Pick a noun, any noun. Chances are, barring anything inappropriate, it'll appear in an instant if it's in "Scribblenauts."

Each of the game's many levels has an open-ended solution. The player is given a goal and must come up with the means to reach it. It's an ingenious idea, and the breadth of things a player can create in the game is amazing.

Once a stage is solved, the player gets a shiny "Starite" trophy and some "Ollars," in-game currency that's awarded based on a player's performance in the stage. Ollars can be spent on songs, new stages and other goodies.

There are two kinds of stages: puzzle and action. Puzzle stages give the player a task – give the chef a tool he'd want, or gather three flowers, or get the duckling to its family without harming the cat that's in the way. Action stages reveal the Starite immediately and give a quick overview of the situation, leaving the player to figure out how to reach it.

The player's onscreen avatar, Maxwell, can carry and use items the player creates for him. Players can otherwise place objects wherever they like, as long as there's room, and junk them at will. (Each stage has a cap on the number of player-created objects that can exist at once.)

Items present at the start of the stage can't be influenced directly. If there's a wall or police officer or piranha or some other obstacle in the way, the player will have to go around or through it, or find a way to destroy or distract it.

This leads to some novel solutions. If there's a shark blocking the way through a pond, use the game's notepad to create a giant squid and drop it into the water – it'll gobble the hapless shark right up. A bear is no match for a tank, either. And those are just possible solutions; the game rewards players for returning to completed levels and trying to solve them in different ways.

There's also a level editor for players who want to create their own puzzles and share them with friends online.

While there are tons of objects to create, not all are useful or interact with each other as one might expect. A police officer will shoot at a robber but won't be distracted by a doughnut. On the other hand, create an elf, a wizard, a dwarf and a halfling, then give the halfling a ring and see what happens.

As excellent as its core concept is, the game's control scheme is almost its Achilles heel. Everything is controlled by the stylus, from Maxwell's movement to the placement of objects. But Maxwell is tricky to move precisely, the physics of the objects can be dicey, and it's easy to poke one thing while trying to poke another.

At worst, a stage becomes a struggle with the interface as much as it does the solution to the puzzle itself, though sometimes the strange physics can be exploited to complete a level.

PICKS AND PANS

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger

3 1/2 stars

A new fighting game from the makers of the "Guilty Gear" titles, "BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger" shares that series' knack for bizarre, fluidly animated and beautifully drawn characters but stands on its own as a fighter.

Each of the 12 characters - ranging from big guys with swords to a young boy with a strange marionette - has a unique set of attacks, special moves and super moves, with four buttons providing the standard attacks.

Special moves are generally done with the same movements as they have been since "Street Fighter II," but some characters have a twist on the process, such as needing to use segments of a power meter to perform them.

The game discourages overly defensive play - blocking too much can leave a fighter stunned. There are advanced defensive moves, such as the Barrier Block, which is an effective guard that can also leave a character vulnerable if used excessively.

The game makes itself accessible to newcomers by allowing players to assign several special moves to the right analog stick - they can be used by flicking the stick in the proper direction rather than entering the button combination manually.

Microsoft Xbox 360, also for Sony PlayStation 3; $59.99 • Age rating: Teen

Stone Age

3 stars

A board game set in prehistoric times, "Stone Age" challenges players to keep their people fed while gathering resources to exchange for huts and cards that will earn them victory points. The player with the highest score at the end is the winner, naturally.

Players start with several villagers and take turns placing them around the outer areas of the board to gather resources - food, lumber, clay, stone and gold, which are gained by rolling dice - or in the central village to increase food production each turn, claim a tool (whose value can be added to a dice roll) or create a new villager (which takes two figures).

There also are huts and cards that can be claimed. Each requires a player to pay a combination of resources to take it but grants points or other bonuses in return. Jockeying for position is crucial.

"Stone Age" scales down well - all resource areas are up for grabs in a four-player game, but smaller games allow only two of the central spots to be claimed per turn, and only one player may place villagers on a given resource area - aside from the food area, which has no restrictions - each turn.

Rio Grande Games; $44.99 • Ages 10 and up, 2-4 players

- Justin Hoeger