The Gaming Experiment

Scribblenauts is a DS exclusive puzzle game that’s tagline is “Write Anything, Solve Everything”. The premise is fantastic, write a word out, using either the keyboard or the in-game writing recognition (which didn’t work very well) to have the written object to appear and be utilized in the world. The in-game dictionary is enormous, clocking in a more than 20,000 words.

How cool does this premise sound? The game was chosen as Gamespy’s game of E3. I have been really hyped for Scribblenauts for a while too.

Unfortunately for the game, the premise is great, but the execution is not very good.

Positives:

Huge Dictionary – You can’t complain about a dictionary that has more than 20,000

Cool Art style – Maxwell (your character) looks pretty cool, and the style of the puzzles are pretty cool too

No Real Title Screen - This allows you to just have fun with the dictionary in a free-form fashion

Negative:

Controls - This single-handedly killed the game for me. The stylus is used for moving your character as well as interacting with they puzzle, and it fails badly because it's imprecise and sloppy.

Only one real negative so far, but it's a fundamental issue that can't be overlooked. It's really unfortunate, but I will keep at it for a while longer. If my opinion changes, I'll be sure to update the entry.

Are you playing Scribblenauts? Let me know what you think about the game in the comments.