Ahh yes scribblenauts the massively creative and hyped DS game that every DS owner should play…well to quickly summarize the game its 3 steps forward and 1 MASSIVE step back

"This is Maxwell and that's all you need to know"

The game in short is a puzzle/action platformer with no story other than you are Maxwell..what makes this game stand out is you type or write things into the game and they spawn with their own A.I. functions for example type in "Santa" he will give everyone gifts, type in vampire he will bite others and turn them into vampires and if you type in sun they will all die, type in toaster throw it into water electrocute any enemies in the water and more there are endless possibilities one of my personal favorites is to say "f*ck it" and drop a nuke and kill everything even Maxwell

Now like I said before the game is composed of puzzle and action stages in the puzzle stages you need to hit a switch or figure out the objective with subtle hints like "the man is hungry" or "save the sandwich from the ants but don't kill any" the action stages are more a incomplete platformer and you fill in the gaps with whatever you please can't reach your objective (they are called starites) ride a t-rex and for the hell of it throw a top hat on him, or start a fire or have two massive creatures fight in the middle of the stage and hope their antics help you and there are over 200 levels and a level editor and you can download user created levels

Now the game is very original and fun I mean the title screen alone is just hours of fun the title screen is just an open level where you can spawn whatever you want and do whatever you want I have spent hours and hours just messing around fighting zombies with soldiers and of course have god and satan and cthulu fight a massive fight and when I eventually get bored of that I remember there is a actual game here and continue from where I left off

Yet all is not as good as everything seems like my first sentence/opening or whatever the game takes this type of genre further but takes a huge step back the main downfall of the game is the controls everything you do is by the stylus want to move left or right tap the left or right of the screen you also use it to drag the objects you spawned into the level and that's when the fun begins because at times when I want to drag the object Maxwell will instead run like a "special needs child" head first into traps, lava, enemies, pits, and just pain also I noticed there is no health bar and it seems some enemies can just keep hitting you for hours and no death and someone can hit you once and you die it's kind of frustrating to get attack by a bee you kill it then another bee comes hits you once and you die and have to restart the level when you had no notification you were weak

"That's right Maxwell run right into that enemy"

The levels as you progress get harder and harder naturally but the problems are you need to be more precise and intricate with objects or just Maxwell's actions (like various trip wires in the way or platforms) the game goes from fun and creative to buggy and a mess there are some levels I know how to beat but due to the controls I quit it from frustration because I keep falling into lava or jumped out a vehicle into the mouth of a shark and it's a real shame really the game shouldn't be bogged by horrible controls in this day and age the DS isn't new it's been around for a long time I am pretty sure we perfected the control scheme by now I would kill for a directional pad function but it's not in this game

Also the level editor is lacking really there are times where I want to add massive amounts of water or dirt to cover up the level to make it what I envisioned (like a digging or swimming section)but instead I type in dirt or water and little specks come out or the water isn't even deep while in the main game they have deep oceans and deep dirt also for the level editor it is very limited with what you can put in there is a little meter that tells you how much space you have left and it seems a bit lacking since the developer made levels seem to have more

Another thing about the game that surprised me was it has a physics system which is amazing for a DS game and about 60% of the time it works but once again when you have a intricate plan and try to use the physics engine to my advantage (putting a boulder on something to weigh it down) it usually fails….horribly but round things roll heavy things usually push light things and so on and so forth

Overall even though this game has its share of problems I find myself playing it more and more sure it's annoying to fall into lava when you KNOW YOU HIT THE DAMN HELICOPTER!!!11!!111!! but it's always fun to spawn whatever is in your head and actually feel like for once interacting in the game's world overall I think everyone with a DS should experience this game either renting or buying just for the reason that things have their own A.I. and physic system but seriously the controls are so bad…argg damn you lava