I'll Scribble Your Naut!

5th Cell came on the hand held scene two years ago with Drawn To Life, their create your own heroes/weapons/story/game for the DS (which honestly really bored me), and then last year with Lock’s Quest (which I forgot about rather quickly). Now 5th Cell’s newest game, which is way more freeform than Drawn To Life (just in different ways) and way more memorable than the last two combined, is Scribblenauts; and I must say, Scribblenauts is absolutely delicious. In Scribblenauts you are given multiple tasks to complete, which actually doesn’t sound too innovative; but when you add over 10,000 nouns to type in which brings that object into the world to interact with or by itself, the possibilities are endless (well not really endless, there are a limited amount of words, and a budget meter… but, I digress). I guarantee you that when it comes to the start screen where you can just fiddle around you will type all kinds of things just to see if it’ll show up, keeping in mind you can’t call up swear words, shapes, proper nouns or alcohol (and yet you can call a town drunk…).

Once in the game there are plenty of levels, all of which can be redone three times in a row without using the same items for a gold star. Each level can also vary between its challenge mode façade and its action mode play. I’m personally more of a challenge guy, but there isn’t too much of a difference between the two types of play. Completing levels nets you some ‘ollars’ which can be used to buy locked levels or used in the unlock shop. The unlock shop is actually quite negligible, as there are just a few avatars and some music inside. Even on top of all of this there is a level creator, which I can’t bring my self to use quite yet as I fear I will burst into a plethora of nouns and puddle at the bottom of my chair with the sheer amount of options and freedom; but maybe I’ll give it a shot later.

I did have some problems with Scribblenauts though. The first one is, as grand as the whole ‘do everything and anything you want thing’ (and I love their faith in me) is it’s a little too freeform. I could use just a little more guidance; for example, a puzzle told me to clear the way home as there was a cow in the road and four backed up cars. I spent thirty minutes killing, riding and blowing the cow out of the way before I figured out it was the cow who needed to get home; little things like that. Another thing, and this is just a personal problem, this game makes me feel like I only know five words in the whole universe. The possibilities are astounding and, furthermore, paralyzing. So when faced with a situation I always revert to my default ‘drop a plane on it’ (cow in the way, tornado, stop a boat, save a sheep or penguin; no matter what it was I dropped a plane on it). Lastly, the control scheme, though extremely simple, is something I find myself fighting with a bit. I want to run with my D-pad, while the D-pad and a, b, x, and y buttons are all camera buttons (feels like overkill).

If you are a fan of thinking games, but Professor Layton is too much logic for you, nab this game ultra pronto (yeah, because that’s a real sentence).

+ 10,000 Words, all which interact with everything else!
+ Innovative
+ Plenty of levels
+ Good replay value
+ Interesting overall design/theme
- Unlockables bored me
- I feel like an idiot
- Controls
? Don’t know what the level creator is like yet
? Dragon > Angel with sword > Demon > Angel > Hero > Easter Bunny
? A town minus alcohol still has a town drunk, how!?

Rating: 9 nouns out of 10