Great If You Like This Sort Of Game
Catan for XBLA is an adaptation of the popular board game Settlers of Catan created by Klaus Teuber. This game is not for everyone. if you spend all you time fragging users online in Call of Duty or Halo, you can stop reading now, because you won’t like this game. I on the other hand absolutely loved it!
The game is fairly simple. There are 3 to 4 players that must compete for resources on a honeycomb shaped board (see screenshots below). Each piece of the honeycomb is attributed a number and a resource. There are 4 resources. ore, wheat, sheep and wood. Users must place their settlement son intersecting points of the board. Whichever resources their settlements are connected to, they will receive that resource if the number attributed to it is rolled on the dice. The resources are represented by cards, which you hold in your hand and can spend on building more settlements, upgrading your settlements, building roads to connect your settlements or other card that help you get ahead of your opponents. I know… this is probably all very confusing, and it definitely is at first, and the game is definitely deeper than what was briefly described. I recommend downloading a trial and trying a few rounds with some easy A.I. just to get a feel for the game.
I really didn’t expect to like this game as much as I did, but a friend of mine recommended it to me and I got hooked. It is one of the few games I have an S-rank for achievements. If you like card games like Magic, or board games like Dominion, you will definitely enjoy this one. I love playing board games and card games, but it’s not always easy to get a bunch of interested friends together, so having a game you can just turn on and play on line with friends and/or strangers is great.
