Just like the name, I’m going to get straight to the point. Word Puzzle is an Xbox Live Arcade game that offers…Word Puzzles/Searches, a simple premise that’s been tried and tested in TV Guides and Puzzle books everywhere. It’s this that lets it down as they’ve taken a simple idea and really done nothing exciting despite the extra power that the Xbox 360 offers over paper.

Gameplay:

While being very simple there are a few game modes on offer here. Arcade mode is the mode you’ll be stuck in the most. This is all based on the idea of combos, which basically translates to finding words in quick succession. They give you a clue, in the form of a highlighted letter at the start or the end of a word, this takes away any challenge as all you have to do is find the highlighted one, and then pick one of the 8 possible directions. While being very simple on your way to getting all the achievements possible, it does get quite fast paced and frantic. It’s just a shame that this doesn’t last that long due to easy achievements and the fact that this game doesn’t really need to be fast. Arcade mode also ramps up the difficultly as puzzle gets progressively harder than the last, and each grid changes shape and sometimes goes into a 3D cube. Once you’re done with that you’ve got Survival Mode. At first it will seem like a simple word search with no clues. But, instead of solving puzzles you are saving 8 ancient civilizations. I’ve never heard of ancient Egypt in trouble while the pharaoh panics having to find some words in a muddled up grid, but then I never really paid attention in history class. If that’s not simple enough, it then throws bombs at you, meaning if you don’t find word X in X amount of seconds you’ll get hit with a distraction such as random black spots over the puzzle. I’ll be honest, I was left confused after playing this mode and it really seems like an unnecessary addition. The final mode is called Free Play Mode. This lets you customize your game and finally lets you play just a simple game of word search. There is also an online component that basically revolves around who can get the most words, there are not many people who are playing online, and who can blame them when the game as a whole is very un-engaging.

Graphics:

There’s not much to say about the graphics, although there is some noticeable slow down when the letters blow up, when you find them, this is embarrassing. Meanwhile the presentation is bad because the grid is in a small window that really hurts the game. It makes no sense to be in a window that’s less than a quarter of the screen, and when you get to some of the later puzzles that are bigger than the window, this gets frustrating as your being timed and the scrolling is painfully slow. This with its randomly themed Ancient civilization style will put a weird taste in your mouth.

Sound:

The music doesn’t really stand out and there are not many sound effects you can apply to a word search, so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. This is definitely one game that you’ll want to use custom soundtracks for.

Longevity:

Despite having 3 offline modes (one with heavy customization), you’ll have to be a “hardcore word searcher” to stick with Word Puzzle for the long term. The online lobbies are empty and the words start to get repetitive. Maybe some cheap downloadable content could help, but I doubt it. Like the actual game there’s only so many you can do in a row before you get bored, and the offline achievements can be nabbed quite quickly. Maybe if they expanded and did similar games in a pack like tic tac toe, crosswords and the like, it would help.

Overall:

If you’re a casual gamer and you're looking for some word search puzzles then maybe you could pick this up. It really doesn’t improve on the original and considering the original is paper and pen that’s quite shocking.