Kickass, was wondering how to see that.
It’s pretty fun. I love the way taking these games digital really changes the way you view them.
Lots of nice little touches, like good sound effects, and a useful zoom function, make this a pretty fun little casual experience.
Once I’ve had another day to get the hang of the game I’ll be looking for opponents…
I downloaded the demo (having never played Carcassonne) and ended up buying it. Seems like an interesting enough game and being able to play with other people on one console definitely helped influence my decision.
As somoene who has never been a board gamer, I really appreciate these games coming out on Live. The 360 market is definitely geared to twitch gaming, so it’s nice to expose some of this audience to slower games that focus on thinking and planning.
Both my wife and I love it. Thanks Sierra (who knew they were still in business!) for including a local multiplayer mode :)
I’ve only played one game against the easy AI so far, so I can’t judge it long term.
I will say that I hate the board game version, to the point that I veto it every time it gets suggested at game nights. But I played the demo last night, and bought the full version as soon as I reached the end of my “free” turns and offered me the chance.
It’s always seemed like a game that I should like, but the tile-counting and scoring has always seemed a lot more tedious than such a simple game should require. Having the computer keep track of all that, and score as you go, makes it fun again.
Still learning the rules of the game but it seems like it should be a lot of fun. For some reason, this game made me wish there was Scrabble on XBLA.
Don’t feel bad. It made me wish they had Risk and Axis and Allies. Now those would both bring back that high school “board game night” fever that I remember.
Heck yeah – although all the lamers on Live would want to use OWL instead of SOWPODS.
Handy tip: here’s a breakdown of the tile distribution for you tile-counting Carcassone sharks out there.
ARGH. Has anyone else had the game lock up while using the Back-button strategy view? It’s locked my 360 several times, such that I have to go hit the power button to shut it off.
It’s done it in ranked matches twice (the only two ranked matches I’ve tried thus far), a player match once, and single player once.
I’ve not had that happen to me yet in my 60+ matches so far and I use it fairly liberally.
I added a few names based on this thread, but feel free to add me as well, Tommy Tutone. I play ranked almost exclusively, although I need to play one four-player match for my final achievement.
I’m not sure if I am keen on the ranked rating system. It rewards people who win/play the most rather than a winning percentage. Right now, I am 32nd on ranked play, but the only way to move up the ladder is to play and win more matches, to get a higher total number of wins, rather than having a higher percentage of wins (although this would probably lower me as I’m only at a 66% win rate).
When you play local mutliplayer, do you have to have a controller for everyone? Or can you just hand off to the next person?
Appears to be “need a controller for everyone.”
My wife insists I tell you all how hard she kicked my ass last night (after the first game where she stranded four followers near an uncompletable monastery).
So one question: How are multi-owned farms scored? That is, if you put down a farmer and then I put down a farmer and then the farms get connected by a grass tile, do we both get points for the whole farm? Last night I kept getting screwed because I thought I had a lucrative farm but then I got something wrong. Back button will help, but the tutorial isn’t clear on shared farming…
We’ll hopefully play again tonight and THENNNNN I will CRUSSSSHHHH
I don’t know, but if you share a city or road then you both get full points, so probably same for farms.
That is correct. Or at least, how I played this weekend when I played it non-electronically. ;)
Yeah, and you should be trying to sneak an extra farmer into that grass territory using the same technique. Just like a city, if you outnumber them you get all the points.
Play it non-electronically? Why would you do that? Hell, I feel like we just saved $15! (Isn’t it like $25 as a physical copy?)
Plus the graphics are really lovely, we totally dig it, and with enhanced vibrance on a digital projector… YUM!
Farms aren’t scored directly. Instead, completed cities are scored according to adjacent farmers.
At the end of the game, you go through each completed city and total up the farmers in farms adjacent to that city. Whoever has the most farmers adjacent to a completed city gets four points for the city. If several people tie in number of farmers, they each get four points.
You can have a huge, worthless farm, if it doesn’t connect to any completed cities.
Or at least that’s how it works in the tabletop version. I assume the XBLA one does the same thing.
I don’t own a 360, so playing electronically would be fairly expensive for me. Plus I didn’t buy the physical copy either, which comes in a nice wooden box. Who wouldn’t want a wooden box?