Review by: Brandon "Trailblazing" Cackowski-Schnell

Quarrel was one of the best iOS titles released last year, surprising given that it was a stopgap measure for the game’s developers as they worked to find a publisher for the Xbox Live Arcade version. The unique blend of Risk and Scrabble made for some very long gaming sessions at my house as well as some very long and loud strings of profanity as Kali beat me for the umpteenth time. Now that the “true” version of Quarrel has been released it’s interesting to see how the game was supposed to be made, and how well it stands side by side with its iOS sibling.

The goal of Quarrel is to take over the entire map with your army of tiny Scotsmen, robots, aliens or whatever diminutive soldier the game assigns you. Each map is broken up into a number of squares with each square containing a certain number of troops. In order to take over the adjacent square you must make a better word than your opponent using the provided letters with the catch that you can only make a letter as long as the number of troops you have. Take on a force bigger than your own and you’ll gain a square as well as extra troops. Lose and the square remains in your enemy’s possession as you watch all of your troops save one go bye-bye. The premise is simple yet engaging as more complex maps and more scattered square distribution requires some tactical thought lest you find yourself stretched too thin and unable to defend when the game’s turns change hands.

The same AI opponents from the iOS game return only this time the colorful and charming character art has been replaced with horribly generic Xbox Live avatars. The AI opponents have different levels of intelligence and you could always tell just by looking at the characters what kind of opponent you were going up against. Biff looked like the frustrated middle manager who likes to beat up on people to hide his own inadequacies while Troy looked like a smug jerk who gets off on making others look stupid. Here they look like every other person on your Friends list, minus the lightsabers or Left 4 Dead t-shirts. Looks aside, they still provide plenty of challenge and learning their personalities is integral to beating them. Malik always goes for the quick word at the expense of a better score, meaning you have a little extra time to come up with the best word possible while Rex is the exact opposite, giving you some room to work, but when you build your word, it better be awesome.

As good as the AI can be, it can’t hold a candle to real life human competition. For the first time Quarrel has multiplayer and while it can be somewhat of a mixed bag, playing against a real life player brings a strategic dimension to the game that the single player game lacks. The AI won’t steamroll you and then suffer a total collapse at the last minute, affording you the opportunity to come back. It’ll simply win and move on. Similarly, if you’re playing against an outmatched AI, it will always be outmatched. Not so with people, which can lead to some lengthy back and forths, but the time spent is worth it for matches that go beyond what the single player game can provide.

This back and forth makes three or four player matches less interesting as there’s always a chance that someone will get completely knocked out and then have to spend the rest of the match watching two players trade squares. Players that still have active units but aren’t directly involved in the current battle have the opportunity to make their own words for the chance to earn backup troops, but once you’re out, you’re out.

The dictionary used for the multiplayer games has some odd omissions in order to comply with Microsoft’s terms of service, something players should be mindful of given that most slang and swear words are allowed in the single player game. Banning “help” doesn’t make any sense and losing due such a restriction can be incredibly frustrating. The single player dictionary has some oddities as well, unless “foes” has been struck from the English language and nobody told me.