Creativity is your primary weapon in this charming platformer from the team behind Drawn to Life.

The Nintendo DS is rife with platforming games, but not a single one is like Scribblenauts. In this game, you guide a cute kid named Maxwell throughout a world, which consists of 220 increasingly difficult levels. The one common theme that draws all of these levels together is the way that you conquer the obstacles that lie before you: think of a solution, type it out on the touch screen, and that object will appear before you, ready to be used. With tens of thousands of objects in the game, it’s awfully hard to think of something that the game doesn’t have in it (provided you’re not thinking of such an abstract concept as communism).

Who’s Making This Game: Scribblenauts is being developed by 5th Cell, a studio with a history of charming and creativity-driven DS games. The company most recently brought us Lock’s Quest, but before that it made Drawn to Life, a platformer in which you actually drew your main character. So it’s a team with a good track record for taking interesting ideas for how to use the DS touch screen and putting them into action.

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We catch a train, blow our own horn, and learn why sometimes it’s good to be fireproof in our first hands-on time with the new Zelda DS.

We think we can say with some certainty that the failure to announce a new Zelda game for the Wii as rumoured at the Nintendo press conference probably disappointed the odd Nintendo devotee. That said, though no new Wii game was brought into the fold there, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, which was announced at this year’s Game Developers Conference in March, is now finally playable.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks represents the second iteration of the long-running Zelda franchise brought to the DS handheld, and if our time and review of Phantom Hourglass serves as any indicator of what to expect, fans should be in for another special outing with everyone’s favourite little adventurer.

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Multi-million-selling author James Patterson is making his way to the DS in a new game from THQ.

Nintendo’s DSi has just celebrated selling one million units in Europe, but that’s still a small number compared to the 150 million books that James Patterson has sold worldwide. The thriller author is one of the most popular writers in the world, and his Women’s Murder Club series is now coming to the DS and DSi thanks to publisher THQ.

The game will be called James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club, and from the look of the video shown at Nintendo’s E3 press conference, it looks to be in the vein of Hotel Dusk and Professor Leyton. You play the game by holding the DS on its side, and it has a graphic-novel visual style.

You will take control of different women from the series, including Lindsay Boxer and Cindy Thomas, as they attempt to catch the killer. They have to solve puzzles, which seem to include Tetris-style block games.

Check out the source at GameSpot

Turn-based puzzle installment in Ubisoft’s long-running fantasy RPG franchise arriving on Nintendo’s handheld in August.

Ubisoft’s most recent installment in its venerable Might & Magic franchise–Dark Messiah of Might & Magic: Elements–turned out, well, less than great. Perhaps recognizing that it may be time to switch up the game’s formula, the publisher today announced Might & Magic Clash of Heroes, a puzzle role-playing game for the Nintendo DS.

Might & Magic’s new look.

Ubisoft did not detail Might & Magic Clash of Heroes’ gameplay mechanics, aside from saying that battles will be turn-based puzzles. However, the publisher did note that the game will offer five quest storylines, and will incorporate exploration elements in addition to battle sequences. Players will also be able to customize their army with a variety of fantasy archetypes, including knights, elves, wizards, necromancers, and demons.

According to Ubisoft, Might & Magic Clash of Heroes will also feature a two-player competitive mode. The handheld game is in development at Capybara Games, the Toronto-based developer behind the recently announced PlayStation Network puzzler Critter Crunch, and is expected to be released worldwide in August 2009.

Check out the source at GameSpot

Superior animation, an engaging story, and clever puzzles make Broken Sword well worth investigating, despite the occasional glitch.

Score: 8.0 / great

Get the full review at GameSpot