Reviews
The long wait to finally see some of the olden classic board games is finally over, SpyGlass Board Games is moving it way onto the market place bringing you 4 great board games such as Chess, Checkers, Reversi and Mancala.
The game is designed to allow you to play all 4 of the games simultaneously by switching between boards using the X button. This feature allows one game to be put on hold if you get stuck or need time to think your next move over while playing one of the other games.
Chess
The same as all basic chess, consisting of 16 pieces each, one side light one side dark. The aim of the game is to remove all of your opponent’s pieces while keeping as many of your own on the board while defending the king. The king is the key piece for both players. Once they king is in line to be struck down the player must do all he is able to do to defend the king, this is called Check. Once the king is out of all moving positions and is in Check a Check Mate is called and the game in over.
Checkers
The classic game of checkers follows similar features of chess but consists of 12 pieces for each player. Each of the pieces is only able to move one position forward in a diagonal direction until one piece reaches the opposite end of the board. This will then allow that piece to move backwards and forwards around the board. The key goal in checkers is to eliminate all of the opponent’s pieces while getting as many of your pieces to the opposite end of the board. Unlike most board games checkers, when a player moves a piece into attacking range of their opponents that piece must be taken. This allows most players to sacrifice one piece to gain a greater position on the board over their opponent.
Reversi
Reversi is not the easiest game for players that are new to it. This game although it consists simply of flipping pieces over form light to dark requires a lot of thinking to follow it. Taking a few rounds to get the hang of it the basic rules of the game are very simple. The game consists of dark and light pieces and the over all aim of the game is to see who can get the most pieces out of the two. The main difficult section of the game is the pieces that you are able to flip. Each player is only able to flip pieces that are in line with the same colour. Although the game is very tricky and frustrating at first, once figured out and you get familiar with the way each piece is flipped the game gets a lot better.
Mancala
Similar to Reversi players that are not familiar to how the game is played it may take some getting used to. Mancala consists of 6 stands with per player with a 7th stand used for collecting the pieces. There are 36 pieces randomly scattered amongst the 12 stands. The aim of Mancala is to collect as many of the pieces as possible tho when you select one stand, you must take all the pieces that are on that stand and drop one on each of the stands after that until there is no more remaining. Example is if stand 4 had 5 pieces on it they will all be taken form that stand and one places on stand 3, then one on stand 2 etc. The pieces will continue to empty as they are collected on the end stand and when no pieces are left the stands are then added up and the winner is decided. For all new comers to board games this one will surly strike their attention as it is very enjoyable.
The game comes with the ability for players to change the themes and appearance of their pieces and boards as they play through the game beating the computer. There are 16 themes for the boards and the pieces with a very large array of colours to choice from. The game also gives you the opportunities to change the colour of the background with plenty of colour choices to choose from.
Spyglass Board Games is also LiveVision enabled and allows you to see exactly who you’re playing online and even in single player mode. The game is great fun and allows hours of enjoyment with the range of games it offers. Players will be able to challenge the computer time and time again, then giving the option to challenge real people online from all over the world and compare their results with friends and others in the world.
XboxZone Score: 7/10
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