KMahjongg

We return to an old favorite with KMahjongg, the KDE take on the classic Chinese game of solitaire (not to be confused with the classic Chinese game of gambling and multiplayer hijinks). There's very little to discuss if you've read my review of Mahjongg for Gnome. They're essentially the same thing.

Graphically, KMahjongg is better, as it has more tilesets, and they all look alright. The 'Alphabet' tileset is painful to look at, but it's amusing; the rest are all in the same basic vein and all well sculpted in seeming 3D. Mahjongg looks as good, mind you, but it has fewer tilesets, so it loses the battle.

Mahjongg also has more gameplay types (not real variations in mechanics, just different layouts to put the tiles in), and they have amusing 'Confucius-say...' sounding names, so it wins that particular skirmish leaving us in a vaguely familiar place, though it's been a while.

We have a tie! I can't actively recommend this to anyone who's installed Ubuntu, as Mahjongg is essentially the same shiznit and there's no point in installing a different piece of software that does the same thing as a piece of software installed by default. And the reverse is true: if you've installed Kubuntu and KMahjongg is automatically in there (I don't know if it is or not, as I haven't been able to get Kubuntu working on the laptop so far), then there's no reason to bother with Mahjongg. If you're working with a blank slate, I'd have to say to go with KMahjongg, as the extra tilesets change the gameplay more than the extra layouts do, in my opinion. Whatever. All mahjongg games that work are awesome.

KFourInLine

My initial reaction to KFourInLine was simply "Wow! Pretty!" and now that I've played with it a bit, that still sums it up quite nicely. KFourInLine is a KDE clone of the classic Connect Four game that was done decently in Four-In-a-Row (review here).

The basic game is simple, so there's not much to say about it. You drop checkers into different columns on the board, trying to get four in a row before your opponent does. Your opponent always wins, in my experience. As far as features go KFourInLine doesn't offer anything that would differentiate itself from other clones.

Where it shines is its look: it's skinnable with different themes, and all of the themes it 'ships' with are fancy lookin'. The board and the score-card are very smooth looking, easy to interpret, and feature a coherent aesthetic that's quite attractive. I congratulate the dev-team for keeping it simple and yet not completely ignoring form in favor of function, as is often the case with open-source games.

One quick complaint: the game runs slow. Probably because my computer is a bit outdated, and it probably runs fine on a more modern machine, but I was still taken aback by the fact that it seemed a Milton-Bradley game actually had a low frame-rate. I never thought of board-game clones as being processor intensive.

Other than that, all I have to mention is the multiplayer. There's support for local as well as the all-important networked human v. human games, and it's very simple to set up. Props for that too: none of the godawful clunkiness and irritation that comes with match-making servers and the like. You just start the game, and your opponent connects to you, or vice-versa. No muss, no fuss.

This is the best Connect Four clone I've ever played. That's faint praise, I admit, but it does mean KFourInLine beats out the one that comes preinstalled with your Ubuntu installation. I recommend it to anyone that wants to play Connect Four on their Linux box. Obviously, if that doesn't sound fun to you, you're advised to pass it up.

Kenolaba

And so the revolving cycle continues, with Kenolaba being unique if not exactly engrossing. The best way to explain it is Othello if it were sumo-wrestling. Confused? My job here is done!

Honestly, that's pretty much how it plays out, right down to the annoying give-and-take tactics that take forever to play out. You start out on a hexagonal playing-field populated with balls. The point is to push your opponent's balls off of the playing field. You have to have more balls in the group you're pushing with than the group you're pushing.

My room mate cracked up every time I said 'balls' while trying to describe it to him.

It's graphically on-par with late 90s shareware for Windows, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The graphics are simple, but clear, and not entirely unattractive. I hate the color yellow, so I personally don't really care for the color-scheme, but the vaguely golf-ballish look of the pieces is fun. It compares favorably to most of the other KDE games I've looked at, meaning it doesn't make me want to vomit, so there's that.

There's no sound. Once again, and I'm tired of saying that, so I think I'm just not going to mention sound when it isn't present and isn't necessary, this game doesn't need sound. It's a turn-based logic-puzzle/strategy game. Without a plot, or any kind of dramatic tension at all. Sound would just be irritating.

Final verdict? Meh. Not my thing, but at least it's not a clone of something I've played six times already, and fully functional. It's got an AI opponent, with different degrees of difficulty, so it's cool for single-player. If they were to add networked multiplayer it would pretty much be perfect for what it is. Want another abstract strategy game? Check it out. Want another FPS? Pass.

kcc

We seem to be doing an alternating thing, here, which means kcc sucks. I assume the acronym stands for KDE Chinese Checkers. It's vaguely functional, in an almost sort of way, which makes playing it that much more tedious. If it just didn't work, I could have ignored it. Instead, I had to wait for it, and deal with it, at great length, so I could give you my honest impressions.

