User Reviews (1 - 11 of 17)

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Great Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 12
Date: November 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

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.

Good implementation - some whistles broken

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 25 / 26
Date: December 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

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.

Scrabble Fan Left Disappointed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 12
Date: December 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

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 :)

How can you mess up Scrabble????

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 15 / 15
Date: December 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

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!

Extremely disappointing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 19
Date: February 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

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).

Like Funkitron Scrabble

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: April 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game was given from Amazon me by one of my nieces, but I already had Funkitron Scrabble.

This version was okay, I do like the email ability but didn't try it, but I think I like the Funkitron one better. It was easier to use, and plus I don't need a cdrom for it.

Sue Williams

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 35 / 37
Date: April 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As a stand-alone game for one player, Scrabble *ONLINE* (!!!) looks great and works well. The mini-games are fun too. This is not a bad game at all.

If you want to play Scrabble *ONLINE* (!!!!) with friends or family, especially those overseas who miss playing the greatest wordgame of all time with their loved ones, then I highly recommend you LOOK ELSEWHERE!!

This game is garbage. With a clean install of Windows and Scrabble *ONLINE* (@#*&#@@!!), my online game with Gamespy crashed or was so slow as to prove unusable (the mouse hardly moved... very frustrating). I did my research and read the README file. I took down my firewall; in Windows XP this is relatively easy, so no problem. Then I downloaded a "retail patch" from the atarisupport website. After all that, the game is STILL garbage.

I have yet to play an online game with Scrabble *ONLINE*.

Frustrating software takes away from fun of game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: December 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I play Scrabble Online every day against the computer. I do have fun playing the actual game, but have a couple of problems that are extremely frustrating. I'd say overall that Scrabble Online is better than nothing if you have to have a computer Scrabble game. But there might be better products out there if you know where to look. (I don't.)

Problem #1: After playing a game, when I select Analyze Play, a function that is very important to me, it always brings up an old game. When I first got it, it pulled up the just-played game, but now it pulls up the same old game. I can scroll back through even earlier games, but never get to anything later than that certain old game. When I wrote to Atari technical support they told me to uninstall the game then reinstall it. I did so (using the program's own Uninstall command). It didn't solve the problem. So now I can't analyze my games.

Problem #2: The one time I tried to use Gamespy to connect with other players, it totally crashed my computer (running on Windows XP). The screen froze and I had to actually unplug the computer and plug it back in to get it to reboot. This is just intolerable. So I haven't tried it again.

National Scrabble Association - are you listening to what the people are telling you here? Can you get Atari to improve their product?

Scrabble Complete

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: January 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love playing Scrabble and bought this game for my Windows XP computer. It worked a few times, but now I have a similar problem as others have mentioned - every time I try to play this, the computer locks up with a blank screen. I can't even reboot, I have to totally shut it off and turn the power back on. I have tried to buy this game twice thinking it was defective, but still doesn't work. We have many games for the kids, and this is the ONLY one I like, and it doesn't work. I hope someone from Atari will find this out and fix the problem.

Scrabble Online

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: March 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Because of my computer's protections, I cannot host a game using GameSpy. I must wait for others to invite me to join their games. Many others using GameSpy to find players seem to have the same complaint. I wish that problem could easily be remedied.

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