Scribblenauts Review
Scribblenauts is the highly talked about DS game from 5th Cell in which you will be conquering levels using your brain and basically any noun (not registered) in the English language. There are 2 different styles of play, Adventure and Puzzle, and you'll find that each stage will have a different difficulty to it. As you move through the game you will pick up in game currency that you can use to unlock more levels, collect avatars, and collect songs. You'll find that the game contains over 200 levels in which to test your wits in.
Graphically this game isn't going to blow you away. It really has kind of that shoe box scene look, and also feels very 2D. With that said that doesn't take away from the game. It is a bit disheartening when you identify an object in a level and try to make a duplicate and you get something completely different, and also that there are some items that look identical to others, even though they are different. The latter is just a product of having to conform to the memory limitations of the DS cartridge.
The music is playful and light, you can definitely feel a connection with the other 5th Cell game, Drawn to Life.
The controls is what breaks the game for me. By limiting the character to following the path of the stylus the game feels beyond clunky. There are times where you character should easily be able to make a jump but because you can't tell it when to exactly jump it will just walk into the wall or object and continue to do so. I like the fact that it is easy to pull out the notepad to write names of objects, but placing objects can sometimes feel stressful. There are times where an object is just the right size, but because of the precision of the DS touchscreen not being anywhere close to as precise as you'd like it to be you'll lose an object down a hole. In my personal opinion I would have liked to see the controls switched where the d-pad moves the character and you can use you buttons to perform actions, and the stylus lets you zoom around the screen to see what all is there.
So the name of the game is adventure levels and puzzle levels. Each will have a vague, sometimes too vague description and you'll have to solve the level, or get through the level to the object that completes a level the starite. Through the first couple of levels you can forgive the fact that your character isn't doing exactly what you'd like for him to do, but as you start getting into the harder levels this starts to really weigh on the experience. The innovativeness of this title is something that can't be matched, but the execution seems to be slightly off. There are times where I feel like I came up with a solution to a puzzle or a level only to be proven wrong with a pop up asking me to try again, or nothing happening when in my mind something should have. Another thing is the fact that after getting through every stage within a level you'll find that when you go back to the screen you're looking at a sea of locked levels. The currency portion of this game just seems weird to me. You have to buy a level so that you can open it up, then you have to play a couple of stages to unlock another couple of stages within the level. To top it off after completing each stage the cursor automatically returns back to the first stage. So if you're trying to beat one after another instead of beating one and then being able to immediately select OK to dive into the next level you'll have to select the next level and then hit OK.
I think I might have built this game up a bit too much in my mind, and now that I've finally taken it for a spin the shininess of this game has been washed away, and what I'm left with is a game that has its good, overly frustrating, and bad moments. I still think that this is a game that everyone should try out, but I don't think that this game is as solid as I once thought it would be. Scribblenauts gets a 7.7 out of 10.
