Scrabble (DS)
© 2009 Electronic Arts Casual Entertainment
The eighth electronic version of Scrabble we've reviewed, and the first for the Nintendo DS, this edition makes good use of the touchscreen, letting you drag and drop the famous letter squares onto the game board. After you start the game, you hold the DS like a book, with the game board on the right, with the touchscreen, and the hints and score on the left. A double tap zooms in for a closer look, which is a nice and essential feature -- especially given the small size of the board on the regular DS screen. There are three modes of play: Classic (like the traditional game), Speed (where players must race the clock as they compete against friends or the computer), and Scrabble Slam (based on the card game where players try to be the first to discard all their Slam cards by making four letter words). There are six difficulty levels and a Training Mode, with six exercises to help you polish your skills. We tried the game on several testers, but none were very excited by the idea of Scrabble on such a small screen. In addition, we noticed that the tiles would sometimes slip when they were dropped to the square below. Handy features include a dictionary, three levels of hints, and a two-player wireless mode that lets you share the game with another player, from one card. In addition, the scorekeeping is automated, and it is easy to save a game for play later on. The game sharing features is handy for car trips. As any teacher will tell you, for informal spelling practice, it's hard to beat games like crosswords, word searchers, or Scrabble -- and you can't argue with the logic of not loosing any letter tiles. Nick (13) played this game briefly, but found it somewhat difficult. On the plus side, he learned some new words, yelling "Mom, did you know that (blank) was a word?" Developed by Stainless Games for EA.
$30, Nintendo DS, PSP
Teaches: language arts, spelling, vocabulary
CTR Rating: 88%