Word Up Review

Let's get the ball rolling by stating that I am a fan of word games. Ever since the days of family gatherings around the battlegrounds of Scrabble and Boggle, I have enjoyed taking a seemingly impossible set of letters and converting them into multiple point paradises. While I am what might be defined as a hardcore gamer, I do not subscribe to the principle that a game must utilize more buttons than up, left, right, down, shoot, and possibly pause to be fun and entertaining. I understand casual gaming.

The main problems began on my dual monitor setup. The game being not optimized for a Windows 7 machine with 2 monitors chose to hide its head in the corner of one monitor while pretending to be full screen. Most applications default to using the primary monitor, and why this one chose instead to utilize half of the second baffles me. With this in mind, I was able to resolve the issues and get down to some good old fashioned Boggle-esque fun. The game is simple enough; select words from component letters in horizontal, vertical, or diagonal extensions, then lock in the word. Occasional bonuses will appear such as randomly switching vowels, wild card letters, and other typical word game fare. The game is functional... sort of.

Unfortunately, problems riddle the experience for this reviewer. The lack of foresight in expecting higher resolution screens caused the game to be half unplayable. As other reviewers have mentioned, the sound is a samba beat that becomes very grating on the ears, with loud trumpet fanfare for the end of rounds and laughter at random words; I am not particularly certain why nerd generated laughs, nor who would take the time to pay attention to a tournament. Finally, the fact that game is available for free in better incarnations on the Internet is no fault of it's own, but makes it difficult to justify the price tag.