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Platforms: Mac OS, Windows 95/98 (from Hasbro Interactive)
Oh Joyous Day!
My weak limbs shook in anticipation as I tore away the packing paper and ripped open the box. I had slaughtered the lord of the undead and now I was claiming my prize! And what, you inquire, was my prize? Scrabble brought to the Mac by MacSoft. Instantly, the image of several little old ladies sitting in rocking chairs around a Scrabble board while knitting flashed through my mind. "Oh look, Mable got a triple letter score on a Q," one of them said. "Oh dear, that puts her ahead of Gretle," said another. Trying with all my might to push my preconceived Scrabble stereotypes from my mind, I placed the CD in my computer and installed.
Um, What's That? Scrabble is a board game in which you and your opponents take turns putting tiles with letters on them on a board to spell words. Sounds simple, right? Well, that's because it is. Chances are, if you are reading this it means you own a computer that is on the Internet. So unless you just left your life of simplicity living with nature in the forests of northern Colorado, or just straggled in at the end of your lifelong journey across the blistering sands of the Sahara and bought your computer five minutes ago, you probably already know what Scrabble is. But I'll rehash for you anyway, in case you forgot. Each player starts with seven letter tiles. They select these randomly out of the entire set of tiles, which contains different amounts of each letter based on their frequency of use in the English language. Each letter is worth a certain number of points; the less common the letter, the more points it's worth. So the first person to move has to use his or her letters to form a word on the board that touches the center square. Words can be spelled out left to right, or top to bottom. So let's say player one, let's call him Bob, puts down the word "SQUELCH." Because he used all seven of his letters, he picks up seven new ones. Now player two, let's call her Jewel, has the letters I, E, D, H, T, C, and another T. Jewel has a few options, she can simply add an "ED" to the end of "SQUELCH" to make "SQUELCHED." Or she could use the "H" at the end of "SQUELCH" and go down on the board to spell out "HITCHED." There are undoubtedly other options she has as well. Scrabble is a game of both chance and skill. Chance because your letters are random, and skill because you need to be able to find all the combinations, and figure out which are worth the most points. Now the one worth the most points is not always as obvious as you might think. There are special squares on the board like double letter scores and triple word scores. When your word falls across one of these squares you get extra points. There are other considerations as well. It is possible to lay down tiles such that you spell out more than one word, by making your word fill the gaps between already existing letters to make other words (you then get the points for each word formed). Also, there is the fact that you can place words that aren't really words if you're able to convince your opponent that the dictionary is wrong (actually that might not be legal, but don't tell me it's never crossed your mind before, you sneak). If you want to learn about the history of Scrabble (it's an absolutely gripping tale, let me assure you), you can use the amazing Internet resource thingy that you're using right now. One page on the subject that I particularly enjoyed reading is here. There are probably others, but I felt that this one covered the subject quite nicely without getting bogged down by details. So now you know everything you already knew about Scrabble and more, so let's move on to what you're really here for: The review of the computerized version.
Sweet Simplicity I hate reading manuals. I don't know if it's just because I'm lazy, or because I was born with the manual-hating gene, or maybe I have a repressed bad experience with a manual as a child. I like to think that it's because I'm an utter genius and have transcended the need for written instruction (of course, there are those who would tell you otherwise; these people are fools and should not be heeded). Scrabble is a game where you don't need to read the manual in order to just sit down and play a game. The menus are straightforward, and the interface is adequately intuitive. Within mere seconds of installing it, I was already well on my way towards an embarrassing loss against a 'novice' computer opponent.
On top of being pretty easy to play, it looks really nice too. I mean, my clothes were not ripped from my body by the sheer splendor of awesomely lifelike graphics and a 3D engine that makes Halo look like Pacman, but hey... It's Scrabble. In some situations less is more, and Scrabble's graphics is one of them.
A Delicious Tenderloin I do have some beefs with this game too. The first one I encountered was a minor one. There are these things called 'Mini-Games' that you can play which are designed to help you improve the different skills necessary to be the best Scrabble player you can be. These include things like finding all the two or three letter words out of a set of letters, or finding the best placement for a word on a given board. These are not as straightforward as playing just an actual game, because they are played on the normal Scrabble board, only not usually played like normal Scrabble. I had to crack open the so-called manual for this one.
So anyway, the mini-games are easy to play, but only if you've read the manual. My other beef is the game has a really useful looking feature where you can have the computer evaluate the moves you've made in prior games (see image to the right), but it's difficult to understand. Reading the move evaluations sent me into horrible flashbacks of the time in grade six when I accidentally opened a quantum physics text book and tried to grasp Watson's Theory on the Dispersion and Stereoisomerism in Bipolar Electron Probability Fields. I couldn't find anything about it in the manual. Probably something that pro Scrabble players, like the ones that play in the Olympics, would understand better. My last problem is that when you place a word that isn't in the dictionary, you lose your turn. That's not fair. I could have sworn 'jqzzxw' was a word.
The Good Stuff There are a lot of things that make Scrabble really nice. It has network play features, allowing four players to compete over a LAN or the Internet. Unfortunately, Scrabble just isn't the most popular game on GameRanger, so you may need to actively seek out opponents if you want to take full advantage of this feature. The music is kind of cool, or you can put your own MP3s in the Scrabble music folder and have it play those instead (A Mac only feature according to MacSoft). There's nothing better than getting licked at a game of Scrabble by your G4 than doing it while listening to Metallica. (Oops, am I allowed to say Metallica on the Internet?) It has support for multiple players, so you can keep track of your game history separately from your braniac brother who beats the hardest skill level every time (there are six skill levels to choose from), and has never lost a tournament match to date. Although I made comments to the issue of placing a word that the dictionary doesn't recognize, you can also replace or customize the dictionary that the game uses if you don't like the included one (Merriam Webster's Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, 3rd edition).
And In Jqzzxw Scrabble is pretty nice... if you like the original Scrabble that is. It seems like it would be really useful if you wanted to improve your Scrabble playing skills and finally beat your mean old Aunt who gives your siblings candy but not you. The mini-games along with the game review function can help you improve your skills, and you can play against humans or different level computer opponents to help fine-tune yourself in actual game situations. Scrabble has earned three and a half Smileys (out of a possible five). Unfortunately, no demo is currently available, so you will either have to check out MacSoft's Scrabble page in the hope that a demo will eventually show up or find someone with a copy to give it a test drive.
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I
was huddled down in front of my computer for the seventy third consecutive
hour of Diablo II 
The
manual is not so much a manual as it is a glorified CD case slip. Thirty
one tiny pages of how to install, and how to play Scrabble. I guess I
can't really complain, they are saving trees and whatnot. But I can still
remember the good old days back when I bought SimAnt for my Mac Classic.
Remember the manual for SimAnt? It was like a thousand pages because they
also included a bunch of educational information on stuff like the mating
habits of ants. Sure, I didn't read it, but THAT, my friends, was a REAL
manual!