It's Chinese Checkers, for your computer. It's low-res, it's sluggish (dear god, the eons I spent waiting for the five AI players to make their moves could have been used to raise a child... or even a village, which would then be utilized to raise a child, all while waiting on the AI to make their moves), the AI sucks, and there's no multiplayer. A boardgame without even local multiplayer (much less networked) is a boardgame which completely and utterly sucks. This is made especially ironic due to the fact that it's part of the GGZ package, which endeavors to be a one-stop shop for online gaming.

Playing kcc is extremely tedious. The AI seems to have no interest in winning, I couldn't find a way to configure any options that might alleviate the lag, and it's ugly as hell. There is no sound.

Oddly, the 'menu' window is separate from the 'play' window, which is star-shaped (i.e. in the shape of the game board, with no background). This was probably supposed to be a neat visual trick, and it is, as long as you're not actually playing it. When you are playing it, it's really annoying how the cursor changes to reflect what's behind the board whenever you cross a transparent seam, sometimes causing you to accidentally bring a program you're not trying to use into the foreground.

Outside of that interesting twist on making a bad game, the rest of its faults are quite run-of-the-mill. It just sucks on all fronts. It looks like there's a newer version available from GGZ site, as well as a GTK version that's quite nice looking, so once again the Ubuntu repositories prove to be woefully out of date.

I'm beginning to wonder if the perception that Linux sucks for games isn't actively being perpetuated by the poor maintenance of repositories - anyone who thinks that the games in the repositories are all that there is has to believe that there are virtually no decent games for Linux. Since one of Ubuntu's selling-points to less technically-minded users of Windows is that they can download all the software for it without having to compile or configure anything, I expect that most of Ubuntu's user-base never goes beyond the repositories. Just updating them, and getting rid of the going-nowhere, abandoned, non-functional projects would go a long way towards making Ubuntu seem like a legit project.

Those thoughts out of the way, here are my thoughts on kcc: Don't bother. Please. If you are in the market for a Chinese Checkers game, get the more recent version of this one from somewhere else or try a completely different one. The version of kcc Ubuntu offers you is horrid.

KBattleship

While it's hard to take serious, KBattleship* is actually the best KDE game I've played so far. Sure, it's a simple game from the getty-up and nothing is added feature-wise that makes it any deeper than the board game. But it works, it's not a hideous C.H.U.D. (this is not a C.H.U.D. reference, but rather a Clerks II reference, since I'm referring to the fact that KBattleship is not ugly, and not claiming that it doesn't kill people due to mutation (it may)), and it's kinda fun.

How does it play? Oh, come on - you know how it plays. There's a grid. You place a couple of shifts on that grid, of varying sizes. Your opponent does the same. Then you randomly pick spots of your opponents grid to blow the hell up, in the hopes of thoroughly decimating their fleet of battleships.

That's all there is to KBattleship. It doesn't add any weird modes of play, or power-ups, or anything at all, really. It's just a game of Battleship (that's right, I italicize game titles, but not board-game titles). On the other hand, it's a game of Battleship that features an AI opponent and support for network multi-player, so it's better than the board-game, all other things being equal.

And they are! The field of play is sprite-based, so it's not uber-sexy 3D but it's exactly what you get with the board-game: chunks of ship and ocean to be utilized as you see fit. Since the board-game is basically tile-based, you lose nothing whatsoever in the translation, and gain the ability to play it alone or with friends in Antarctica.

The sound is better than the talking version of the board-game, despite the fact that it does not talk. The explosion sounds are nice n' bassy, compared to that tinny crap-speaker mess I heard on the TV commercials back in the day. The sound of a missed shot, a shot scored on your opponent, and a shot scored by your opponent are all different in a lovable way. You get a basic explosion sound when you hit the other guy, but when you get hit, there's a hull-ringing clang of explosiveness that lets you know bad things are afoot.

To sum up in a slightly anti-climactic way, KBattleship is another game that I'm sad won't really appeal to anyone. Because really, who the hell is dying for a chance to play Battleship on their damn computer? On the plus side, I feel less guilty about not recommending it because it's really simple and I suspect that it didn't take all that much work (comparatively speaking).

If you are, by some strange chance, longing to play Milton Bradley's classic on your Linux box, KBattleship is everything you could want. Unless you want shiny happy pretty graphics that don't really add anything, of course, in which case you will probably be disappointed by 90% of what the open-source community offers anyway.

