Scribblenauts just absolutely overflows with charm, going up against heavyweights on the DS system to offer a game that has so much style and verve that it's impossible to ignore. Seriously, look how gosh darn CUTE it is!
You're in control of a little boy named Maxwell who has a kind of strange superpower – the ability to summon any noun (except proper names, places, trademarks and "suggestive material) into existence. Type "Pegasus" and a little horse with wings shows up. Type "refridgerator" and you've got a fridge to play around with. You're really only limited by your imagination, and it's really fun playing around with the different objects and animals and such that you can summon.
The game is divided into two categories: "puzzle" levels have you trying to solve some sort of puzzle so that you can collect the Starite (a little star that signifies the completion of the level). An example is an early level where you have to move a cow off of a street so that traffic can get by, without killing the cow. The other type is "action" category, where the Starite is in plain view – you just have to go and get it by avoiding or neutralizing a number of obstacles.
In my experience (maybe because of the way my mind works), the action levels are way more difficult than the puzzle levels. I've blown through a chapter of puzzle levels in twenty minutes or less, but the action levels seem to take forever. Part of this has to do with the difficulty level, which isn't so much a gradual incline as it is a steep cliff filled with dragons and lava and sharks and death. Seeing as Scribblenauts is supposedly a game designed for kids (its website is located at WB Kids Games), this could be a little bit offputting.
Despite how much I've enjoyed the game, I do have a couple of problems. The first is that over half of the objects I've tried to use haven't really behaved in a way that makes them very useful at all. Take, for instance, a level where you have to return a baby to its parents. I tried picking the baby up with my hands – no go. Then I tried putting the baby into a baby carriage, but for whatever reason, that didn't work. The solution I finally came to was to use a lasso and drag the baby to its parents, which should have killed it, but didn't. 5th Cell (the developer) came up with pretty ingenious puzzles and an absolutely boffo idea for a game, but maybe the execution of this idea hasn't quite caught up to its ambitions.
The other problem I have is that, as many other critics have noted, the controls blow. The camera is controlled with the d-pad, while you control Maxwell, and all of the objects, with the stylus. Now, the camera controls work fine, and the objects being controlled with the stylus is fine too, but I've killed Maxwell so many times by accidentally jumping him into lava or flying into a spike that it's not funny anymore. I feel bad for the little guy! It could have been fixed with such a simple solution, too – just flip the camera and Maxwell controls. Unfortunately, that's not an option, but it's one I hope to see in an eventual Scribblenauts 2.
And despite my issues with the game, I think it's absolutely a game that you should play. If only to see who would win in a battle between a zombie and a Martian.