Customer Reviews

Scrabble Complete (Jewel Case)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought the Atari-branded version of Scrabble Complete hoping they had fixed the problems in the 'Hasbro' version.

Nope. It seems to be the same item, no improvement at all.

Scrabble Complete is a sadly flawed Scrabble program. It has some great features, some surprising omissions, and a lot of awful, killer bugs.

For example, in Windows XP SP2 (perhaps elsewhere, don't know), it will blank the screen while you're playing, and only reveal parts as you scroll over them. Very annoying.

The dictionary lookup is poor--it misses obvious extensions of words that are valid. That's a terrible flaw in a reference tool.

It requires you to keep the CD in the drive (copy protection, likely), so your laptop battery runs out fast (bad for 16 hour flights).

Accessing the dictionary to look up words is awkward. It should be a up-front menu command/button. You must go several levels deep to even find it.

There are lots of great features I won't go into, because the flaws make this an exasperating program.

Too bad Hasbro, which restricts use of the Scrabble name, can't manage to get a better Scrabble program out on the market. I'd pay real money to buy one if it were available.

In addition to all of the valid points mentioned in the other review on this site I found that this software seems very old... sort of as if it were written for Windows 95. It will only run from the CD drive and cannot be copied to run from the hard drive. The commands are not well labelled and are not intuitive. But the most maddening thing is that, while playing a game, it will sometimes spontaneously start some sort of auto play function and start making moves and just finish the game while you watch helplessly.

TERRIFIC GAME, TRUE FUN, EDUCATIONAL, AND CHALLENGING. THE VARIED LEVELS
TO PLAY THE GAME AT VERSUS ITSELF, ARE A CONSTANT TEST OF ONE'S GRAY MATTER.
YOU CHOOSE HOW HARD OR EASY YOU WANT THE GAMES TO BE. TRUE FUN.