Just a quick one - there's a truly great board game out there called 'Settlers of Catan', which was first published in 1995 in Germany. It's been called the killer app of board games.
If you have never played, you are doing yourself a great disservice - run right out and buy the board game now, it's available at most Barnes & Noble stores.
To me, the best part of Catan is the fact that even during other people's turns, you still get to play (after a fashion) as you may gain additional resources with each roll of the dice, on your turn or not - and you're constantly scrutinizing the board and the actions of the other players to fine tune your own strategy.
An iPhone app for Settlers of Catan was released recently - named simply 'Catan', it's $4.99 and I have to say - not worth it. It's perhaps worth 99 cents.
The gameplay in the iPhone version is clunky, the interface is dated and there are many times in the game when you have no access to the menu, there is no landscape view, there is no online multiplayer, you can save only one game at a time. The AI is not at all challenging, even when you manually select all of the most skilled bots as your opponents.
The 'fun' factor is very decidedly lacking. (I know I've said before that FUN is the hardest thing to write into code...) I can't recommend this game at all. I'm very disappointed, because I was very excited when the game was announced. I've played other digital versions, such as the one offered by MSN Games - for all its flaws, the MSN version is 1000 times better than the iPhone version.
Please check out the MSN version of Settlers of Catan here - it's a lot of fun. It's a demo version, but it takes about sixty seconds of Googling to find the registration key you'll need to convert it to the final version. I've spent at least thirty hours playing the MSN version and it's an enjoyable challenge.
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