After Scrabble enjoyed an unauthorized Facebook renaissance last year, it makes sense that 2009 would see the game expand onto even more platforms. Produced by Hasbro in association with EA, this year’s Scrabble should not be confused with the Ubisoft version that stirred up curse-word controversy in December 2008. This latest incarnation is not only family friendly (sorry kids!), but also marks a significant improvement in both game play and graphics. Long-time Scrabble fans are sure to be immediately hooked, while those only mildly interested in the game risk becoming serious players.

Scrabble has three game modes this time: Classic, Speed, and Slam. The first two are self-explanatory, but Slam is a new mini-game that you might find strangely addictive. Based on Hasbro’s spinoff Scrabble-like card game of the same name, Slam requires you to create words using a deck of double-sided letter cards. Picture Solitaire, but for Scrabble lovers. Personally I’m not into it too much, but I can see it becoming popular with a certain subset of users. There are multi-player options as well, including Hotseat where you pass around one console between 4 players or you can play with others wirelessly in DS Download mode. Hotseat is a nice idea, but somewhat cumbersome. If you’re going to take the game that far you may as well invest in a real board!

Top-Notch Training

The genius behind Scrabble is how much it will actually improve your game. And that suits me just fine because I was never very good at it to begin with!It might very well be called Scrabble Trainer and indeed it’s billed as just that in the game’s trailer. The training menu has enough options that it if you diligently put in a few sessions you’ll be crushing your family and friends in no time.

The vocabulary training has the potential to convert countless casual Scrabblers into high-level experts. What usually separates the Scrabble-men from the Scrabble-boys are all those obscure two and three letter words (take ti, mi, li, or qi for example, a few of the worst offenders). The training feature makes sure that you have a solid arsenal of the all the short, high-scoring words beginning with Z, J, X, and Q. Having been defeated on numerous occasions by such silliness, I’m now proud to say that I’ll now be using this same silliness to lay the Scrabble-smackdown on my wife. The game also provides a full dictionary, which I didn’t use a single time during the game, but I expect it would come in handy as a reference if you were having a real game of Scrabble sometime.

Graphics and Gameplay

Overall the graphics are much better than the 2007 Ubisoft edition, although I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t distinguish between score multiplier squares (i.e. double/triple-letter/word score) on the board without zooming in. And when I tried to zoom by holding the stylus on the screen the view toggle feature didn’t always respond right away. A couple of user reviews on Amazon.com report stylus-related issues with this game, and I hope that those complaints turn out to be the exception rather than the rule. It wasn’t a serious problem for me, but I encourage you to proceed with caution. If you plan to buy Scrabble you might want to scan the most recent reviews to see if it turns out to be a widespread issue. It’s a fairly new release, so I’m not going to jump to any conclusions just yet. At the end of the day I thought the problems were minor in what was a very solid game overall.

“The zek wearing zori stood under the zin”

Thanks to Scrabble I now know that this roughly means “The Soviet labor camp inmate wearing sandals stood under the palm tree.” Nevermind that Soviet labor camps likely don’t have palm trees, nor are the inmates there likely to wear sandals. Those are all perfectly valid words because DS Scrabble told me so. And I think that’s awesome.

This game was far more interesting than I expected, not to mention educational. The next time someone challenges me to a real game I might just take them on, rather than telling them that “Scrabble is for losers” as I always did before.

Photo: ign

We Ninjas are invincible, and do not require support from anyone. However, our IT guy Clyde does need to be paid. So consider buying Scrabble through our Amazon Affiliates Link.. Do it for Clyde. He is weak.