While it stumbles here and there, simply the idea of it wins it enough awards to warrant a purchase.
You're a Scribblenaut! It's never quite explained where you come from or what your goal is, and I personally think a story, even if it's as wacky and unreal as say Elite Beat Agents or LittleBigPlanet, would have helped. However as it stands, your only explanation for anything is that you're a Scribblenaut. In puzzle levels, this often means helping out a person in need, and in action levels, this often means just seeking out a starite.
Graphics:
It's bright, it's colorful, and it's efficient. Out of the thousands of items in this game, I've been able to accurately identify anything that gets spawned. It doesn't sound like I'm saying much when I say that, but of thousands of items on the DS's little screen, being able to see a pocket watch and know it is a big task. There are nice little effects hidden around like being able to spawn a rainstorm or using a moon to go from day to night, but overall the idea here is quantity over quality. Items get extremely pixelated when they're on uneven surfaces, and often stuff like spy and ninja will share the exact same model.
Gameplay:
This game plays almost exactly as you think it will, and with a game as ambitious as this, that's a huge task. You can spawn anything within some loosely followed rules of no copywrite, vulgarity, ect. to solve anything. Over 200 levels, split half an half between action and puzzle levels, give you a large variety of tasks to accomplish. However that's not the first thing you'll be doing most likely, as right from the title screen, they give you a blank slate level to mess around in already. Yes, you can glue a chainsaw to a motorcycle and ram it into zombies and yes, you can finally know what happens when a Lammergeier and a Hoatzin fight over lunch.
Getting past the initial lets mess around with everything stage of the game, you get to a fairly well made game. There is no story or order to anything so really getting out of the training level, you're just kicked into a world of over 200 problems that need to be solved. When solved, a puzzle will arbitrarily rate you on how well you did. I don't think I've ever gotten a style score over 120, and my time score is always through the roof. With these points, you can buy avatars and music at the shop or buy more levels to play. The levels are good fun and have produced just as many laugh out loud moments as the messing around mode did. If you find a level fun, you can take on the advanced challenge, where you play the level 3 times in a row, not using any items you used last time. It mixes up your solution to everything and makes it so god can't just sit there as your ultimate warrior for anything that needs a beating.
I have a couple of problems with the game however that hold this back from being the best ds game everyone was hoping for. One is that the item limit, mostly in the level maker, is too small. The developers seemed to have had a lot more space to work with because their levels often have twice the stuff yours can have. Two is that movement is buggy. Touchscreen controls both items on screen and your character's movements. If you have something small you wanna pick up, you will often tell your guy to run to it, which in some levels, will cause traps to go off or just cause you to run right into lava. Last is that some levels just don't feel polished. In one situation, I was robbing a museum when I set off the alarm system. This caused an extra security guard to appear where I came from, but the guard oddly enough was friendly to me, and actually started to beat up the guards that were already in the level. Despite these flaws though, ranging from small quirks to major frustrations, you get over it eventually just because you want to enjoy a game like this.
Sound:
The sound really is the department this game lacks most in. The music has a bunch of nice remixes of it's main tune, but doesn't get a single spot on my MP3 player. It is functional, but nothing more. The sounds of everything else is just terribly lacking. Most animals and objects make no sounds at all outside of the most common animals like cat or dog. Musical instruments have a little whimper to them when I touch them, but become as silent as a mime when I give them to rock stars and other people. A didgeridoo makes the sound of a flute, an accordion makes the sound of an organ, and every creature makes a total of two noises max. The sound really feels like a missed opportunity as other than that, every object really feels like it had a lot of work put into it. The game is just as good played in mute as it is played with headphones on max.
Who wants this game?
Anyone who has read a description of it and says "Hey, that's a really cool idea!". It has a good number of flaws to it's formula, but doing anything has never felt so fun.