Scribblenauts (DS)

Gamecow’s Price	RRP $59.95     Save $6.00 $53.95
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Genre	General: Puzzle
Platform	Nintendo DS
Release Date	30/09/2009
Rated

Scribblenauts (DS) Product Information

In Scribblenauts, the player uses the Nintendo DS touch-screen to help his character, Maxwell, acquire the starite in each level by solving a series of puzzles.

The twist is, in order to solve the puzzle, the player uses the stylus and notepad to write down the word for any object that comes to mind in order to reach the goal. Every object behaves as it would in the real world, and the player can combine countless objects together to create completely new behaviours. Every level has more than one written object to use as a solution, opening up the game to unlimited replay.

Scribblenauts (DS) Review

How can you sum up Scribblenauts? Since its announcement, the game has been a veritable snowball gathering hype as it rolls down the gamer mountain - a game that lets you create anything, do anything, limited only by your imagination. This is the highest-concept game that's come along in a while, and on the DS platform it stands to reach a massive audience and potentially have a great impact on the way we play games as a whole. It's no doubt an important game, but how well does it capture its 'write anything, solve everything' tag-line, and is it actually a fun game to play?

There isn't really a story to Scribblenauts, as such, you just play as the dude in the rooster hat, Maxwell. He's got a notepad that lets him write down just about anything, and create it. He's only limited by words that may be suggestive, profane or copyrighted. When you first start up the game, the title screen is pretty much just a sandbox mode, where you can choose from a number of locations and just create whatever you want and see what happens. You can only create a certain number of objects at any one time, the limit measured by a thermometer on the top screen. For many gamers, you won't get past this first screen.

The amount of things you can create out of thin air is indeed, insane. You can create a shovel. An apple. A flamethrower. A helicopter. Plastic explosive. A ziggurat. Keyboard Cat. The Large Hadron Collider. The list goes on and on and on and on. There's also a level of interaction between these objects, so if you wanted you could create George Washington and a velociraptor and watch the inevitable outcome. You can equip characters with objects, so you could give a soldier a steak if you so chose. We've only just touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you could do, and this is just the title screen. Holy bananas. The creativity and open-ended nature of this game is simply marvellous.

There's definitely a lot to like about Scribblenauts and we have no doubt that it's an important title. No other game has come close to giving you so much control over how you approach puzzles or challenges, but the fact that you can just have an enormous amount of fun just playing and creating in the game's sandbox mode is also incredibly refreshing. It's a game that promises a lot, and mostly delivers, but due to some frustrating controls, cramped and occasionally uninspired level and mission design, it's not quite the perfect game some were hoping it would be. However, that said, anybody with a DS who wants to test their imagination and enjoy a truly charming atmosphere would be a fool to pass this up.

Full review PALGN