Ah, chess. It’s a fun game, but certainly not something I ever expected to play on my Xbox. This is a console dominated by shooters and sports titles, not ancient board games. In any case, Ubisoft has released Chessmaster for the Xbox at a bargain price of twenty bucks. I’m surprised to say that it’s certainly worth picking up if you can handle the idea of playing chess for a while instead of Dead or Alive or Halo. There may be free chess alternatives on the web, but none as fully featured as this particular title.

Chessmaster isn’t so much a game as it is a tool. It’s Chess for Dummies, if you will. Yes, there’s a full-fledged chess game in here, complete with Xbox Live support, but the features that make this one worthwhile are the tutorials. There are several teaching modes in here, and going through all those tutorials can take a few hours. Within them, you can learn everything from the basics of each piece and when to attack with them to good opening moves and advance strategies for all stages of the game.



I’m by no means an expert chess player. In fact, I’m not very good at all. After running through the tutorials, though, I found myself really understanding how to play the game. Instead of focusing on just capturing enemy pieces until I happened to see an opening on the enemy king, I can now plan out just how I’m going to make that opening appear. If things don’t go my way, I’ve learned to deal with those kinds of situations, too. Chessmaster is a fantastic teacher, and if you take the time to learn, it will dramatically help your game.

Once you’re confident in your skills, you can challenge over 100 different AI players, participate in virtual tournaments (or create your own), and even hop online. There aren’t a whole lot of people playing this online, and there were a few nights I wanted to play but couldn’t find a single opponent. Still, it’s possible for the determined to find other players. The online play is silky smooth, of course. I’d be amazed if it wasn’t, given the nature of the game. You can also play with two players on one console, but if you’re both in the same place, it makes more sense to me to just grab a real chess board.

Should you tire of the standard chess game, there are a few more options available to you. You can set up the board in any way you’d like and begin a game from those positions. There’s a collection of some 800 famous chess matches that you can replay, which also feature commentary from various chess masters. Some of these were interesting to watch, and hardcore chess fans will probably get a kick out of it. Finally, there’s an interesting puzzle mode. This sets up a random chess challenge for you, and you’ll have to move the right piece to the right place in order to satisfy a condition.



If Chessmaster falters anywhere, it’s in the visuals. It’s not that they’re bad; all of the pieces and boards look great, and there are a few dozen different board sets to choose from. A couple of them even have fun animations for movement and attacking. On some of the sets, though, it’s hard to tell the pieces apart, and I often had trouble getting a good camera angle. The player is given full control of the camera, including angle and zoom, but no matter how much I fuss with it, it still feels slightly wrong. Playing from directly overhead works, but it’s too hard to tell the pieces apart from that angle with most chess sets.



Article By: Joe Mackie