PLAY THE GAME ! (miniclip.com)

Member Name: jayjolynn

Product:	miniclip.com
Date:	14/12/06 (4831 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Learning new words

Disadvantages: Glitches!

MINICLIP FREE GAMES

The amount of games on Miniclip are far too numerous to mention, as there are hundreds of them, but will try and cut it all down a bit into categories:

5 Minute (In a hurry)
Action
Cash
Christmas
Dancing & Shows
E-Rated (Everyone)
Learning
Motorsports
Multiplayer
Platform
Political
Puzzle
Retro
Shoot 'Em Up
Soccer World Cup
Sport
Top 100

As you first enter the Miniclip. Com website, you are met with an abundance of games and perhaps too many to take in initially, but once you find your way about, and search out a few of these games, you soon find something you are looking for!

The games are separated into different headings to make searching for a particular game a little easier. At this moment, they have the following headings on their Home page.

Christmas Games
Action Games
Multiplayer Games
Sport Games
More (and there are many)

There is also a large index should you want to trawl through this, but I would recommend trying to figure out what sort of game you may want to play and just go through that section, as you could take months going through the numerous games on offer!

Arguably a lot of these games are for children (13 and over), but I would say that Miniclip is a site where every member of the family will find a game that will soon get them addicted!

The top 10 games, at this moment in time are:

Club Penguin
Commando
Ice Slide
Acid Factory
The Ashes
Hunter
Power Boat
Snowboard Madness
Skyboard
Scribble

There is a game store on this site where you can get the chance to buy some of the games, but personally never saw the point in this, as they are there, free, for you to play!

It is the word games I enjoy the most, and you will find numerous ones, but I will give you an idea of one of my favourites, and this is a game that attracts predominently older people to its site.

It is in the Multiplayer section, and usually it's to be easily spotted on the Home page of Miniclip.

ANAGRAMMATIC

The purpose of the game is playing against other opponenets, and is similiar To'Countdown' ( without the Maths part!). You basically pick 9 letters ( vowels and consonants), each taking a turn in each round, and then picking the longest word you can make with these letters!

You gain the points as to how many letters were in the word you made up! You must get a word with minimum 4 letters in it or it won't be accepted. So if your word consists of 7 letters, then you earn 7 points, but if you should get a nine letter word you also get an extra 9 points on top of your 9 (18).
Then the fifth (bonus) and final round, is a conundrum that you have to solve. The first person to get this, earns an extra 10 bonus points, on top of their score for the other 4 rounds!

It is one of these games which, can get you so frustrated and kicking yourself when you sometimes cannot see the words, and the conundrum round has you trying desperately to unscramble the letters before your opponent does!
Sometimes you can play like a 'word wizard', and other days, you can't see anything other than a jumble of letters, and you end up staring at a screen with your brain going on vacation!
It keeps you on the edge of your seat, and sometimes when you know you are playing a 'good player' your nerves go to pot! It can be a very exciting game of word guessing once you get up to the higher Star status!

You start off as a one light pink star, at 1200 points, and work your way through the ratings to a 5 light star status, then after gaining more points, you carry on with a 1 dark star right through to 5 dark star status, where the playing is more difficult as you are playing with some good players who I think are word geniuses and some come out with words I never knew existed!

One of the bad points of the game , is when you reach 20,000 points, it re-sets you down to 1200 again, so lose some points if you get too close to that score! You would have to start all over again, after all the hard brain work you put into it!

After saying that, it takes you months to get to that status, and once up there with these sort of ratings, you quickly learn that if you should play a 'lower' light star opponent , and lose, you could lose thousands of points, so it restricts you (if you value your points) as to who to play, but many of the players have opened a few accounts so they can actually play different levels, giving you a chance of more games!

My personal attitude is that the score system should be a little less brutal as sometimes players will sit for ages trying to find a game with someone who has the same amount of points.
I myself didn't put much importance on my points, but many long time players guard their points with their lives!

The very serious 'down side' of this game is it has many glitches, along with cheaters and quitters!
You will get penalized though, should you quit in the middle of a game, by 50 points, but many players are happy to take this point loss rather than losing hundreds of points by 'losing' to a player who is a lower 'star'!

Sometimes, people will quit for a genuine reason, like the glitches, but there are also dubious players on this site, and they will stoop to anything to get high points. If you are willing to ignore these people and learn to avoid playing them, then it is a very addictive game and many who play it have played it for a couple of years or more! Some are perhaps too obsessed with it!

Another problem Miniclip have is that for this game they base words on Dictionary.com and many perfectly good words are rejected, and also on the conundrum round, it can often tell you you never guessed it correctly, then come up with the exact same conundrum that you had offered as the answer!! Very frustrating!

This is where I feel Miniclip could be better in trying to fix these games problems, especially as they rely on advertisements, so they must want people to come to Anagrammatics for that reason alone, hence they should put more effort into sorting these glitches as I fear they lose a lot of players because of them. It's a shame as it's a great game, if it weren't for all the hiccups in it!

This game is made in Flash 8 if you do not have the latest plug in on your computer you will not be able to play the game. You can download this easily enough though, through the Miniclip site.

Anagrammatics has a forum, which is a fun forum, and a good way to make many friends. There are people from all over the world playing this game, as in many of the games on Miniclip!
Anyone can go into the forum to read the posts, but in order for you to post yourself you must sign up, and after you receive your activation e-mail, you can do searches, and post to 'thank' or chat to other players.

Although I have said this one particular game is mainly for adults, I would recommend that children over 13 try playing this, as it is a terrific way for them to learn about words, consonants and vowels! It is very educational and fun, and the more you play, the more you learn and remember the rather more 'obscure' words.
There are a few younger members play this, and you can actually see them coming up through the ranks to becoming a very commendable opponent!

The forums do have Moderators, and there are rules to posting in them, so although there are some adult conversations going on in here, the rules state that you should not post anything that might offend anyone else, and if you should post something too OTT, Miniclip do take steps to protect the younger players!

I haven't had the time to play recently, having been so busy with work schedule, but on the odd occasion, when having a coffee break, I sneak into this game! Often as not though, I find it hard to come out of it again!!!!

http://www.miniclip.com

Summary: Addictive game!