It took me by surprise when I found out that the first Wednesday after the summer of XBLA would have three releases instead of one. I was only surprised until I played them; only one of the three is worth looking at. In the never ending quest to charge money for things that are free (and possibly better) elsewhere comes Gin Rummy.
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By Jay Aphale on September 13, 2007 in xbox live arcade
Players: 1-2
Publisher: Freeverse Software
Developer: Strange Flavour, Freeverse
Genre: Board Games
Review By: Jay Aphale
“Why oh why did I spend five bucks on board games?!”
Board games can be incredibly fun. I’ve had some very tight matches of Checkers in my childhood with my closest friends, and they were all very entertaining. Then I moved on to Chess, and sucked at it, because it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. But I could at least respect the people that knew how the game worked and could master it. So when I heard that Spyglass Board Games was going to be available on Xbox Live Arcade, I hoped that I could relive the memories of Checkers, start learning Chess, and so I did not hesitate to buy it.
So, uhh, how do I review this? Checkers is the same old checkers we all know and love and the same could be said for Chess. There’s also Reversi and Mancala, two games I had no idea how to play and had no interest in. So what differentiates this release from the thousands of ways you can play these games for free on the internet or in your own home? The answer is pretty complicated so read and re-read the following words carefully:
Absolutely nothing.
After playing this, I’m still decent at Checkers, while being absolutely useless at the rest. I mean, they could have at least put in a goddamn tutorial mode that taught you how to play these games. But no, they just fucking released the games like they were completely stolen from Yahoo! Games or something. I guess tutorials are a feature only found in good XBLA board games (see: Catan).
But it’s okay, the various difficulty settings should help you ease into the game, right? Well, you’re exactly right. Except that’s totally inapplicable since this game has no difficulty settings. Actually, strike that, it’s even worse because this game has random difficulty settings that the player cannot control. The A.I. in this game is so fucked up that I’ve gone from being completely destroyed in Checkers to winning with five of my kings still left. Same goes for Chess, where I can get demolished or somehow squeak out a stalemate by just moving my king around for a while when it’s the only piece left or even completely destroy the opponent by taking out every single one of his pieces. Keep in mind I still don’t know how to play the fucking game. Speaking of games I don’t know how to play, Mancala’s A.I. is actually consistent. Consistently fucking bad. Seriously, the only thing I know about this game is that it involves discs and magically moving pebbles. And yet I still manage to win the game every single time.
I mean, difficulty settings are found in the most basic forms of internet games. I bet you I could type in “checkers” in Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky search and it would take me to a site where I’d be able to change difficulty settings, but the game that I paid five fucking dollars for does not have such a thing. So are there any unique features in this game? Well, it contains this fucking awesome (read: unimportant) feature that lets you play all four games simultaneously. Well that’s fucking great if all four games were worth playing. I’d be surprised if you’d want to play some Reversi after a heated (read: wtf) game of Mancala, let alone still having the game on your hard drive. You also get new board game pieces every time you get an achievement. Both the achievements and this idea are dumb, don’t even deny it. Oh, and there’s also the saving grace for most XBLA games, online multiplayer. This would be good if you could actually find somebody playing it. After the hour of searching, you’ll probably run into someone that’s either way better than you or just completely terrible, so it’s basically like playing the A.I. again.
So, if you want to buy a board game on XBLA, do yourself a favor and buy Catan. Hell, even Carcassonne, Catan’s nerdy brother, is better than this game. If you want to replicate this game’s experience for free and you don’t have internet access, it’s incredibly easy. I’m sure you have an old Chess/Checkers board lying around somewhere. That’ll let you play three of the board games in this game. As for Mancala, don’t even bother because it’s just fucking terrible. If you don’t have a board, just get a piece of paper and draw some squares on it. If you don’t have pieces, use some Skittles or action figures or some shit. Whatever you come up with will be better and more creative than this garbage.
“Steps Toward an Elitist Critic Future” at Rock Paper Shotgun
I went into this article expecting the “elitist critic future” to be presented as a negative thing, but no. Kieron Gillen is openly admitting here that he likes it. I think he’s buying into the idea that games need what you could call “indie cred” (not his words) to be worthwhile. I love Earth Defense Force 2017, but no, Kieron, it’s not better than Gears of War.
Lower the price of the hard drive, Microsoft. I want to give you more money, all you have to do is let me.
“EA Partners Is A Murderers’ Row - Who’s NOT On This List?” at MTV Multiplayer
This is a good bit of investigative reporting from Stephen Totilo. With last Thursday’s announcements by Electronic Arts of deals with Grasshopper Manufacture and Epic Games, they now have at least half a dozen major partners, and that’s not counting the smaller companies they have outright purchased over the last couple years.
I have become amazed at what XBLA has done in the past few weeks. It started with Geometry Wars 2, a game Jim Canapa described perfectly in the previous column (he should know, since his high scores are far better than mine). Bionic Commando, another great game I will go into detail about later, was the most recent addition. But in the middle was Braid, the first game to ever cause an internal conflict for me.