FB Review » puzzle http://www.fbreview.com Facebook Application and Game Reviews Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:31:06 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 The Northwest Trail http://www.fbreview.com/2009/01/05/the-northwest-trail/ http://www.fbreview.com/2009/01/05/the-northwest-trail/#comments Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:35:40 +0000 Dan http://www.fbreview.com/?p=67 In the spirits of the old classic computer game Oregon Trail, Northwest Trail is created.  In this game, you recruit your friends to your wagon and lead them across the Northwest Trail.  The game has a small but loyal user base with about 50k monthly active users.  However, this game is not as great as I hoped it would be.  I had no idea it was even on Facebook until I was invited to join a wagon.  Without a second though, I joined the wagon and couldn’t wait to get started.  Unfortunately, it is only slightly similar to the Oregon Trail I was used to playing.  You can earn money for your wagon, but only the leader can spend the money on food and supplies.  If you want to be a leader, then you have to go through the whole process of building a wagon, inviting friends, and hoping they join you.  The ways in which you can earn money for your team are less than exciting.  You can invite friends to join the wagon, play a few games, add an auction application, or take a survey.  There is also the duel feature, in which by challenging someone to a duel you can earn money.  However, with the duel feature the friend has to except and be online to participate.  Many of us don’t spend that much time online playing games and waiting for other people to join the game, at least not without preplanning.  This game was fun for about five minutes and then it was sort of boring.  The original Oregon Trail allowed you to play alone and for a decent amount of time, without needed to relay on other people getting into the game.  This game is too time consuming and requires a commitment from other friends.  In summary, great game idea to build on the original but falls far short in meeting expectations. I would rather play some solo Pathwords.

]]> http://www.fbreview.com/2009/01/05/the-northwest-trail/feed/ 0 PathWords http://www.fbreview.com/2009/01/04/pathwords/ http://www.fbreview.com/2009/01/04/pathwords/#comments Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:48:50 +0000 Dan http://www.fbreview.com/?p=45 PathWords

PathWords

Games are always a fun feature on Facebook and a great way to kill some time while at work. One fun and educational word game is Pathwords from Zynga. The game has a monthly active user base of approximatly 600k users.  PathWords is set up in an octagon sort of shape with random letters. The object is to string letters together in order to make words, the longer the word the more points are earned. It is a fun and addicting game, but can also be challenging when attempting to make larger words. The game can be played solo or with other people. In order to play with other people, your friends need to be online, you can join a game hosted by another random user, or you can host your own game. Playing solo is the easiest and fastest way to get into a game right away, since then you don’t have to wait for anyone to come join you. Of course, you can always challenge your friends in the ladder mode. The ladder mode allows you to challenge friends, because it ranks the scores of all your friends, the highest scorer being at the top of the ladder. This provides a further challenge because you are now competing for the top spot. Pathwords is also a great game to help improve your vocabulary. Even if you don’t do well when you first play, with time you will begin looking for longer words and skipping over the three or four letter ones. It’s a fun way to challenge your friends while doing something for yourself, putting all those English classes to good use.

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