There are few things that rile a gamer as much as hype. We’ve been burned far too many times before. If a reviewer was to refer to Scribblenauts as the best game ever (fact) almost a year prior to its release, there’d be carnage. 5th Cell warranted the hype, though. They’d come up with a concept that was unique, and seemed impossible to achieve: if an item exists in the world, then Scribblenauts was to contain it.

The difference this makes to an inventory system is astonishing. Previously, the closest gamers had got to this kind of freedom was deciding whether to set the hook-shot to A or B, and now they could do anything? On the DS? Witchcraft, surely? People refused to believe it could be done, but 5th Cell were insistent that they could pull it off: “If you can think of it, you can use it.”

They didn’t quite manage it. There are over 20,000 items here, and playing with a dictionary will catch the game out. There are some obscure items that don’t make it in but the chances of the player coming across them at random are slim. A few items (notably human characters) reuse the same graphics over and over, but this is made up for with other items which perform beyond the player’s imagination. Equip Maxwell with some night vision goggles. Ultimately, if you can think of it, you can almost certainly use it.

The key to all these items is Objectnaut. It allows all the items to have properties that let them react as realistically as possible within the games physics engine. If an item is marked as being made of wood, then it’s automatically given the property of being flammable. If an item’s marked as being alight then it can be extinguished with water. If an item has water, you can fill up a glass and drink it. There are an incredible number of interactions between items, some expected, some unexpected, and some so unexpected you can’t help but be awed. There are precious few games with events that warrant discussion, but when you encounter a switch on a ceiling and press it by putting a midget on a trampoline, well, just try not to tell someone! Half the fun of Scribblenauts is experiencing it with others.

Maybe more than half because it does its best to be as unfriendly as possible.

Hundreds of levels are split into two sections, both challenging Maxwell to collect Starites. Puzzle levels give the player a hint and they must work out how to perform the action (save the whale, press the switch, give them what they want in their hands) whereupon the Starite appears. The Starite is visible from the start in Action levels, and the task is simply to work out how to get to it. There are some wonderful puzzles, and in a lovely touch, some pop culture references. It will always raise a smile when a level is reached based on a familiar movie. So, you’re prepared for fun?

But then there are the controls to deal with. Aside from moving the camera with the D-Pad (which snaps back to Maxwell if left for two seconds) everything in the game is stylus controlled. This is nothing short of a tragedy. Touching the notebook icon allows a desired item to be summoned by an on screen keyboard (or a less convenient handwriting system). The item can be dragged around and placed wherever it’s needed. Dragging it onto Maxwell will allow him to carry it, or ride it, whatever the item demands. Tapping an item on the screen brings up a context-sensitive menu with options for attacking, throwing or riding among other things depending on the item and what Maxwell is carrying. Touching Maxwell makes him drop an item he’s holding. Tapping elsewhere on the screen moves Maxwell to that place.

That’s the theory; this is what happens in practice all too often. Tapping an item causes Maxwell to run into the water and get eaten by a shark. Tapping elsewhere on the screen makes nothing happen. Tapping the sky to have Maxwell fly with some wings will lead him to run off a ledge into a pitfall. Trying to drag an item will cause Maxwell to run smashing through every item in the level without a care, destroying everything the player has worked hard to create. Controlling Maxwell with the D-Pad would have been enough to fix every problem with the game’s controls but it wasn’t to be. It’s possible to play many levels in a row without encountering any control issues, falling head over heels in love with the game, but when an elaborate set up is destroyed by Maxwell’s incompetence the affair ends. When the game frustrates again, it’s too tempting to just spend level after level spawning box after box and pushing them around a bit before using jetpacks to get the Starite.

The game gets around this by offering an advanced mode. To obtain a gold medal in a level the player must complete it three times in a row, with a twist. The items you use to solve the puzzle one of the three times can’t be used any of the other times. This requires a whole new way of playing. Spamming a level with items is replaced with a need for efficiency, it demands imagination.

The game gets around control issues, slightly, by offering a sandbox mode on the title screen. When the pressure’s off and there’s no mission to complete, it’s easy to get lost in spawning item after item just to see how they react with one another. The control issues are quickly forgotten when they’re not creating frustration and the game works as it was meant to work.

Objectnaut is an incredible achievement. Squeezing so many items into the game and having each one act how (and beyond how) the player expects is amazing. The structure was there for a near perfect game but the controls let it down. In the end though, the most disappointing thing isn’t the poor controls. It’s not the fact that needle and pin spawn the same graphic. It’s how easy it would have been for 5th Cell to make the change that would have taken this game from what it is, to the best game ever.