The concept is simple, yet profound; you are an odd-looking boy with a rooster hat named Maxwell, and there are a series of minor tasks for you to complete. The reward for solving these tasks is a starite. However, instead of taking the usual video game route where you have very few items to work with and must rely on your skill, in this game, you can summon into existence ANY OBJECT YOU CAN THINK OF to help you on your way. (There are restrictions to the “anything you can think of” rule, like not including vulgar terms, shapes, Latin names, or copyrighted things, but those restrictions do make a lot of sense, and don’t ruin the overall game.)

For example; on the far side of a lake, there is a flower that you have to pick, but between you and the flower is an angry bee that won’t let you go past it. How do you get rid of it? That is entirely up to you. Flyswatter? Sure, it works. Bug spray? That works too. Boomerang? Yep. Sword? Absolutely. Venus’ flytrap? Um… actually, I’m not sure about that one, let me check…

*a few seconds later*

OK, Venus flytrap doesn’t actually try to eat the bee. However, dropping the plant on the bee’s head seems to kill it. This illustrates one of the downsides about Scribblenauts. Just because you can summon nearly anything doesn’t mean that it will always act the way you may expect. An ostrich will not bury its head in sand. Playing the flute will not make rats follow you. A ceiling fan will not automatically attach to most ceilings.

In making this game, 5th Cell – the creators of the game – were doomed to at least some level of failure, because everyone who picks up the game will eventually find something that the game will not do. It has no hope of living up to anyone’s wildest expectation. However, it does do at least half of the things that I could dream up for it, and that’s amazing in itself. Monkeys will eat bananas and swing on vines. Elephants will run from mice (and so will mammoths). Electrocuting a corpse will turn it into a zombie, who will in turn try to turn any living human around it into a zombie.

It is a game that amazes me, but I couldn’t have a proper review of the game without mentioning its biggest flaws. There are two big ones that have dominated game reviews for Scribblenauts since the game launched, and I have to mention them here as well: player control and camera control.

All player movement is done with the DS stylus, rather than most games where control is done with the pushing of buttons. The problem with this is that the manipulating of objects in the game is also done with the stylus, meaning that you frequently move Maxwell around when you mean to pick up an object (or vice versa). When I first started playing this game, this annoyed me, but I’ve quickly found the solution for this… move Maxwell as little as possible. If there’s an enemy between me and the starite I need to get, I don’t give Maxwell a machete and try to fight the enemy myself. Nope, I send a T-Rex after him, or bury him in quicksand. The less that Maxwell does, the better.

The camera control problem is a harder one to deal with. You see, you use the buttons on the DS to scroll the camera around to the part of the level that you want to put an object in. The unfortunate problem is that the camera will automatically recenter you on Maxwell after a few seconds, and while that’s sometimes good in large levels when you have forgotten where Maxwell is, it usually is a pain in the butt. It makes levels longer and more tedious than they need to be.

There is a wide variety of things to do in Scribblenauts. The game contains 220 levels, although the game shines most for me in levels where you have a very simple task to do and can choose from a hundred different ways to do it. I should also mention that this isn’t the type of game that you’re likely to play for five hours at a time. I find it best to pick it up for twenty minutes, do a level or two, and shut it off again, because then the whimsy of being able to make any object I please to solve a problem stays fresh in my mind, and I enjoy the experience even more.

Scribblenauts is definitely worth buying, despite its flaws, and if the creators of Scribblenauts were to create a sequel that had better controls and more types of item interactions, I’d be first in line to buy that too. 5th Cell, my inner 8-year-old thanks you.

The game contains 18 dice that have individual pictures on each side. The dice are rolled, and then everyone around the table tries to find common phrases, like I’ve done in the illustration to the left of this review. In one mode of the game, players have about two minutes to find as many phrases as possible on the dice. After the time is up, everyone compares their word lists. If two or more people came up with the same phrase, they cancel each other out, and if someone came up with a phrase that’s a bit of a stretch, they’re voted down by the other players, but every legitimate phrase earns one point. First person to 20 points wins!

