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Spyglass Board Games

EMAIL PRINTxbox360

4.0 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 10 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 3 votes
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Game Info

Publisher: Microsoft

Developer: Freeverse - Strange Flavour

Genre(s): Board

Players: 2

ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)

Release Date: August 1, 2007

Summary

[Xbox Live Arcade] Spyglass Board Games offers a fun new take on classic board games, like Chess, Checkers, Mancala, and Reversi. Play and chat socially on Xbox Live, or play against the computer. Use the Xbox LIVE Vision camera to personalize the game board, playing pieces, and video effects. Each game has custom pieces to choose from, such as a rook made of stone, or a furry checkers piece with cute gleaming eyes. Customizable pieces: Choose custom game pieces that range from traditional marble, to metallic silver, to fuzzy and wiggling gel. Twelve achievements: Twelve achievements are offered ranging from easy, such as playing all four games, to more challenging, such as taking all four corners in Reversi. [Microsoft]

Cheat Codes & Hints: GameFAQs

Also On The Web: Official Website

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

X360 Magazine UK

Word. [Issue#25, p.118]

Official Xbox Magazine

On the surface, there's not much to Spyglass Board Games. [Aug 2007, p.81]

Xbox World 360 Magazine UK

Chess, Draughts and two other games you'll never play - all of which do everything you'd expect. [Dec 2007, p.96]

Team Xbox

It’s nicely constructed and attractive, but doesn’t provide compelling reasons to play it a lot either—unless you already own an Xbox 360 and know another Xbox 360 owner with which you’d like to compete in any or all of these games regularly.

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Game Almighty

Even if it’s just to have chess or checkers to play online, you may want to look into this title. The camera support adds a little bit of extra fun to a very bare-bones package.

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GameSpot

Getting to play chess or checkers online against friends is pretty much the sole reason to own this ramshackle collection of games.

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Worth Playing

The inconsistent AI vacillates between being way too easy to soundly beating me — sometimes while playing the same board game!

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PALGN

Unfortunately with average presentation and a distinct lack of options the game is only really recommended to those who thrive on the idea of playing chess via the Xbox 360.

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IGN

Are most casual gamers willing to pay 400 Microsoft Points (US$5) for Chess and Checkers? Probably not.

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Official Xbox Magazine UK

Advanced video chat...and same old games. [Oct 2007, p.96]

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this game is 4.0 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Daniel gave it a2:
Only buy this to play chess with a friend online or are a hardcore competitive chess player and have to play it on Xbox Live. The game is very bare bones. It doesn't have features you would expect it to have. There’s no timer for moves and people can quit early and it won’t count as a win. As you move your piece the opponent can see what you’re thinking. You can't even play local multiplayer. The AI is horrible. I can beat the AI in chess in 4 moves every time and it will stupidly sacrifice its queen for no reason. The achievements are glitched and there still hasn’t been an update since release. Barely anyone even plays it online anymore. Also you can't even have a view that looks directly down on the pieces, only at an angle you can rotate. The 3D pieces do look nice though.

Mat C. gave it a3:
Flat out, this should have been a free release. Chess? OK, there are 1000 features that are in every other chess game, but this is just as basic a game as it gets. Same with checkers. The rest is fluff. The reality is that the CPU is blindingly simple, and the game lacks any reason to pay for it.

Aaace5 gave it a7:
It's pretty clear that when you make this purchase, you are buying chess and checkers - with two bonus games added to make the package look better! I only play chess and checkers, and don't have a clue what the other games are even about, nor do I care! These games are good as is... but it helps if you play against someone you know. The games are too simple to judge these games by any technical standards. If you like chess and checkers and want to try two extra games this is a good deal. Just don't expect this package to have alot of flash like most other XBLA games... it's about as plain as hardwood spades!

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Spyglass Board Games

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