I have been following Scribblenauts ever since journalists praised it at E3. The stories of people testing the boundaries of this game convinced me that I needed this game on day one. I have read many previews describing how the writers tried to stump the game, and now I finally have my chance to play the game. First, let me backtrack and recap the premise of the game.

Scribblenauts tasks you with either solving a puzzle or getting to a star. How you go about it is entirely up to you. You bring up a keyboard and type in what you want to drop into the situation. The development team has spent an insane amount of time inputting words into this game. I had a very hard time stumping it. There have been a few things that I have found missing, but only a handful of items. Most of the fun in this game is putting stuff into the game, and seeing what happens. Ever want to know what happens when God runs into a dinosaur? Well, I have that answer (God rides the dinosaur, just so you know). The creativity that can exist in this game is insane. You and your friend could both beat this game, and your solutions could very likely almost never match. That is where this game shines, how you solve the problems is entirely up to you. There is almost no better satisfaction than tackling a problem in your own unique way. On one early problem, I was tasked with obtaining a flower in a pool where a shark resided. My first thought was, “What will kill a shark?” I tried dropping a whale in there, and it attacked the shark, but died. I repeated this a few times, and the shark got fucked up every time. Next, I dropped a shark in there. They just hung out and didn’t attack each other. Douches. Then I knew I needed to get creative. I didn’t know if this would work, but I created a toaster and dropped a toaster in there. That douchebag shark got lit up!

While that moment was fantastic, there are some pretty glaring issues with the game, and they all pretty much tie back to controls. You move your character by using the stylus, which feels very in-precise. There have been many occasions where I have perished where I thought, “This wouldn’t have happened if I had used the D-pad”. I hope this game sells so that we see a sequel where this is ironed out. But, overall the good outweighs the bad here. And even though this feels more like a toy, there is definitely a ton of fun to be had here. And, only because this game exists, I now can finally talk at church and comment about how God digs riding dinosaurs.