Buyer's Remorse: Scribblenauts

Scribblenauts is an odd title for me. I love the concept and the execution of the concept but from the (admittedly very) little I've played of the game so far, I'm coming away just a tad bit underwhelmed. This is a game that I ran out and bought right away expecting to use thousands of words to solve the myriad of puzzles the developers threw against me. While I liked the idea of messing around typing in a variety of words and seeing what happened, I knew that it wouldn't be enough to entertain me. The ability to use my word knowledge to solve puzzles was the biggest reason I bought the game. Scribblenauts, so far, has failed to do that for me.

The problem is that as a player, you fall back on a set list of words that seem capable of solving every situation. While I wanted to use a different word for every puzzle, I discovered that the way I imagined an object wasn't the same as what the game imagined it. The best example of this was the puzzle where you had to protect a sandwich from a bunch of ants without harming them. My first thought was to build a pedestal and place the sandwich out of their reach. The problem was is that I could give the sandwich to Maxwell but I couldn't place it elsewhere on the level. I failed. Next I tried a net to place over the sandwich. The ants simply moved it aside. Finally I gave in, typed in wings, picked up the sandwich and stayed above their heads. That's not too bad but what made it really damning was when I discovered I could just pick up the sandwich, run away, and still get the starite. When I can solve a puzzle without even using the main gameplay system of the game, there's something wrong.


If only half those items were actually useful...

I haven't really said this to anybody before because it's been getting praised constantly. I changed my mind when I saw that I wasn't the only one disappointed in this aspect of Scribblenauts. Scribblenauts is a fantastic idea and it can be fun just seeing what the game holds. It's just a shame that the puzzles aren't really able to back up this promise.

I haven't completely given up on the game yet. I plan on seeing if the puzzles improve at all later in the game. If they don't, then I'm afraid I will truly have buyer's remorse with Scribblenauts, especially since I could have gotten Mario & Luigi 3 or the new Layton instead.