Hasbro Family Game Night
Nov 18th, 2008 by cm1
Hasbro has long been a name associated with a dizzying variety of toys and games, but now some of the more iconic games in its stable are being trotted out on the Wii and PlayStation 2 in Hasbro Family Game Night. Five of the six included games are classics–Boggle, Connect 4, Yahtzee, Sorry, and Battleship–while one is a new game that Hasbro will be releasing this fall called Sorry Sliders. We played the Wii version at a recent press event and got a taste of how some of the games are being adapted for a new medium.
First up was Boggle, the game that challenges up to four players to find words by linking together letters randomly placed in a 4×4 grid. One player begins by shaking the Wii Remote to jostle the letter dice around; when they’ve all settled in, the lid comes off and the game begins. You select letters in order by pointing at them (or moving your cursor with the D pad) then pressing a button, deselect a letter by pulling the trigger, and register a word with two button presses. If the word doesn’t exist or another player has already registered it, it won’t count, but valid entries will be recorded on a pad in your corner of the screen. The letters are big and easy to see, but they’re not so big that you won’t occasionally select the wrong one. The control scheme is simple, and the game captures the frantic word-finding fun of Boggle well.
Rat, ram, rams, ream, reams, cream, creams, scream, screams, scram…
You can spice thing up by turning on the panic flip, which will jumble the letters up when only one minute remains, or portal cubes, which will switch the first and last letters of every word registered. The latter option can really change the game because words can disappear before you have a chance to complete them. The letter arrangement is also constantly changing, which forces you to act quickly and be aware of the whole board. With these wacky options on top of the solid core gameplay, Boggle actually feels like a great fit on the Wii.
Download Hasbro Family Game Night:
http://d01.megashares.com/?d01=ac2c771
