Although XBLA is mostly home to flashy arcade shooters and broken multiplayer brawlers, it occasionally drops a thinking man’s game on Xbox 360 owners. Chess, Catan, Yaris; all good games, but I’ve personally been waiting for the penultimate puzzler: Scrabble. Thanks to EA and IP owner Hasbro, the day has finally come, but how does this virtual version of the popular board game hold up against the IRL classic?
Only four letter words? Mandy must be playing...
For the uninitiated, Scrabble is a word puzzle game where it’s not so much the size of your word that matters, but how you use it. Each player (up to four) gets a set of seven random letters which they must then dispense on a static grid by creating words. New words can only be built using letters of previous words, and only in certain directions (never diagonal or backwards). To reward the more intelligent players, larger words and especially those utilizing fancy letters like Q, J, X, and Z, earn more points. There are a number of bonus spots on the board which can double or triple word scores, and if you can’t make a word with your currently allotted letters you can always discard them and get a new batch at the cost of a single turn.
When playing locally, the game is altered a bit from the physical version of Scrabble. Usually, each player takes position at opposite sides of the board and can rearrange their letters and plan their next move during their opponent’s turn. However, when sharing a single TV both players can see each others’ letters, yet the letters are only displayed when it’s your turn. Online is a different story, and thankfully plays out much more like the physical version. No matter which mode you play though, you’ll definitely want at least one if not three other friends along for the ride as Scrabble makes for a terrible single-player experience.
Recommendation
Ironically, I recently discovered that EA and Hasbro had released a slightly superior version of Scrabble on Facebook, all for the conservative price of free. Unless you absolutely detest social networking sites, it’s hard to argue with free. Still, for only $10, an online-enabled version of Scrabble with Achievements is close behind, and at least this version won’t cuss you out.
Hasbro Family Game Night: Scrabble
Systems: XBLA, Wii, PS2
Developer: Hasbro
Publisher: EA
Find: Amazon
All reviews are based on final retail code unless otherwise noted.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:38 am
If this game started out with an online component, then I wouldn’t hesitate. Games that don’t require much graphically or content-wise should always have online. I can always play Scrabulous on Facebook so why would I need this game…?