Creativity is encouraged, although bending the pictures too much into other things to try and make them fit a phrase probably won’t work. Playing on words is allowed, which means that “peace” can also be “piece”. You can add small words like “a”, “in”, or “and” to help you. Also, the phrases are only allowed to be two pictures long, so my sentence at the bottom wouldn’t be allowed (whether or not it made the other players laugh).

All things considered, it’s a fun game to play with a few friends, and it usually has some pretty hilarious moments. For instance, on one round that showed two dice with a calendar and a penguin on an iceberg, someone wrote “March of the Penguins”. On another round that had an obese man and a parka, someone suggested Chris Farley’s “Fat Guy in a Little Coat”.

There are a few downsides of this game. For instance, if you play this game too many times in a row, you start noticing a few of the same phrases over and over again, which takes a bit of the fun away. Another point is that it doesn’t work to have large groups of people play this, as it gets difficult for everyone to see the pictures on the dice. It’s also more of an adult game… in my experience, younger kids have a hard time coming up with phrases.

Those, however, are fairly minor compared to the actual fun of the game. If you want to see how well you’d do playing this game, see if you can find other phrases on the dice shown here. What about “papercut”? “Cut time”? “Playing with fire”? “Happy hour”? “Clock face”? “Two-faced”? “Time flies”?…

Two years ago, when I heard that Mario Galaxy was coming, I decided that it might be wise for me to get used to playing Mario games in 3D, as I’d never played classics like Mario 64. So, I picked up a copy of the Gamecube game Super Mario Sunshine – which, of course, plays on the Wii – and started playing. I soon discovered that I was not particularly good at the game… I had a difficult time mastering the controls, and there were too many precision jumps for me to master. Less than a tenth of the way through the game, I put the game away, hoping that Super Mario Galaxy would not be as difficult for me.

Fortunately, it is not. The controls are perfect, and the spin ability while jumping means that, if I’m about to land somewhere that I wasn’t intending to, I have a second chance before landing to correct my jump and land properly, which was much easier to master than Mario Sunshine’s F.L.U.D.D. system.

The gameplay is amazing. The opportunity and challenge of solving puzzles while walking upside-down is quite a feat in itself, but the fact that you can play gravity-defying levels without getting dizzy is astounding. The game seems to delight in twisting your brain in ways its never gone before, while still making sense.

From watching trailers of the game, I had gotten the impression that the game would all be about walking around on curved planets and puzzles with gravity, but it was much more than that. Some planets turned out to be giant watery racetracks, surfing on the back of a giant manta ray, while other planets put Mario in a bubble, requiring you to blow him around with the Wii remote.

One of the most overlooked points of Mario Galaxy is the fact that it’s a multi-player game. A second person can, whenever they want, pick up a second Wii remote and help Mario by collecting star bits for extra lives or holding back enemies, which is good for helping less skillful players (or giving less skillful players something helpful to do). Another frequently overlooked point is Mario Galaxy’s music, which is frequently fully orchestrated and gorgeous. If Nintendo ever decides to sell the soundtrack in North America, I’ll be in line to buy it.

There’s more to be said about the game, of course. Rosalina shines as a wonderful female character addition to the Mario series, the boss battles are frequently intense, the difficulty is just right; it’s a wonderful game to play.

Now, imagine that you and your friends are the ones that get to press the big red button, without any fear of being charged with a criminal offense for destroying public property. That’s Boom Blox. If you have ever delighted in watching a wobbly building made of dominoes get destroyed and wished that it didn’t take so long setting up the dominoes in the first place, this game is for you. Boom Blox comes only on the Nintendo Wii, which is good, because I don’t know what other console could support a game like it.

At first, when I had heard of the concept for Boom Blox, I thought it would be fun for a few minutes, but without much potential for long-term play. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of different options for gameplay that the creators of Boom Blox – one of whom is none other than Steven Spielberg – came up with. There are modes where you hit things for points, others where you hit things to make them explode, and others where you delicately pull pieces out of towers, attempting to leave the rest of the tower standing. There’s a wide variety of weapons, from bouncy balls to six-shooters to, I kid you not, a fire hose that shoots bowling balls. As for variety in targets, there are Chemical Blox, which only explode when two come in contact with each other; Vanishing Blox, which immediately disappear when hit, and Gem Blox, which are frequent objects of desire for different modes of play.

