p.s Try the teleporter, type in God, type in Eskimo(for the fact its politically incorrect), titmouse is infact a bird, Rooster and cat can be conjured up using vulgar words, you can get a cadavar, Bigfoot’s in the game as is the Chupacabra. That’s all for now folks!

“once past the original stage of dissapointment and realise how to work within the games mechanics, i really think its an amazing game, control issues aside of course.”

Working within the game’s mechanics was what this game was trying to avoid. You make the game work for you, not the other way around. As Reay stated, the game rewards speed and number of objects instead of creativity. The amount of points you get for style pales to the amount for time and objects under par.

I think, though, that we all agree about the game, fundamentally. We think it’s a worthwhile experience, but it has some control issues and falls short of its promise. We all feel the same way about the game, the problems just have more weight for me. That’s a personal preference, and it’s cool that you disagree. I’m hoping people are reading this discussion and getting a better feel for the issues that game has.

Then the quality of the game comes from how you yourself approach it and choose to interact with the levels and items available? I started to not care about the items used bonus’ on the later levels to just complete them in cool ways. At its core Scribblenauts is a game totally unlike any other and I think everyone should try it, if only to curse themselves and their lack of creativity!

The point of the game, after all, is to complete levels. And personally, if I can do that quickly and easily, it beats the hell out of trial and error with needlessly roundabout ways to finish.

Could any level be finished numerous ways? Absolutely. But while it’s certainly cool that no one else who plays the game will have all the same solutions and experiences I did, Filipe’s point is a valid one: unless players go out of their way to experiment with how to accomplish levels multiple ways, any one player will likely start to rely on a personal tool box of default objects which they have continued success with.

What would be amazing is if they could supply wifi patches for the game which are updated files for the game’s database. Have the designers hear out open forum suggestions from players for other objects, and then routinely offer updates to the game to accommodate for the newer items.

One other drawback I’ve experienced is finding a solution which wasn’t first intended in the level. For instance: the penguin wants the two smallest fish from the water. Ok, well hooking the two smallest fish (below the bigger fish) is hard to do straight-up with the fishing rod, so I figure I’ll get the bigger fish out of the way by distracting them with food away from where I’m trying to fish. So first off, there’s no “fish food” in the database. It showed up as just “food”: a steak. Ok, so I dump the steak in the water, but when I go to do another one and mis-lay the steak, the penguin snaps it up. And a second one. And voila! The level’s done! So it wasn’t that the penguin wanted the two smallest fish so much as it wanted to eat. And evidently, steaks will do. A happy result, to be sure, as I finished the level faster than I otherwise would’ve, but still, different than the hint would first have me approaching the solution.

All in all, however, I’m still enjoying it. And once I’m done with it, I’ll be getting more pleasure out of hearing how my wife and friends solve the levels.

it is hard to see the game for what it is due to the amount of hype that was created and how much the idea of the game was built up. but looking at it for what it is, once past the original stage of dissapointment and realise how to work within the games mechanics, i really think its an amazing game, control issues aside of course.

Girl+Diving board was a very annoying level, as was bully+vending machines, havn’t got the yellow star for the bully one yet :o

as for the similar item issue, try to get the bonus for an item you havn’t used before as much as you can, then you find yourself racking your brains and trying to think of words and objects to complete a solution that you havnt used before, I found it more enjoyable once I started to try and do that as much as possible!

Dying by accidently running into a pit after setting up a huge contraption happens way too often though and is probably the worst thing about the game, d+pad and L for jump should have been the controls for maxwell for sure.

Fore the stages that involved transporting items or dispatching enemies, there were a lot of different tools that I had that had the same effect. A gun, a shotgun, and a ray gun all have similar properties. Trying other things, like I did with the girl/diving board mission, usually led to frustration because some of the choices I made, that seemed valid to me, weren’t recognized by the game.

It’s hard not to get annoyed with the game sometimes, though. Like, the second goddamn mission tells you to catch a butterfly. I make the obvious leap and summon a butterfly net and…it doesn’t work. He’s too far out of reach. What the hell, Scribblenauts?

Wolfkin: I tried using varied tools, to see what could be done. I even watched somebody play for a few hours to see how they got around some of the problems, just to make sure I wasn’t doing something wrong. I think it’s worth checking out, and I look forward to 5th Cell’s future games, but it’s held back by it’s controls, and doesn’t fulfill the promise it makes.

a) I think you did mention issues with using some of the tools
b) you ended the article saying the game was “thoroughly soaked in imagination and charm”
c) the rest of the issues you raised seem perfectly reasonable and valid

so I figure you aren’t completely out of your mind or anything. I haven’t heard anything yet that has brought the game down in my eyes so it’s still on my ‘hype wagon’