harshal chheda xbl boardgame review v1.2

8/3/2019 Harshal Chheda XBL Boardgame Review v1.2

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XBL Boardgames| Review 1 June 01, 2009

SupInfo Game / UBIsoft Harshal Chheda

XBL BOARDGAMES | REVIEW

OVERALL

+ (Looks) Neat interface with pleasing transparencies clean layout, smooth animations

- (Ergonomics) The button-dropping animation upon changing menu screens is slow, and

pressing ‘A’ during the animation just presses the (invisible) currently selected button –

pressing ‘A’ should just skip the animation while staying in the same menu screen

- (Looks) Backgrounds have spinning game tokens like chess pieces, etc which, in my opinion,

look out of place (flying mushrooms with AA bugs)

- (Known Issue) The left analog stick behaves erratically

- (Known Issue) Obvious discrepancies in menu styles for the individual games, e.g. the

Reversi menu has gray buttons whereas the Backgammon menu has dark-blue, slightly

differently shaped buttons

- (NYI) No difficulty levels in most games

- (Bug) The text on the ‘Play Online’ button in the main menu is only visible after the button-

dropping animation is complete

- (Looks) Different graphic theme options would be a plus

- (Looks) The text throughout the game needs editing for grammar and polish

- (Ergonomics) Skippable animations across the board (no pun intended) would be nice, e.g.

piece-moving animations, etc.

- (Ergonomics) Exit button inconsistency: Sometimes, the button to exit a screen/game is ‘B’

and sometimes its ‘X’ – this needs to be streamlined and made into one universal button

-

(Ergonomics) Some menu streamlining is evident compared to the Alpha DS Boardgames Itested, however, there is still room for improvement in my opinion:





CURRENT MENU STRUCTURE

SUGGESTED MENU STRUCTURE

Main Menu

Single Player

Multiplayer

Achievement

Play Online

Leader Boards

Help

Reversi

Backgammon

Etc…

Basics

Learn

Play

Main Menu

Single Player Multiplayer Achievements

Play Online Leader Boards

Help

Reversi

Backgammon

Etc…

Learn (Includes

basics)

Play Splitscreen (W/E)

Etc…





BOARDGAMES

REVERSI

+ (Gameplay) Strong AI – couldn’t beat it in ‘Play’ mode but that may just be me being crap ;)

+ (Gameplay) Hint mode seems useful and the toggle is a good idea

+ (Looks) The animation showing which pieces will be captured is slick

+ (Looks) Overall looks and smoothness levels are good

- (Looks) Wrong spelling of ‘Reversi’ in the boardgame selection menu

- (Gameplay) The ‘Basics’ section only has 3 slides showing the board, player pieces and

opponent pieces – it should also explain how pieces are captured, multiple-line captures, etc

- (Ergonomics) ‘Basics’: Each slide’s text is slow-scrolling and pressing ‘A’ entirely skips the text

and goes to the next slide – pressing ‘A’ should just skip the text animation, show the text

and then, upon pressing ‘A’ again, it should skip to the next slide

- (Ergonomics) Cannot select which ‘Learn’ level to jump to (even if that bracket of levels i.e.

easy, medium and hard has been completed)

- (Ergonomics) Turn indicator could be more obvious, i.e. a glow/highlight or marker

- (Ergonomics) No ‘Exit’ or ‘Menu’ button indicators ingame

- (Ergonomics) After completing ‘Basics’, it should default to the mode selection screen – not

many people would want to see the basics section twice or more times in a row (at the

moment it just restarts the ‘Basics’ section

BACKGAMMON

+ (Looks) The board and pieces look excellent

- (Gameplay) In ‘Basics’, capturing pieces is not explained

- (Gameplay) In ‘Basics’, ‘bearing off’ is not explained, but the last step says ‘Whoever bears

off first wins.’

- (Gameplay) In ‘Basics’, the implications of a double-roll are not explained

- (Ergonomics) In ‘Basics’, dice are shown in the middle of the board, whereas they are at the

bottom of the left-side-panel ingame

- (Looks) The highlights showing available slots to move a piece to need better anti-aliasing

and the throbbing animation needs better alignment to make it look seamless

- (Ergonomics) After completing a game in ‘Play’ mode and leaving the ‘Results’screen, the

game automatically restarts in play mode – maybe it would be better to ask the player what

he/she wants to do?

- (Gameplay) AI seems pretty poor, or maybe it’s just how the game is

- (Gameplay) In my personal opinion, it doesn’t seem like a fun game, it’s based off the diceroll result too much





MASTERMIND

+ (Looks) Board and tokens look amazing

+ (Looks) The piece-picking animation is a nice touch

+ (Gameplay) Difficulty levels!

+ (Gameplay) Good AI

+ (Gameplay) Challenging game, personally found it fun to play

+ (Looks) Good menu style

- (Ergonomics) The ‘Dark Pegs’ are of a dark-orangish colour instead of black – this is a bit

disorienting at first

- (Looks) Slight anti-aliasing issue with the holes on the ‘Hint’ side of the board (right half)

- (Bug) Wrong spelling for ‘beginner’ in the difficulty modes menu tooltip

- (Gameplay) No option to reset your guess after placing a piece

DRAUGHTS / CHECKERS

(Ergonomics) No slow-scrolling text in ‘Basic’ section

(Looks) Hints, board, tokens look good as usual

(Looks) No flying mushrooms in the background

- (Gameplay) In ‘Basics’, there is no explanation of how to capture pieces etc

- (Bug) In ‘Learn’, there is a ‘Hints Off’ button indicator but that disappears when activated

with no replacement ‘Hints On’ indicator – this is not a problem in ‘Play’

- (Ergonomics) There should be a ‘Move Available’ indicator for when a player thinks his turn

is over but there are still other opponent pieces he/she can capture

- (Ergonomics) In case there is a move available, the movable piece (or one of them) should

be selected by default

- (Gameplay) AI seems erratic – it didn’t kill my king even when it had a clear chance

-

(Gameplay) No difficulty levels- (Ergonomins) Turn indicator could be more obvious

- (Ergonomics) The CPU player is shown as ‘Player x’, x being 1,2, etc…; whereas it could be

simply be ‘XBox’, ‘CPU’ or ‘CPU 1’, ‘CPU 2’, etc

harshal chheda xbl boardgame review v1.2

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