If the stationary Blox weren’t enough, there are also the block animals pictured on the cover of the game. Some of them have strategic purposes, but most are just there for decoration and to make funny noises when hit. The beavers, in particular, have an annoying, yet infectious laugh.

Now, what would a game like this be without a multiplayer mode? This one has it, for up to four players, and does it well. Much of the replayability will actually come from the multiplayer, playing with other people in the house.

I couldn’t give a proper review of the game without mentioning the level editor. This game comes with a decent level editor, where you can set up your own levels, ready to be exploded at a moment’s notice. The level editor is quite impressive, although it’s also one of my biggest disappointments. There were many times where I’d play a premade level, and the design of it would inspire me to make something like it, only to discover that the level editor didn’t have the pieces in it to build the level I’d just played. As versatile as the level editor is, the fact that it didn’t give me all of the tools that the creators of the game had to build a level was unfortunate.

So, the ultimate question… should you buy this game? Well, my opinion is that you should at least rent it. That’s what I did (from Blockbuster Video, ironically enough). You’ll get your money’s worth from renting it. As for buying it, I wouldn’t buy it for the original asking price of $50, but I’d buy it for $30 if I found it for that price.

The concept is simple. Drag and drop balls of goo. That’s all you have to do. The goo, depending where you place it, can construct towers, bridges, fences and ladders. The goal is to create a structure that will transport other, free-moving goo, to a mysterious pipe somewhere in the level. Get enough goo to that pipe, and you’ve completed that level’s puzzle.

The art design is simultaneously beautiful and dirty, in a Tim Burton sort of way. The music is well orchestrated, perfectly complimenting the art style, and the sound effects are also appropriate, with the goo happily proclaiming “Woohoo!” when they get added to the tower, and angrily grumbling when they are placed somewhere that can’t connect to the rest of the goo.

World of Goo is downloadable on the Wii from Wiiware. It costs 1500 Wii points, and was well worth it. It’s games like this that really show the strength of the Wii controller, being able to intuitively act like a mouse pointer. This game would be much more frustrating if you were trying to place the goo with a joystick or a D-pad.

This game is also available, at the time of this review, for PC, Mac, and Linux. The free demo of this game can be found at 2Dboy.com. Even if you have no intention of buying this game, I highly recommend downloading the demo and trying the game yourself.

However, I was mistaken. First off, you don’t start off with a static board. The board is made up entirely of square tiles that are built up as you go. Plus, there is no element of removing your opponent’s men. This is purely a strategic building game, and is much shorter than the average game of Risk.

In the game, you are constructing the southern French city of Carcassonne, one tile at a time. The tiles have pieces of roads, cities, and/or fields on them, along with the occasional cloister (monastery). Every time you place a tile, you have the option of playing one of your 7 followers on the tile you just played, claiming a road segment, city segment, field segment, or cloister. Once you’ve placed a follower, he stays there until the road, city, or cloister gets finished (if you place your follower on a field, he doesn’t leave until the end of the game). For every road, city, or cloister that gets finished, the follower on it earns points. Your goal is to get more points than your opponent(s).

There are many strategy games out there – Axis & Allies, Chess, Khet – but this is one of the few strategy games that doesn’t feel like a strategy game. In fact, there’s enough of an element of chance in the game that you could win without doing much strategy at all, which is one of the best things about this game. Literally anyone ages 8 and up could play this game and have fun playing it.

This game came out in 2001, and has enjoyed such popularity that it has spawned many expansion packs and variations. If you do decide to buy this game (and I highly recommend you do), the Inns & Cathedrals expansion is a good one to start with. It makes the roads and cities worth potentially more points without adding too many new rules to the game. If you want more cutthroat competition in your game, the Tower expansion is good for that, since it allows you to actually remove some of your opponent’s followers.

Bottom line: If you can find this game (which can be a little hard to do, since it’s more likely to be found in a specialty games store than your local Wal-Mart) it is very much worth buying.