Scrabble 2003 Edition

DIRECTX - BAD CHOICE.

Personally I don't think DirectX graphics are the best way to do this game. Instead, standard Windows could have been used. This would probably have made the product much easier to use and would have been quicker to develop freeing the developers to add more functionality and improve usability.

QUICKSTART DOES NOT SAVE SETTINGS AFTER YOU QUIT THE GAME.

Because a game of Scrabble can take around half an hour, many people will just have one game then quit the application. Unfortunately, when you re-start the application and select QuickStart, the settings from the previous game are not carried over. They only appear to be carried over when you have more than one game in any one session. Oddly enough, if you don't select QuickStart when starting the first game, the CPU level defaults to whatever it was in the previous game before quitting.

POOR USABILITY

There are a number of weaknesses with this products usability:

- Cumbersome mechanism for dragging and dropping the tiles. Rather than placing the tile on the board when you release the mouse button, as you would expect, you have to actually click the mouse button again to release. This problem also exists when rearranging your tiles on the rack.

DOESN'T SAVE BOARD LAYOUT.

In my opinion, most people will after a while always use the overhead view of the board.

However, the game defaults to a 3D view and if you change it to the overhead view, this preference is not saved between games. Also with the overhead view, by default you cannot view the whole board so you have to drag bits of it you can't see into view (although you can zoom in and out using the + and - keys).

TILS ARE RANDOMLY REARRANGED

If you for example, play a 7-letter word but then the computer rejects it, rather than placing the tiles in the order they were originally on your rack, it kindly randomly rearranges them for you.

ONLY BASIC FUNCTIONALITY

Although Scrabble 2003 does provide a number of games, most people will usually play Scrabble.

Unfortunately, the developers wasted too much time on annoying animations using DirectX. Time which in my opinion could have been better spent on improving the usability of the product and
Adding additional features. For example, the ability to have a post match analysis of the game where the game is stepped through and best moves compared with actual moves and improved statistics.

MEANINGLESS STATISTICS

Again because of the use of DirectX, the game statistics are harder to read and understand.

Other problems with the statistics:

- It tells you what the best word you have played in each game is without mentioning how many points it was worth. Better to have a list of the best words, with the score for each.

- It tells you how many games you have won and lost regardless of the opponent CPU level.

Better to break down the wins and losses into the different CPU levels and human players.

Anybody could repeatedly play CPU level 1 and attain a 100% win record.

- Would be good if it had a record of all the games you have played including the ability to trace through that game. Again functionality more easily achieved with a proper Windows user interface, not the inappropriate DirectX.