How the mighty have fallen. Words with Friends came to my attention via the Top 25 free apps listing of the App Store, courtesy of its free edition. It's a Scrabble clone, so I knew it could only be so bad. The application is a medium size download, so it installed quickly. Note: I played this exclusively on 3GS, so your mileage may vary.

Interface

The interface is clean, and easy to navigate. After a short account creation, you are free to create games via searching your contacts individually, passing the phone between multiple players, or just battling randoms around the world. Words with Friends (WWF) allows you to play up to 20 simultaneous games, and has a nice list view. The interface is completely custom, yet instantly intuitive to anyone who has ever played scrabble. Simply drag and drop tiles to play.

Performance

Since the game is turn based, gameplay should not be affected by hardware speeds (2G vs. 3G vs. 3GS and all flavors of iPod Touch). With that said, WWF is currently undergoing extreme server difficulties. When I started playing way back in December 2009, gameplay was responsive and server communication was near instantaneous, regardless of connection speed. Now turns take an eternity (up to 5 minutes occasionally) and it can be extremely frustrating to have gameplay limited based on hardware as opposed to brainpower. WWF would do well to invest in better servers as their game has become increasingly popular.

Gameplay

It's Scrabble. If you've played Scrabble, you already have an opinion on Words with Friends. The dictionary has been updated to be more similar to the official Scrabble dictionary, but there are occasionally words that should be included and aren't. But you get used to it. There is a handy feature that blocks players from playing words not in the dictionary. Unfortunately, this can encourage a strategy of trying all sorts of variations on tile placement until you find one that sticks. You just have to trust that your opponent will play with honor. I am pretty sure that some of my matches have been against filthy cheaters (some of the randoms have suspiciously vocabularies). The tile placement is unique, most likely due to copyright concerns, but again, you get used to it.

Value

The game is tremendously addictive. Despite all my complaints, I've been playing for 2 months with no end in sight. It's a perfect bus or even mid class game, and as you play and improve, you will desire to compete even more. The free version is definitely worth a download, but features extremely annoying ads between every turn. Fortunately, the ads, while full screen, are static, and can be skipped after one second. But if you have 20 games going simultaneously and are playing a turn every couple minutes or seconds, it is worth upgrading to the paid version. At $2.99, it is pricier than most other iPhone games, but to an active player, the cost is worth the convenience.