Scribblenauts is suppose to be a game that you can finish in a million ways. Could it possibly work? Not quite!
It is not the graphics that bugs me, because they couldn't make that many summonable items with high graphics unless they planned on working for a century. While the music is boring and the sound effects lame, that is not what's destroying the game either. And the complete lack of story ain't the problem.
The first big problem with scribblenauts is the controls. Many of the items are small and easy to miss when trying to touch them with the styIus, and missing them often means the character, Maxwell will go towards that spot, which can be a really, really bad thing.
The second big problem is that the levels aren't much fun. Some of the puzzle levels consists of just summoning an item then you are done, like give candy to the kids that go trick or treating. Yes, the levels can be solved in many ways, but there's still not much motivation as to why you want to solve them. If you had a game where you could save the world with twenty different tactics, it would be much more fun.
It is a common misconception that Scribblenauts is limited only by the players creativity. The truth is that the creators' vocabulary and sense of logic is quite as limiting. Let me demonstrate what I mean at this point by telling you about a specific level. I am supposed to steal the startite without killing the guards. I can take the long way around, or a short-cut, but in the short-cut there is a guard, and a camera that puts up a wall between me and the startite if it sees me. I wanted to take the short-cut.
My first idea was to use sleeping darts on the guard, then take the camera out with EMP. Neither sleeping darts nor any other way to get the guard to sleep was available, and the EMP did not take out the camera.
Second idea was to shoot the camera, then jump on a trampoline to get out of reach. I missed the camera with the styIus and thus walked straight at the guard. Therefore I tried to start by luring the guard away, so I set up the trampoline again, caught his attention and then ran off to jump at the trampoline. Problem was when I pressed the trampoline, the game thought I wanted to run straight at the trampoline and thus push it away. So same idea again, just use wings to fly off. Well, the reason why it didn't work this time, was that the guard turned on the alarm, then a second guard came AND THE TWO GUARDS KILLED EACH OTHER.
So in other words, I don't blame my creativity for me having problems with some of the levels. I could point out several more flaws, such as the items having a very specific size, so building a bridge to cross the water will rarely work. But I think I could go on for too long with all my complains, so I think I'll round this up.
Scribblenauts offer some fun to begin with when you solve the puzzles in particularly un-orthodox ways, but it leads to frustration just as often as fun, and there is not enough variety in the two hundred and so levels to keep it interesting. If I want to feel freedom in a game I'd rather ride Epona in Twilight Princess, and if I wanted to be creative, I'd rather not play a game at all. Scribblenauts just isn't entertaining enough for more than an hour and a half.