I recently got Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS, and I like it. I feel that it’s a deeply flawed game, but I like it despite its flaws.

So that I might end on a high note, I’ll cover the bad stuff first. The single biggest gripe I have with the game is probably one you’ve heard before, if you’ve read anything resembling a review for this game before now: the controls. Everything except for the camera and the ability to rotate objects is controlled using the stylus, and while this works well enough for positioning and manipulating objects, Maxwell (your character) is just as dumb as dirt. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve tried to move a particularly fiddly object, only to see Maxwell jump merrily to his death in a pit of lava or shark-infested waters. Even when I’m trying to control Maxwell, he often fouls things up through no apparent doing of mine. Controlling Maxwell is a very approximate and imprecise, and often you’ll want him to, say, dig through ice with a pick-axe, and he’ll instead jump in place like a spastic mental patient. Which sort of brings me to the next flaw.

Everything is controlled by a physics system; the problem is, the system doesn’t model relative weight all that well, if at all. Why is it that I can set a car down next to a ledge, but as soon as I attach a rope to it, it gets pulled right off the cliff? Why can’t my helicopter lift a penguin? Similarly inscrutable, at least occasionally, is the game’s internal logic. Why, when I try to break a starite out of a block of ice with a sledge hammer, do I break the starite, too, but when I shoot the same block with a machine gun, the starite survives? Why will my vampire attack just about everyone except for a pesky pair of redcaps?

The camera, too, needs some work. Controlling the camera is mapped to the d-pad, and works just fine; the problem is that it snaps back to Maxwell after about a second and a half of inactivity, which is simply inconvenient in a game in which you’ll often want to be creating things and placing them in areas where Maxwell isn’t (presumably so he doesn’t accidentally jump off a cliff or something).

All that said, I find I simply can’t stop playing the game. I frequently curse it, and it frequently frustrates me, but I can’t stop playing it. It’s simply too original a concept, and the basic concept is simply too well-realized, for me to pass up. And for that reason, if you’ve been at least a little bit interested in this game, or if you like puzzle games, you should go out and buy it. And if my earlier negativity has dissuaded you, you should still buy it. Why? Because every copy that gets bought makes it more likely that a sequel will be released, a sequel with better controls, better physics, a better camera, and better internal logic. And because it’s crazy fun, when it works right.

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