Bookworm

"600 Mile Trip? Check. GBA? Check. Bookworm? Well, duh."

If you haven't played Bookworm, you should.

Bookworm is Scrabble for the single player. It was made by PopCap Games (www.popcap.com) and can be played there for free along with every other addictive game known to man. Since then it has spawned a number of look-alikes and wanna-be games like Tumble Bees (www.pogo.com). Now it's out for the GBA... for only $20!

Bookworm was transferred really nicely from the computer to the handheld. So far the only main differences are that you don't have a mouse to click on the letters and the tiles don't have the little dots on the bottom to show how rare they are (no big deal).

If you don't have a clue what I am talking about, in Bookworm a bunch of tiles fill the screen and you have to connect them to form words. Those tiles are removed, you get points and a shelf starts to fill with books, and more letters are placed on the board. Once you fill a shelf you "level up". You continue to play until you begin to make short word after short word, at which time the game will drop red "Fire Tiles" on the screen. If you can't use them before they reach the bottom, they will start a fire in your library and you lose.

The controls are very decent as opposed to what everyone else says. You move a little cursor around the screen with ease. Because of the way the tiles are positioned, sometimes the cursor gets stuck half on one tile and half on the other, but all you need to do to fix that is to push where you want it to move next.

Another plus is that, while you may not think 100,000 words seems like enough, I have never found a time when I typed in a valid dictionary word and it rejected it.

As for the music in this game, you might as well turn it off. It is ANNOYING, doesn't change, and for the 30-60 minutes it takes to play a full game, you really won't enjoy the music Bookworm offers. Did the phrase "30-60 minutes" catch your eye? Don't worry, you can save your game and continue at a later time. The game also saves your high scores and best words.

You can't go wrong with this game. While the music is annoying, the game doesn't let me down enough. It pockets a 4...

out of 5. (8/10)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/04