Playing this game is like standing on a sinking ship.

“Write anything, solve everything” states the advertising for Scribblenauts, the much hyped puzzle game for Nintendo DS that came out last week.  I’ve been obsessed with the concept of this game since the moment I heard about it.  In Scribblenauts, you’re presented with a puzzle.  In order to solve the puzzle, you need things.  To create things, you simply write down anything you can think of.

That seems simple, right?  Unfortunately, Scribblenauts is–without a doubt–the most frustrating gameplay experience I’ve had in a long time.  The game does an amazing job of recognizing what you’ve written, but so little of it does what you want it to do.

Here’s an example.  There’s a level with a tripwire.  Somehow you need to trip this wire without falling down yourself (or at least I think that’s what you need to do.)  Mannequin?  Crash test dummy?  Caveman?  None of these work.  What does work?  I don’t have a clue; this level is unsolved.

I could say that for a lot of levels; they are unsolved.  One level requires you to get past a tornado.  God?  Wormhole?  Sun?  Tank?  Nope, none of these.  This is a game that requires you to cheat or share solutions, yet doing so makes the game completely unrewarding.

There are also levels where I can’t even figure out what’s going on.  And only a couple of hours in, I find that I don’t even care anymore.

While the designers say that there are “tens of thousands” of words, and Internet research shows the number to be close to 22,000 of them, I find myself only needing a few things:  ladder, gun, axe, jet pack.  I think I can get through 95% of the puzzles I’ve tried so far using just those items.

The most fun that can be had in the game is immediately after turning it on.  You get a little sandbox area where you can just create things and make them interact.  This is a sweet tech demo, let me tell you.  Try a teleporter, and see where it takes you.  This is my favorite thing in the entire game so far.

Scribblenauts is the kind of game you bring out at a party to show people how cool games can be, but it’s not the game you’d ever want to actually play.  Conceptually, it’s an absolute piece of genius that I want to tell the world about.  It’s great that 5th Cell is trying something completely new, and kudos to them for that.  It’s too bad the concept wasn’t applied to a better game.

The bouts start with the lowest class of rikishi, and work their way upwards. When the first group is going, there is hardly anyone there. 300-400 tops. So they let us go down to the very very front. We sat only a few feet away, and boy are these guys huge! You think I’m huge?

Anyway, there is a lot of ceremony for a very short bout. Some of them last a few seconds tops. In the second level, called Juryo, the guy who won beat his opponent in about 2 seconds. He just stepped backwards and tossed the guy down. This was one of the times the fans laughed. Laughed! I must say that this was the most surprising thing about this event: the fans did not act like I expected. They basically cheer for the popular wrestlers, but it seems no one is even paying attention most of the time.

The funniest part of the entire event was the awards ceremony. Hakuho, the champion, is given some awards. It starts with the Emperor’s Cup, which is gigantic. Then there’s another trophy. And another. And a proclamation. And more trophies. Then there was a giant hookah. Then there was a statue of a cow on a pedastal. A huge line-up of Japanese men in dark suits were presenting these trophies. Then a representative from Toyota gave him a truck to take home all of his trophies! (No, not really.)

Why would I make this change?

First off, we have the reliability factor. There are just too many stories about the Red Ring of Death, and although Microsoft is happy to replace those consoles, I don’t want to be in the middle of a game and have to wait a week to keep playing it. When game addiction sets in, I want my console to work! This was a big strike against Microsoft.

Secondly, there is the Blu Ray thing. I have a wee little HDTV, but this may not always be the case. It seems silly to not get Blu Ray discs once their price gets close to that of DVD. It may take a while, but I should be protecting myself against future obsolescence.

Then we have the games. Oh, the XBox 360 definitely has the better exclusives right now. Mass Effect and Bioshock come to mind. But here’s the thing: both of these are available on the PC, and I now have a PC that can play these things! I have a fancy shmancy 22″ monitor and a high-end video card. Why shouldn’t I play those on the PC then? Seems simple.

The online thing was a big plus for XBox 360, but I can skip that whole point collection thing knowing that I can get Super Puzzle Fighter for the PS3. However, it turns out that the majority of my friends who have a console have the PS3, so if I want to play online with them, I will need to have the same console. Plus, since it does not have as big of an install base, used games tend to fall in value a lot quicker.

So now that I’ve made this choice, and am ready to make the plunge, I wonder when my wallet will be ready.

Here’s the rub: I love playing them. I’ve noticed that there is a big gap in the video game review world. Everyone who writes about games for a living is able to get to the end of these things before 100 people have written online about how to beat them. Where is the voice of the crappy gamer?

I always find myself buying a PS2, playing a few games that look cool, sucking at them, throwing controllers, reading cheats online, and eventually selling it all on craigslist at a small loss.

Then, a few months later, I start again.

The time has come for me to stop the cycle! I am now going to suck at games as a creative endeavor!

Join me in my quest to suck at as many video games as possible. You can be surprised when I’m good at one, and laugh at me when I’m not. I’ll tell stories about video games and other media when applicable. I’ll swear. I’ll throw (even more) controllers.