Online Spotlight
By Nino Mann
Chessmaster® is a full-featured chess game for the Xbox® with a complete range of AI opponents. It's nowhere near as fun to defeat a computer as it is to checkmate another human being, so Ubisoft made sure to include a full slate of multiplayer modes that let you challenge your friends in customizable tournaments offline or in head-to-head matches via Xbox Live™.
Enter the virtual chess arena.
Online, Chessmaster lets you compete against other gamers using the now-familiar Quick Match and OptiMatch features. The game knows that it's best to stay within your own skill level and will always try to pair you with opponents of a similar rating. You can also set the time limit for the game and for each move, choose which color you want to play, and decide if your game will be rated or unrated. Rated games count towards your ranking on the Xbox Live Scoreboards, so your success or failure will affect your standing. Unrated games are just for fun, for practice, or for bragging rights—they look and play exactly the same as a rated game, but the outcome does not affect the Scoreboard rankings.
The competition for online chess is as fierce as any other game, so it's best to prepare yourself and sharpen up your skills before you start playing lots of ranked games—unless you're in a hurry to learn some hard lessons by jumping in against the veterans. Fortunately, the game has extensive tutorial and practice modes to get you started, and a wide range of AI competitors to test every skill level. After a little practice (and maybe a few friendly unranked games to get your feet wet), you'll be ready to put your reputation on the line by playing ranked games.
Improve your game, improve your ranking.
Offline, Chessmaster also lets you enter over 60 virtual chess tournaments to compete against a virtual army of opponents. You and your friends can also enter the tournament and play through the ladder, match by match, eventually squaring off over the same chessboard. Tournament formats include round robin, where every player faces every other player, or swiss style, where all the participants are split into brackets and only the winner of each pairing advances to the next round of play.
If you don't find a tournament to your liking, you can create your own and fill its ranks of players from your Friends List or with the AI opponents. These tournaments are all customizable so you can determine the tournament type and the time limits that govern each round of play. You can save your progress after any completed game within a tournament by adjourning, which allows you to leave and come back to finish the match at your convenience. You can't play in more than one tournament at a time, however, but you can bail and start again by resigning from the current tourney.
One night in Bangkok on Xbox Live.
Mastering chess usually requires a great deal of time spent alone in quiet contemplation—it's never been necessary to even have your opponent in the same room. Chessmaster updates the time-honored practice of chess-by-mail, adding the speed of broadband and the power of the Xbox to make the pieces sparkle and dance. Both online and off, Chessmaster lets you and your friends engage in a decidedly elegant form of strategic combat, without restraining your need to trash-talk through the XboxLive Communicator Headset, of course.
Comments about this article?
