FileFactory Games Consoles - console games, console movies and trailers, console reviews, cheats and news.

Catan
Home : Games : Reviews : Xbox 360 : Catan

Promo-screenie from Big Huge Games' website that depicts board layout and piece placement.

The game is played with 3-4 players, each represented by a different color of settlement and road pieces on the board, which is made up of 19 randomly arranged hexagon-shaped tiles. The tiles themselves each represent one of 5 resources (wheat, ore, lumber, brick, and wool), and all have a number that corresponds to a value that can be rolled on the dice. Play starts with everyone placing two settlements near numbers that they think will get rolled often. Each settlement must be at least a certain distance away from other settlements. The first player then rolls the dice, and the sum of the dice yields resources that have that number on them to players that have settlements adjacent to them. As an example, if the sum of the dice is 3 and there is one tile on the board with a 3 on it, (ore let’s say in this case), then anyone who has a settlement near that tile will get one ore resource card to put in their hand. If instead they had a city near that tile, they would get two resource cards.

You collect cards in your hand until you can spend them to build a new settlement, road, or upgrade one of your settlements to a city. Additionally, you could spend your cards on what is called a development card, which have special abilities that help you to varying degrees. Game continues this way until someone reaches 10 points. You can score points in this manner: 1 point per settlement, 2 per city, 2 for having the longest road, 2 for having the largest army, and 1 point per victory card. Development cards give you soldiers for your army, victory cards, and a few other special surprises. As I said you earn cards by the luck of the dice, but you may also strike deals with other players and make some trades (anyone have wood for sheep?!)

The trade screen is your friend, your opponents on the other hand.

At first glance, the graphical presentation of the game is certainly not impressive. That’s because the default view is a 2D board game. You can change this in the menu to be 3D, and once you do, I’m willing to bet you won’t go back to the default view. The sound is appropriate, and subtle enough to not get on your nerves. The original board game had an expansion pack available that came with more tiles, pieces, and cards to allow for 5 or 6 player games, but sadly this has not been implemented in the digital version of “Catan.” Perhaps if they sell enough copies of the game, the developers will decide to release a new version with what seems like an easy thing to code to address this issue.

Playing online against friends is where it’s at, but the AI is no slouch either. A good game is to be had by all that give this game a chance. I definitely recommended this game as a purchase, and I’d even go so far as to tell you that you don’t need to download the demo, just buy the full version right off the bat. It’s a solid game, that’s easy to learn, but is deep enough to require some strategic planning. It’s got 12 achievements worth 200 gamerscore, has online leaderboards, online multiplayer with voice-chat, and a good offline experience too. Go ahead and buy this game now – I’ll see you in an online game sometime!

Highs
Captures the essence of the board game beautifully (quick to learn but hard to master).

Lows
Only supports up to 4-player matches on or offline; default graphical 2D-view is unappealing in comparison to 3D-view option.

Final Verdict
This is hands-down one of the best titles on Xbox Live Arcade. It’s certainly worth the price and definitely deserving of the high review score I’m giving it.

94%

May 8, 2007

Review by Charles Lentz.