ANatA: Catan Trial on Trial

Woke up bright and early this morning and what did I do? Did I have a healthy breakfast? No. Did I get dressed for a productive day? Nope. Did I anxiously check Xbox Live Marketplace to see if the working demo of Catan was available for consumption? Oh yeah, baby.

As I was saying in yesterday's post, I've never been big on Settlers of Catan or board games in general for that matter. Gone are the days when I would come home from school, friends in tow, and sit around the fireplace for rousing game of Talisman. Board games are slower placed, require interested friends and don't have HDR lighting and sweet volumetric smoke effects. So given this set-up, it should come as no surprise when I say I had a lot of fun with the trial version of Catan.

My juicy game-playing details are, as always, found after the jump!


This is a good game. Sure, sure... I'm playing a board game on my Xbox so I'm only paying lip service to board games, but hear me out. The trial has not only given me a hankering to purchase the full game, it has made me much more receptive to playing it "bricks n'mortars" style with actual people sharing the same physical location with me, holding up physical cards to our fat, physical faces. This game is one of those instant classics: easy to learn, with impressive depth of play to master and just enough old-fashioned, dice-rolling luck thrown in to keep players on their toes.

If you haven't tried it already, I do recommend you give the trial version a spin. The tutorial mode is extremely helpful and the overall translation of the board game is quite elegant, with brightly attractive graphics and a no-brainer control layout. You do get a couple added touches that you wouldn't get sitting around a table with friends, namely one-touch access to useful match statistics. Knowing the type and amount of resources currently in play is a not a luxury included in the board game, however since all players have access to it, there is no real game imbalance there.

If I could level one gripe at the Catan trial, it's that they cap your progress in a match at 7 Victory Points, which is a total bummer. I was laying down those roads and settlements like nobody's business! Perhaps I will purchase the full game. I find it very soothing and refreshingly bereft of murder and decapitations. Even so, would I have the mind space and time in my Xbox life to dedicate to this slower paced affair? Fellow blogger, Jigsaw, made a salient point about the game's length. With any single match lasting at least 30 minutes (usually longer), would I be playing this a lot or only when there's a serious 360 release drought? Hey, that drought is sorta like right now!