Format: iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
Developer: Zynga Inc
Zynga really are pretty incredible they seem to have a knack for releasing games that simply takes over people’s lives for a period of time. I mean for like a few weeks or a month it seems like a game of theirs let’s say Scramble With Friends for example just blows up and then it disappears. Well Zynga are back with their latest life stealer What’s The Phrase.
Now graphically there is really not a great deal to talk about here. If you have played any of the other word based guessing games on the iOS and if you have an iOS device I would bet you have at least played one. Then you know what to expect here. It’s nice enough looking, but nothing really stands out as amazing.
But you really cannot judge a game like this on the way that it looks. To me at first when I read a little into this game I thought that it sounded like it was just some Wheel Of Fortune rip off. But once you play the game you see that while Zynga have clearly been inspired by Wheel Of Fortune they have put their own spin of it (no terrible pun intended ) and have actually improved on the formula. Which is really actually quite impressive.
So the idea of this game is that you have to guess what a phrase is. There are a ton of different categories for you with the best ones being TV and Movies. You are given a series of letter tiles and a phrase and you need to guess the phrase before your opponent does. I understand that right now you are probably thinking that this is just the same as Wheel Of Fortune, but there are some great improvements that Zynga have made.
There are power ups that you can use. You get to spin a wheel before each guess to see how many points you will earn if you guess right and one of the power up will give you an extra spin. You also get a power up that will take way some of the letters. My personal favorite though is the one that screws your opponent out of points. A big part of the charm with this game is that you can have multiple games on the go at once so whenever you fire it up chances are you will have a game to play. This is great and I think it is one of the reasons that the game is so addictive as whenever you look at your device you have a new challenge.
One of the very best things though about this game is the ability to send custom phrases to your buddies. Now if you are as immature as me and my friends are you can have some real fun with this by making insulting phrases (not that I recommend that kind of thing of course) Also if you want you can actually try and make some phrases that will really stump your friends.
In all this is a wonderful idea and I do actually prefer this to the standard Wheel Of Fortune game, but this game does have a couple of downfalls. First of all is the in app purchases you need to use your in game currency to buy power ups and even vowels. You can earn these by playing the game, but you do so t a really slow rate. But as the game is so addictive I would bet more than a few of you guys would be tempted to spend some real money.
This is a great social puzzle game and I am sure that many people will be addicted to it for at least a few weeks. A couple of bucks may seem a little steep especially if you buy in app purchases as well. But I have had a great deal of fun with this and not spent a penny over the asking price.