Bookworm Adventures 2 Online Game
Read Common Sense Media's Bookworm Adventures: Vol. 2 Game Poster Image. Platforms: Windows; Price: $19.95; Available online? Get all the latest new about Bookworm Adventures: Volume 2 from GameSpot's industry-leading news coverage!
Cute graphics? Low system requirements? Addictive 'Just onemore.'
Yup, it's a new PopCap game. In BookwormAdventures Volume 2, you once again control Lex, the bespectacledworm, as he travels from one literary locale to the next, spellingout words from a collection of random letters and defeating foessuch as Papa Bear and Puss In Boots.Bookworm Adventures Volume 2 isn't a simple spelling game withsome graphics bolted on, though.
As with its predecessor, BookwormAdventures 2 adds in elements from role-playing games. You winmagic items and potions as you travel, your Health Bar expands, andyou gain more tactical options. You also face foes with moreinteresting powers.Gameplay in Bookworm Adventures is very straightforward, and noreflexes are required, a blessing for the slowly graying gamer. Onone side of the screen is you; on the other, your foe. Down belowis a grid containing letters.
That's no hyperbole. Surrounded by a throng of ecstatic fans (3,165 to be exact), the legendary performer delivered a concert in Carnegie Hall the live recording of which became, upon release, an unlikely pop cultural phenomenon. 'Indeed,' The New York Times reported in its review of the evening's proceedings, 'what actually was to have been a concert-and was-also turned into something not too remote from a revival meeting.' What the recording highlights, and what's made it an enduring classic in a class of its own, is the palpable connection between the songstress and her fans. The afghan whigs gentlemen zip. Judy at Carnegie Hall, the two-disc set that captured all 25 numbers she performed that night, went on to spend more than 70 weeks on the Billboard charts, win four Grammy Awards-including Album of the Year (making it the first live music album and the first album by a female performer to win the category)-and become, in the process, the fastest-selling two-disc set in history.
Click some letters to spell out aword, and then press 'Attack!' Your word flies across the screen,smacking the enemy. The longer your word and the more unusualletters (such as X) it uses, the more damage you do.
(For youWarcraft players, think of 'dog' as a green item, and 'taxonomy' asa purple epic. Good.) In addition, various magic itemschange the value of a word.
If you have Farmer Mac's Almanac, forexample, adjectives do bonus damage. You are allowed only a smallset of magic items on each level (though you never lose those youwin and can swap them out between stages), so choose wisely!The monsters you face will do things like stunning you (so youmiss a turn), or, worse, messing with your tiles. They will causesome to be locked, some to deal no damage if you lose them, andworse.
They may even change your tiles randomly, so that great wordyou almost had the letters for vanishes and you're left withnothing but a mix of 'g,' 'c,' and 'k.' Popcap has a very distinctive style, andthere's a point at which you really begin to suffer from cutenessoverload. Bookworm Adventures teeters on that fine edge between'Cute' and 'Cloying.'
More serious, at least to me, is that thegame is not very challenging-or, to be fair, the first hour ofgameplay isn't. I made it to the final boss of the third chapter ofthe first world with a full shelf of health potions and having notdied once during the prior game. Playing beyond the initial demo, Ifinally died in a boss battle in the second 'World.' It may getharder yet-I know the Penny Arcade guys love this game, andthey're '133t'-but it would be nice to feel a bit more stressearly on. Constantly losing is no fun-but constantly winning isn'ta whole lot more fun. Popcap makes casual games and aims for anaudience with a low tolerance for frustration, and that's fine, buta difficulty slider would be nice.This aside, any gamer who likes word games such as Boggle andScrabble will probably love Bookworm Adventures Volume 2.Note: This trial version works for one hour of gameplay.After that, you'll have to buy the game to keep playing.