Scribblenauts

When this game came out a few months ago, I raced off to the store to buy it. I think I even skipped classes for a day just to play it. The premise of the game was simple. Solve very quick puzzles by conjuring up objects. Literally, just type in an object, and it would appear. The game contains a library of 10,000 objects, and as long as your word isn't too dirty or adult-themed (drug and alcohol references count), it'll almost definitely be in there. At first, the game was a blast. I wasn't even attempting puzzles as much as dicking around. Who would win in a fight, a kraken or a megalodon? Could I attach enough helium balloons to myself to cause me to begin to float away? Who can cut down more trees - this lumberjack, or these beavers? You get the picture. But before long, innovation and imagination gave way to the grueling task of clearing out my backlog. While I had enjoyed wise-assing my way through the first thirty levels or so (there are 220 in total) I soon became bored with imagination and innovation. And that's kind of the key flaw with Scribblenauts - sure, in theory, there are dozens of ways, if not hundreds, to solve each and every puzzle. But before long, you start to develop a starting rotation of go-to objects. As it turns out, there really aren't that many tasks to perform in the game. You can fly, swim, dig, and operate vehicles. You can attack enemies or bad creatures with weapons. You can use explosives to remove hazards. And really, there's not much else. So I found myself settling into a rut where I was completing four out of every five levels with the same palate of ten objects or so. I even read online about one guy claiming to have beaten the entire game with six objects. So, yeah, there may be 10,000 nouns to choose from, but Scribblenauts is a game with very few verbs. Two additional factors also negatively affect this game, and they go beyond mere repetition. One is the control scheme. You control a guy named Maxwell with the DS stylus, and when you click anywhere on the screen, he'll go there. But you also need to click on objects to open up little interaction menus. I must have sent Maxwell off a cliff or into a pack of monsters a hundred times while trying to click on objects. You use the D-pad to scroll the screen around and view the level, but the game automatically and obnoxiously scrolls your view back to Maxwell after a second or two. So you can't really survey the landscape. And there's no preventing this either. More than half of my Maxwell suicides came when I'd go to tap on an object only to have the screen scroll back toward Maxwell just before my tap, allowing me to click on empty space, sending Maxwell into a headlong beeline. Worst of all was the jumping. There is no jump button, and Maxwell automatically leaps to cross gaps or ascend small steps. But he never seems able to jump when you want him to, and he's always jumping around like a giddy little asshole when you just want him to stand still. At least, that's how it seems. And even when you attach wings to him - fly, Maxwell, fly! - he still has trouble getting airborne more often than not. All of this is especially annoying when you're trying to flee from a ninja or some kind of hellspawn. Finally, there's tons of lag in this game. There's a maximum amount of items allowed on screen at once, and that's understandable, as a tiny little DS and its game card can only have so much RAM. What's not understandable is why the game slows to half speed when more than three items are moving at once. Games shouldn't ever lag that poorly, especially ones with cartoon graphics made for handheld systems. So what's the bottom line here? Scribblenauts is a unique and interesting game; that much can't be denied. It's also untrue to say it's dull or boring; this game, more than any other game ever, has an excitement level that completely depends on the gamer's innovation and imaginative efforts. But somewhere amid the 220 levels, everyone will lose interest. Before too long, you've written all the cool things you can think of and found out which ones work (at all) during missions and which ones don't (hint: nuclear bombs are never a good idea). Combine the inevitable loss of interest with the annoying lag and downright terrible controls, and this really isn't all that good a game. Which is a damn shame to admit, as I wanted to love it as much as anyone did. And the thing is, I did love it. But only for an hour or two, and it took me ten or twelve to beat it. I do think it's worth checking out if you've got a DS; there's nothing else like it. But be warned - if you're looking to complete the game, you've got a long and lifeless road ahead of you. Oh well. I guess not every "next big thing" game can live up to the hype.