This Wednesday: Switchball and Word Puzzle [verb] XBLA
by Ludwig Kietzmann 
on Nov 5th 2007 5:25PM
It's hard to believe that the seemingly innocuous phrase, "having a ball," could be tinged with cruelty. You see, the life of a nondescript videogame ball is actually quite miserable, rife with surreal landscapes, tilting mazes and suspiciously long half-pipes that only lead to pointless goals. Sierra Online's graphically splendid
Switchball only exacerbates this sad state of affairs, featuring a shiny sphere capable of changing its physical properties (to overcome puzzles!), but not its
emotional state. If you spend 800 MS Points ($10) on it this Wednesday, consider how you'd feel if tears rolled down your cheek
and up the back of your head.
Hitting Xbox Live Arcade on the same day is
Word Puzzle, a game that primarily deals with the useful thingamabobs that made this sentence possible. For 800 MS Points, you'll receive "intricate 3D boards," Vision camera support and the chance to use "exploding word bombs." Those should give the stereotypical
Halo crowd a head start, at least.
