Over twenty million people world-wide know of PopCap Games and their horribly addictive puzzle games. You can play a dumbed-down online Flash version or you can plunk down $30 online and download a full, "Deluxe" edition of it with no limits. They make such classics as Bejewled, Mummy Maze, Zuma, InsaniQuarium, and the game I'm reviewing now, Bookworm. Bookworm is different from the others, as instead of luck you need pure skill to survive. This is just one of the things that makes the game so fantastic. Now, they've ported the game over the GBA for a retail price of $20. I had the PC version, but I just had to buy the GBA version. It's just so great. In the game, Lex the Bookworm is hungry, so you have to feed him tiles in a library. You have to string together tiles, each of a letter, to make words. The longer the word, the more points you get. The more points you get, the more you level up and the harder the game gets. Some tiles, if you make a bunch of long words in a row, become green, gold, or other fancy colors, and give you extra points if you use them. You want to use these tiles in long words as they add to the value of each letter and make the word worth alot more points. On the contrary, some letters are on fire. You have to use these before they get to the bottom of the board, and if you don't, you lose. Each "round" that you don't use a burning tile, it burns the tile underneath it. This adds a level of strategy to the game. Do you want to wait until it reaches the bottom so you can use it with the QU and T tiles at the bottom, or do you want to use it now so your green H under it is spared? If you use it now, will it mess up the setup you have for a long word towards the top for which you only need one letter, or will it work out fine? It may seem silly, but this is as much a strategy game past the third level or so than it is a puzzle game. However, the game is still a puzzle game. You have to string together words out of the tiles, which is the basis of the gameplay. It seems boring or easy, but it's far from it! It's lively, challenging, addictive, and just plain fun. You will think you'll get bored with it, as I did at first when I played the PC version, but you will get addicted and hypnotized to the point that you see the board in your dreams. Control is simple. You move over each tile with your D-pad, you actually select each tile with the A button, and you double-press the A button when over a letter to enter a word with that letter if you have a word made out of tiles (if you don't, it doesn't mess you up- it just makes a noise and doesn't enter the word). Hitting the "B" button is like "backspace" per se, and erases a letter each time you press it. Hitting Select scrambles all the tiles on the board- and causes flaming tiles to appear-, and hitting Start brings up the menu, which lets you save the game, enable/disable the music, and go back to the main menu. The game looks great. It's just the same board the whole time, but it looks faithful to the PC version. It's just the same PC board shrunken down, but it looks nice. The letters are easy to read, and so are all the numbers- provided you have a GBA SP. It's too dark on a normal GBA. Though, more people have a GBA SP than a normal GBA, so this isn't a problem. The graphics are occasionally blurry and jagged, but you can still see your score and the letters, so this matters not. The music is exactly the same as the PC version. From the catchy music to the voice clips of Lex saying "Welcome to Bookworm!" and "Look out!" and "Excellent!", the sound is yet another way this version of Bookworm is faithful to its PC version. There isn't any "campaign" as Bookworm is a puzzle game. However, this doesn't mean you won't play the hell out of the game. You play as much as you want, and you can save at any point, so you can come back whenever you want. However, once you get to 1.75 million or so, the game stops giving you new levels. You just get Bookworm Supreme ove rand over again. You can keep playing, but aside from making cool words, there's no sense of accomplishment or reward anymore. For people who played the PC version, it'll take about 5-7 hours to get to Bookworm Supreme. For people starting with the GBA version, it'll take you about 8-11 hours to get there. That's a fair amount of value for $20 compared to other, $30 GBA games, but it's still disappointing. Buy it, and say goodbye to 5-10 hours or so of your life as Bookworm consumes your mind. After that, it's up to you whether you keep playing, start over, or quit completely. Either way, it's well worth your time and money.
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