'Scribblenauts' inventive, fun, frustrating

• By JOSHUA WASCOM
• Special to 2theadvocate.com
• Published: Sep 23, 2009

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"Scribblenauts” is quite possibly the best terrible game I’ve ever played. The wonderful central concept -- you have a magic notepad, capable of summoning anything you write down -- is brilliantly executed. Almost every other detail, however, is off in some way.

The basic game is a fairly simple platformer. A star is hidden in each of the game’s 220 levels, and it’s up to you to retrieve it. Sometimes you do this by solving puzzles. Other times by simply finding a way through a variety of obstacles. To aid you in your quest, you have, well, almost anything.

Need to climb a cliff? Pull out your notebook, type “ladder,” and one will appear. Need to distract a vegetarian? You could summon some broccoli, or, if you’re feeling adventurous, perhaps a helicopter, a pilot and some rope. The game has a huge dictionary and a fairly comprehensive set of interactions. It allows for a huge amount of creativity, and there’s a great feeling every time you pull off some complex scheme that you didn’t really expect to work.

It’s also surprisingly fun just to start summoning things at random. Even after my main playthrough of the game was completed, I’d find myself turning it back on just to see if a particular device from science fiction or some creature from Greek mythology could be called forth. More often than not, the game would know exactly what I meant, and I’m still not certain if I was more excited over the shrink ray or the cloak of invisibility.

It would take a lot of flaws to spoil an experience this unique, and, unfortunately, “Scribblenauts” tries hard to provide them. Many of these are general and small problems. However, the most effective hindrance to fun, though, is the control scheme. Your character’s movement and interactions are controlled through the touchscreen, which really doesn’t work terribly well for a platformer. If you’re moving the camera as you tap, it rapidly becomes difficult to determine where you’re actually going to end up, and the game simply guesses -- often poorly -- about when you want to jump.

To make matters much, much worse, item creation and placement is also controlled through the touch screen, leading to numerous situations where an attempt to equip a jetpack instead leads to a blind leap into a lava pit. Tasks like trying to navigate on a big vehicle like an alien spacecraft or a dragon can often lead to you pulling your mount out from under yourself.

That last sentence should really be enough to let you know how you’ll feel about the game. Did you focus on the sometimes awkward controls or the much-more-important fact that you can fly UFOs and ride dragons in the same game? It’s a shame that such an ambitious and original concept is coupled with so many missteps. With that said, if you let your excitement overcome your frustration, there is a huge amount of fun to be had in “Scribblenauts.”