Hasbro Catch Phrase Review

Catch Phrase is a game of quick wits, that tests people's abilities to associate words or phrases with descriptions.  The game is hand-held, making it extremely portable, and very easy to store when you aren't using it.  In addition, this is an electronic game, which keeps it very compact, and keeps it easy to play with.  The basic premise of the game is to take a word or phrase that comes up on the digital screen, and get your partner or team to guess it without saying the word itself.  This can be done with motions or words, and an internal timer helps to insure that you move along quickly.  The trick is to pass the device (after a correct guess) to the next player or team before the buzzer goes off, and then they try to guess the next word.

As a game, Catch Phrase is relatively easy to play, and extremely easy to learn for a first-timer.  The trick becomes learning how to associate the word you are given with clues that you know your teammate(s) will be able to guess in a short amount of time.  The timer goes off after one minute, and the team left holding the Catch Phrase disc is declared the loser for that particular round.  The winner of the round gets 1 point, with the ultimate goal being to achieve 7 points over the course of several rounds.  The size of the game (no bigger than a small Frisbee) is what makes it easy to pass around, and when you have guessed a word, it is as simple as pressing the button on the front to get to the next word.  When a round ends, there are two buttons (one that corresponds to each team) that you press to give the point to the correct team.

When starting out the game of Catch Phrase, you can choose one of the categories, or go with "everything", which shuffles up all of the possibilities.  The categories to choose from include Tech/Inventions, History Buff, Entertainment, Sports/Games, Geography, Transportation, Around The House, Food/Drink, Plants/Animals, Family, and Everything.  They are all fun, and the difficulty level of the clues varies depending on how much you know about one of them.  Game-play goes pretty quickly, as each round is only 1 minute, so you could finish an entire game of Catch Phrase in less than 15 minutes.  The game also runs on batteries, and tends to last a pretty long time, with the ability to turn itself off when not in use (which is very nice).

ViewPoint of Hand-held Catch Phrase

Players of all ages can enjoy Catch Phrase, and I have found that the game works best with large groups.  That's when the guesses get really fun, and the competitive juices start to flow as the game is passed around during the rounds.  It's also a game that can easily be played by families, as it doesn't last very long, and doesn't take any effort to get started or "break-it-down" after a game has been played.  A lot of fun to be played, and full of many different words and phrases to guess, Electronic Catch Phrase is a highly recommended game that is guaranteed to provide hours of fun.