A Night at the Arcade: Catan and Puzzle Quest

This week's ANatA (whoa, messed up acronym, son!) is a shorty but a happy one. Catan gets the XBLA grand opening today. This is, as you may know, the video game version of one of the most popular board games around, Settlers of Catan. This thing may have sold about a zillion copies, possibly making it this generation's answer to Monopoly but I never really got into it. My gaming bud and my roommate used to play this once a week and I even joined them a couple times. It's one of those rare games that deals with economic and resource domination, and not one drop of blood is spilled. You just build roads, trade wheat and bricks and invoke nasty thieves to hijack your opponents' booties.

More Catan ramblings after the jump!

I have yet to try out the board-to-video translation of the game and it looks like I will have to enlist the expertise of my roommate to determine how faithful the XBLA version is to the old-skool one.

Remember how I was whining about Puzzle Quest 2 weeks ago and criticizing Infinity Interactive for releasing a PC demo of their game, yet not disclosing any details of an actual full PC release? Well the gaming gods have answered my goddamn prayers, because Puzzle Quest is making its bejeweled way to the Live Arcade! Huzzah, I say. Huzzah!!

For the record, I'd still like to see a PC release around the same time it hits XBLA. It just makes sense, y'know? Their PC build is practically finished.

That's all for now, kids. A review of sorts for Catan should be coming soon.

Update: It appears there is no demo version of Catan, so you have to shell out 800 points up front. I do not like this. No, not one bit. I suppose as a concession to cheap-Os like me, Microsoft also released two retro titles (with demos!)as well, Millipede and Centipede. But really, who wants to play those?

Update Update:Okay, so there was a demo of Catan released but it was pulled due to technical issues, according to Major Nelson. There is not ETA yet for the corrected demo, so until then shell out the moolah or wait. In other news, I will (try to) stop whining.

Source: Xbox 360 Fanboy