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There are things about this game that’ll make you shake your head. For starters, the
avatars, which are offensive less for their stupidity than the implication that they were
preferable to adding Mii support...which is easy and awesome, but no.
Let’s add a pelican instead.
Then there are the graphics, which may or may not have caused the Nintendo 64 to break
a sweat, as well as an overall lack of presentational panache...most obvious in the fact that, yes,
there are misspellings in a game about spelling.
But if you can lay down your guard for a second—that instinctive skepticism that’s been beaten
into you by years of lazy third-party Wii games—the payoff is worth it. Yes, there
are a lot of things you can nitpick about with WordJong Party, but like so many of this
system’s pleasant surprises, the gameplay is undeniable.
WordJong Party is a 2008 follow-up to the 2007 Nintendo DS game. The original was praised
for being a great game with not-so-great presentation, and the same applies to its sequel. WordJong
Party takes all the things that made the DS game so awesome and so bland and brings them
back for another round on Wii.
Only this time, it starts a party.
WordJong is a pretty simple mashup of existing concepts. If you combined Scrabble and Mahjong...you’d
have a mess of tiny wooden pieces. You’d also have something very similar to WordJong.
You take letters off the pile to create words, earning more points for longer words. Once
the pile is gone, the higher score wins.
If you’re a vocabulary nerd like me, you’ll be hooked in seconds.
The Wii version also adds new features that weren’t on the DS. The single-player experience
has been fleshed out into a quest, which has you competing against a bunch of other stupid
avatars on a journey up the mountain or something. But the game’s biggest changes pertain to
multiplayer. Two new party modes have been included, and they’re a great complement
to the standard multiplayer.
Listen, WordJong Party doesn’t look like much. I realize that. But when it comes to
party games, it just might be one of the Wii’s best-kept secrets. Even four years after its
release, this is s\till a party worth attending.
Just make sure you bring friends. Who are verbose.