Chesscapade by Superscape,
$18
Reviewed August, 2003 by Howard Paw
I have this love/hate relationship with
the game Chess, I love it cause it gives my brain a good
work out and nothing is more satisfying than to checkmate
your opponent after a grueling match. I hate it because sometimes,
it can get boring and tedious especially if you’ve
been staring at the same board design over and over again,
plus the game isn’t very fun at all if your opponent
is either too good or too bad. Game developer Superscape
has stepped forward with a solution that may make Chess exciting
and fun again on the Pocket PC.
Chesscapade is basically a Pocket PC version
of the popular board game Chess, all of the rules that you
would expect from a real Chess game are ported seamlessly
into the electronic version. Seasoned Chess players will
be happy to know that Chesscapade offers a very competent
CPU AI to play against. There are various levels of difficulty
settings for the CPU so both beginners and experts alike
can take on an opponent within their skill level. You can
even play against a human opponent either by sharing the
same Pocket PC or you can get online with your Pocket PC
and search for human opponents. Chesscapade also keeps track
of game statistics both offline and online, and you can even
check out the statistics of your online opponent before you
decide to take them on.
There are 2 features that makes Chesscapade
a stand-out among the other Chess games; first, in Chessscapade,
you get to play it in fully rendered 3D graphics, the board
and the Chess pieces look really good plus you can even rotate
and adjust the board position to your liking (an option to
play the game on a plain 2D board is also available). The
second feature, which I think is the main attraction of the
game, is the animated fight sequence among the Chess pieces.
In Chesscapade, when a player’s piece takes on another
piece, both pieces transform into their medieval counter
parts and go head to head with each other. It reminds me
very much of the old game Battle Chess.
I tested Chesscapde on an iPAQ 5450 (running
Pocket PC 2002) and an iPAQ 2210 (running Pocket PC 2003)
and I found that Chesscapade definitely runs faster on the
iPAQ 2210. The animations are very smooth on the 2210 and
the wait time for a move to be executed is much shorter.
The animation was close to being jerky with some dropped
frames in 3D mode on the iPAQ 5450. Personally, I like playing
the game using the normal 2D board and then enabling the
fight sequences.
All in all, if you’re an avid
Chess player and are currently looking for a Chess game,
do give Chesscapade a try. The numerous difficulty levels,
online capabilities and 3D fighting sequence are quite
cool. I definitely urge you to try out the demo version
first before buying the game so you can see first hand
if the animations are good enough for you; the sluggishness
of the game on my iPAQ 5450 is a little disappointing and
it detracts the fun of watching the fighting sequence. |
