USA Today Crossworld Challenge Review

Pros

• USA Today Crossword Challenge comes equipped with 300 crossword puzzles.
• That equals to hours and hours of crossword potential, without having to wait for the newspaper.

Cons

• Crosswords are too large to fit onto the DS screen, with bits falling out of sight.
• The writing sensor, where players draw letters, is finicky and often just inaccurate.
• Each puzzle can’t be completed until all spaces are filled out in “pen,” which can't be redone.
• Icons representing “erase,” “list clues,” etc. are unintuitive and confusing to use.

Description

• Choose from a wide selection of crossword puzzles from USA Today. Fill in the blanks using the clues provided.
• Write the letter you’d like to appear in each box with your stylus on the DS’s touch screen.
• Use the “pencil” tool if you’re unsure of your answer, and the “pen” tool if you’re certain. Answers in pen can’t be erased.
• Complete a crossword, then receive a score based on how many correct letters you inputted.

Guide Review - USA Today Crossworld Challenge Review

Crossword Challenge takes a simple idea – put some crossword puzzles on the DS, making them portable and accessible – and turns it into a cry for video game help. The letter inputting system and the pen/pencil mechanic are such a pain to use, it would be easier, cheaper, and a heck of a lot less frustrating to go out and buy a book of crosswords and be done with it. Remember too that, since puzzles don’t fit on the screen, players will often choose one word (thinking they have, let’s say, five spaces to fill) only to discover the board actually continues and the word they’re searching for needs to be twice as long. The non-erasable pen mechanic is especially troubling, since the game has such much difficulty figuring out the letters players write on the screen. It’s nearly impossible to speak to the content of the puzzles themselves – whether they’re interesting, challenging, or varied – because Crossword Challenge makes it so tough to accomplish the basic act of filling them out in the first place.