You can’t spell “fun” without UPlay.
We all know those classic board games like Clue, Monopoly, Sorry!, and Candy Land. There was always that one board game that required players to use their brains a bit more than just rolling die and moving a piece. Everyone knows what game I’m talking about. That’s right, the word game Scrabble. Part of the Hasbro family of games, Ubisoft has brought the classic board game to the PS4.
So, for the few people that have never heard of the game, Scrabble is a word making game that takes place on a board. Players use letter tiles to spell out words and gain points for the number of letters and the certain letter that was used. The trick is, players must connect and use letters from existing words that have already been placed on the board – much like a crossword puzzle. Certain spaces on the board represent double and triple the points for letters and words used on said spaces. Whoever has the most points when all the letter tiles are used, wins.
MSRP: $14.99
Platforms: PS4, XB1
Price I’d Pay: $10
Multiplayer: Local and Online
The game starts with a simple classic Scrabble mode, where players can choose to play against a ranging difficult AI, other players in local play, or online multiplayer. Other modes are here but are locked behind UPlay, which is a big misstep for people just looking for a game to play.
Controlling is actually very intuitive and simple on the board. Placing tiles and moving from one space to the other is smooth and simple, and the game does a good job of showing players which letters work and which ones don’t when confirming what I wanted to try out.
While I can comment on local play and playing against the AI, I unfortunately can’t talk about online play because I could not find a single game going on. That may be telling on just how well this game has been received, or maybe just no one is playing online. In any instance, I tried three different times to find a game, and each time resulted in no one.
For the most part, it’s a decent Scrabble game that friends on a couch can play and not get into arguments on whether what they played is a real word or not. Even fans of the game looking for a nice 10-15 minute time waster will find some decent fun with the AI opponents, but players looking for an online community to challenge will not find it here. At the same time, I feel that $15 is a bit high for a traditional board game. I would wait for a sale.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
