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Carcassonne
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The game itself is quite fun. The rules don’t take long to get the hang of, and that’s always a good thing. There are some underlying strategies to master as you play more and more. I downloaded this game on reputation alone, (having never played the board game); so I was hoping that I wouldn’t be disappointed. Luckily, I was able to get up to speed quickly with the games tutorial section, so I don’t get my butt handed to me when I play online. The tutorials are split up into 3 sections: Basic, Farms & Final Scoring, and Expansions. Going through each one is recommended, and takes hardly any time at all.

Learn about using The River expansion pack, in the tutorial.

The background music in Carcassonne is appropriate and non-distracting. It kind of reminds me of they style you might here in a village in the movie Robin Hood, or perhaps the one that the minstrels sing to “Brave Sir Robin” in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The graphics are nothing to brag about, but then again, that’s not really the point of the game. The point, in fact, is to be able to play a great board game in digital form. Some people may be of the opinion that that defeats the purpose of a board game, but I disagree. Some of the advantages of playing a digital version are: not having to set it up or clean up afterwards; being able to play with friends even if they are across the globe; not having to keep score manually; and the prevention of mistakes and/or cheating.

Luckily, after you build your masterpieces, you don�t have to clean up!

One of the main things I didn’t like, however, was problems with the camera. Sometimes you’ll find yourself fighting with its zoom level or location, but for the most part, it’s okay. The HUD is slightly adjustable, but not in a real meaningful or very useful way. You can view the controls from the options menu, but you cannot change them, so there is no real point to having this there, other than maybe it being a requirement from Microsoft.

There are many things to like about Carcassonne. It’s got multiplayer over Xbox Live or locally. You can play with 2-5 people. The single player mode is nice as well, thanks to some good AI code. Those of us with a Vision Camera will adore having another title that takes advantage of the peripheral. The tutorial section is well done, and the game is just fundamentally easy to learn, but allows for multiple strategies to victory. It includes a free expansion pack of 12 additional tiles, which although not worth a standalone purchase anyway, are still nice to have as a freebie.

Supposedly there are future plans for additional expansions, and we can only hope that the price stays small. Other than the camera problems, and worthless changes that you can make to the HUD, there’s not much more you can ask for from a title that goes for 800 Microsoft Points (USD $10). I give this game a well-deserved rating of “Must Download.”

Highs
Easy to learn; contains many angles of strategy; Vision Camera support; great tutorial.

Lows
Sometimes you�ll need to fight the camera; HUD is tweak-able but not in a useful way.

Final Verdict
With easy to learn rules, but surprising strategic depth, Catan gets some company in the �Turn-Based Fun� genre of XBLA! I'm giving this one a much-deserving thumbs-up.

94%

Sep 4, 2007

Review by Charles Lentz.