Scrabble Online

Rating:
Summary: Extremely disappointing
Review: After I was unable to make my original Scrabble game work on my XP SP2 computer (black screen, had to reboot every time I tried to run it), my husband gave me this version for Christmas.

I have played this version three times. The first and third times, it crashed in the middle of a game. 66% crashes??? On XP??? I have no other problems with other games or software, and have worked in IT for over 12 years, so I don't believe this is my or my computer's wrongdoing.

As other reviewers said, it's insane that you have to click OK every time it's your turn; apparently this is the creators' idea of a "pause" function, because there isn't one of those.

I actually think this was a complete waste of money, because I can't see myself playing a game that crashes 2/3 of the time.

If anyone has suggestions on getting the original version to work, I'd be glad to hear them (aside from having it run as other versions of Windows).

Rating:
Summary: Scrabble Fan Left Disappointed
Review: Ever since reading Stefan Fatsis' book, Wordfreak, over two years ago, I've been hooked on Scrabble and preparing myself for the club and tournament scene. This looked like the first Scrabble product to offer a tournament-like experience and a range of training activities. But this game is a sore disappointment.
**Dispite the misleading advertisments on the product, you can't actually have an online tournament, you can have tournament style matches online, but its not an actual tournament.
** No one is playing online!! Everytime I log on, few people are playing, and several can't host a game because they are behind a firewall (Atari provides instructions to allow you to play behind the firewall, but they don't work).
** The game's record keeping functions are less than stellar- it doesn't always record your online tournament games properly (some count towards your rating and others do not, for no apparent reason). Offline ratings are also questionably recorded.
** The minigames are fun and challenging, but not really a good way to prepare yourself for more competitive Scrabble.
** The computer's skill level seems dumbed down- chances are a given player is 2 or 3 notches up the scale for computer opponents than they think they are.

OVerall, it's a disappointment. If you desperatley need computer Scrabble, its alright, but stick to the box game version if you're a diehard nut like myself :)

Rating:
Summary: Good implementation - some whistles broken
Review: I'm generally very impressed with the game. The gameplay is quick, the graphics are well done but not over the top, and enjoyment is high. This is certainly an upgrade from previous versions.

My criticisms:
* Analyze play crashes the game on both my WinXP and my Win98 box. Atari has not posted a patch to fix this as of my writing.
* There are very few folks playing online. I've seen no more than a half-dozen folks at GameSpy playing. This is perhaps an issue with how new the game is, but I was hoping for more.
* After every turn from the computer player, the game stops and says that it's your turn, requiring you to click a dialog box to continue. Very annoying.

Overall it was a good effort, but not as good as it could have been.

Rating:
Summary: Great Game
Review: Scrabble online is a great upgrade from the original scrabble. I love the play by email part of this game, and playing online is great if there are people there to play with.

Rating:
Summary: How can you mess up Scrabble????
Review: Very disappointing. All I wanted was to have a Scrabble version where I don't have to change my computer colors to 256. However, after adding some better music and background pictures, they've done away with a lot of functionality of the old (1996) game. For example, if you play against the computer, you HAVE TO be the first to play, unless you pass your first turn, and then you'll be the last. You cannot change the order of players. Also, when you play against the computer, you CAN NOT turn off the Auto Challenge feature. So, if you accidentally press Enter, and what you've put on the board until then is not a valid word, you lose your turn. That's it. The "good old" version used to just throw your letters back and tell you what word was not valid. One time, I had the dictionary open to find out if what I had on the board was valid, and when I pressed Enter to find out the definition (like it usually works), it took my word on the board instead, and since it was not valid I lost my turn even though I had no intention of playing that word. I also agree with a previous reviewer, that having to press OK every time it's your turn, is very annoying. Basically, a huge frustration, since I used to use the functions previously available. I haven't tried to play online, I'm too mad to try and get even more frustrated. I'll probably turn back to my 1996 Hasbro version. Too bad Atari had to screw it up!