Scribblenauts.

Scribblenauts (Warner Bros.; DS; everyone 10+)

I remember the exhaustion on the face of the guy who was demonstrating Scribblenauts for me at E3 last June. It was at the end of three busy days, so I wasn’t surprised that he was so tired—I was tired too. But after playing Scribblenauts for a while, now I realize that his demeanor had to do with the game too.

The objective in this game is to help the cute li’l Maxwell reach the Starite in each level. You do this by writing on the DS touchscreen and invoking objects in the game. If a Starite is on the other side of a lake, you can write “boat” and float across, or “pterodactyl” and fly across. There is no one way to solve the puzzles and navigate through the environments.

Brilliant, right? Original, unique, simple.

What I know now that I’ve played the game for a couple of weeks is that the gimmick gets old fast. Because that’s all the game really is—trying to think of wacky and bizarre objects to bring into the Scribblenauts world—it becomes boring and tedious faster than you want.

To make matters worse, the developers at 5th Cell Media decided to make the entire game stylus-based. This becomes a problem when you’re trying to open up the notepad to invoke a new object or want to move that object around but because your stylus accuracy was off by just a hair you end up directing Maxwell to walk off a cliff.

So, a game that showed great potential ends up being a bit mediocre in the end, all because of a wonky control scheme and a hook that can’t sustain itself. Full marks for trying, though.