Back before we had the video game industry to lean on, the only kind of word games you could really play were Scrabble and Boggle, using random letters and putting together the kind of high-scoring words that could earn you a victory – at least, until some smart-ass put together “quandary” with his leftover letters and laughed in your face. (In which case, we’d come up with a few choice curse words to counter.) Nowadays, though, word games have a good place in video games, and this week, Quarrel joins the party. Originally released for the iPad/iPhone market a few months back, Quarrel makes a pretty interesting debut on Xbox Live Arcade. Most of its word play elements remain in place, but UTV Ignition has managed to add some new modes that keep things interesting, even if the general play tactics remain the same. But you’ll have fun with it, unless you’re one of those people that can’t stand to use a thesaurus or dictionary. (The proper word is “simpleton”.)
Here’s how Quarrel works. It’s kind of like Scrabble when it comes to point value, but it’s set against a war theme, utilizing a number of cutesy Worm-like teams, including ninjas, pirates and Scots. The goal of the game is to dominate a pre-set board, divided up into squares with little folks occupying each square. Each player starts out with an equal amount of these sections, and can either divvy up their soldiers into groups, or go straight on for an attack to overtake an opponent’s square. Once your turn is over, you’ll gain new recruits to help you out in the battle, depending how you performed. Now, when it comes to the battle itself, it’s actually a war of words, if you will. Depending on the number of team members you have, your job is to build the best word possible, using a total of eight letters given. Now, you only get the same count of letters as you have warriors, so if you go in with just two guys, the best you’ll probably muster is “go” or “bi”, and you’re likely to get pounded. The more teammates you have going into a fight, the better the word.
Like in Scrabble, each letter comes with a pre-determined point count. Simpler ones like O and S, more common ones, only fare about one point a piece, while more obscure letters like F and U (random choices, we swear) go a little higher. You’ll only have a short amount of time to put a word together, and the computer is rather strict when it comes to judging whether something’s a word or not. That’s a slight negative against the game, as it won’t determine “foe” being a word, yet will allow the idiocy of “ameerate”, something we’ve never dream of doing. (What the heck’s it mean, anyway?) Playing against the computer is okay, though occasionally it will save itself from a beating by awarding itself a win during a tie, depending on the speed you turned in letters, or allowing awkward words. But if you really want to have a good time with Quarrel, you’ll hop online, where up to four people can take part in a match. Though they take a significant amount of time (set aside a half hour at least), they’re quite rewarding, especially when you’re pounding someone into oblivion with “jingle”. That’ll teach ya! And from what we saw, the lobbies aren’t too bad in terms of player count. (Credit that to the very affordable 400 Microsoft point price.)
This featured review concludes on the next page, please click Page 2 below to read more of our final impressions of Quarrel for Xbox Live Arcade.
