Review by Clark A.
Word games and video games were two of my favourite pastimes growing up but the two largely remained segregated affairs. Back in the day, the simplicity of handhelds condemned crosswords and the like to the realm of pencil and paper. It’s somewhat disheartening, then, that Word Wizard 3D arrives years after Nintendo established workable pricing schemes, visuals, and controls yet isn’t able to outclass the standard dollar store activity book.
It’s especially saddening because by all accounts, Word Wizard should be the crème de la crème. The promise of eight activities, over 100,000 words, and a technological advantage over books in the form of randomisation all sound legitimately compelling. That last point in particular sounds most tempting; after all, randomised puzzles with a sufficient word count should lead to a virtually infinite supply of puzzles. Tack on a competitive price tag and it sounds like a winning formula for killing time on rainy afternoons like the days of old.
The classic Word Search is flawed almost irredeemably. It’s been reconfigured to operate as an endless time attack rather than divided up into predetermined puzzles, which would be an interesting approach if the game’s randomisation actually worked. As is, I wound up searching for the word “kettle” more than 10 times in a single session amongst countless other offenders. Furthermore, regardless of the difficulty level selected, diagonal words never showed up, causing the experience to rapidly grow stagnant. Since the game remains consistently repetitive and brain-dead in difficulty, it’s so difficult to lose that you’ll have to be actively self-destructive to even set a record. 
Technical Editor
