Since the DS came out, word games and puzzlers have caught fire among casual gamers. And while these games lack the uber violence often found in more hardcore games, the recent glut of casual DS puzzlers frequently fail to excite gamers. Wordmaster for the DS is like a lot of ports to the touch-screen handheld. It makes decent use of the touch mechanics, but lacks the polish and in depth gameplay most gamers require.
Gameplay 6
Graphics 2
Sound 5
Difficulty Med/Hard
Concept 3
Overall 5.0
In concept, Wordmaster is pretty straightforward and has the potential to be a real mind bender and time trap. However, since the provided clues are sometimes nebulous, the game becomes less of a brain teaser and more of a formulaic guessing game.
Nevertheless, Wordmaster is what it is and does not try to be anything more. Like its included instruction manual, it is a no-frills take on familiar concept.
Wordmaster is a small collection of word-based games, but overall it plays more like the old game of MasterMind than it does a word game. The main mode of play challenges you to guess a six-letter word. After submitting a guess, the game will tell you how many letters you guessed correctly and whether or not you put them into the right position in the word. Your goal is to guess the word before you run out of allowed guesses. You're given a clue for the word, but the clue is usually only a word or two itself and not usually any help (The Gamers Temple was once given the clue "baseball player" for the word "Carson"). Rather than trying to use the clue to guess the word you're better off starting off with the most common letters in the English language and then using that to zero in on the word. This can be fun for short games, something that's good in a portable game, but there are enough odd words and proper names that have a number of spelling variants to make things frustrating on occasion.
Zoo Games' attempt at the casual design is flawed but not enough to be a game killer. Wordmaster has enough going for it to make it a better-than-bad word challenge, but you'll have to push through some of the awkwardness to truly enjoy it.
Presentation - 7.0
Graphics - 7.0
Sound - 7.0
Gameplay - 5.5
Lasting Appeal - 5.0
Overall -