*Yeah, for the record, the screenshots on the official page on the KDE Games site look nothing like the version you get from the repositories. I hate to keep bringing this up, but I think this version I played (that you get from the repositories) is woefully out of date. Just, y'know, for the record.

KBackgammon

Because I have journalistic integrity, I spent a really long time learning the rules to backgammon so I could review KBackgammon. I want those hours back, thank you very much. Short review: the damn thing works, much to my chagrin, but it's ugly as sin.

So yeah, now I know how to play backgammon. And I now know that a game of backgammon takes an hour or two to finish, when you're playing by yourself, against yourself because there's no AI. Which is probably my biggest complaint about the game: without an AI, it's not really possibly to play as a single-player game. I mean, I did but it wasn't like playing a game.

The interface is simple enough; drag pieces where you want 'em to go. Clicking buttons lets you do everything else you'd need to. If you're familiar with backgammon, you know that means rolling dice and doubling the points-value. There's a critically annoying one-second delay in between when one turn finishes, and when the game realizes that it's the next person's turn. Outside of that, the basic mechanics work fine.

KBackgammon makes up for its lack of AI with working online play, through something called FABS. I was able to make an account and login all via the game's UI, so that was convenient. In a two-player boardgame, I have to say that I think I consider online multiplayer to be the single most important thing. So good on them!

Visually, it's just ugly. Seriously, it needs a re-skinning really badly. The colors are mealy and unattractive, the pieces look a bit dithered, and it's very rudimentary. All of these KDE games are ugly as sin, but whenever I look them up, I hear people talking about how great KDE makes things look. I'm a bit confused at this point.

There's no sound. Doesn't need any.

The final summary? If you really want to play backgammon with friends on the internet, this'll git 'er done. It might not be as pleasant an experience as you'd hope for, but it works. If you have an alternative to KBackgammon, you should probably try that one first, cuz' this is just functional. Nothing more. If you want to get into backgammon, I'd recommend that you not do what I did and learn to play backgammon with this one.

gtkgo

gtkgo is a decent version of the classic game Go. It actually works pretty well. You'll note that the name doesn't link to anything this time: there's no website for gtkgo that I can find. I believe it only got one release, version 0.10.0, something like five years ago.

That makes it pretty amazing, as in that one release, they got all of the necessities working, and if you pick the right skin it doesn't even look too shabby. There are two different AI scripts to compete against, and you can also play against another human being (local only, no network support).

Outside of the fact that you can't make it full-screen, I have no visual complaints. gtkgo ships with five skins, of which one is boring, two are ugly, and two look alright. The skins change the look of everything from the pieces to the configuration menus, and while they obviously weren't done by design majors, they look self-coherent and are easy to interpret on all the skins.

There's no sound, but there's an option to turn sound on, so I assume sound was going to be added at a later date and no one got around to it. No biggy; soundtracks are for action games, not board-games. Right?

I probably could have stopped with the first sentence: gtkgo is a decent version of Go. Wanna play Go against your computer? Pick it up. Don't wanna play Go against your computer? Don't pick it up. I think it's the best version of Go I've seen so far, and it's certainly the nicest-looking. Shame it's not in active development; add network support and some higher-res skins and there'd be no reason for a different one.

Gtkboard

You know those crappy five-dollar CD-ROMs that have 'hundreds of games' on them, only they're, y'know, really bad shareware from ten years ago? Gtkboard is like one of those, only unfinished.

According to the website, the actual inspiration for the title seems reasonable: since the AI for all of the single-player board-games they saw were essentially the same, why not just do every board game in a single game? Sounds alright if vaguely sketchy; I don't understand how say, Risk or Clue would utilize the same AI as a chess game. Regardless, I'm positive that Pac-Man isn't a board-game anyways, so whatever good intentions that they start with, the inevitable grandiose feature-bloat that kills all Linux projects kicked in, and left Gtkboard an unfinished pile of crap that occasionally works.

There are thirty-two games in this collection, most of which are played on some sort of board, and are two-player games. Most of those are playable single-player with AI. Maybe twenty or so of the games are fully implemented; the rest are either completely unplayable, or playable but so broken that there's no point. The Pac-Man clone strikes me as the single worst iteration of that storied franchise I've ever encountered, finished or not; most people don't release something that broken, even in beta. It's not fun, but it's funny.

Tetris features here, and it's pretty much a less-pretty version of Gnometris (review here), but unlike Gnometris, the tetris clone in Gtkboard actually works. So if nothing else, Gtkboard is an option if you're looking for a barebones tetris-clone. There are better out there. The only other thing that was neat and never crashed to the desktop on me was the maze game. You move a cursor from one corner to the opposite, through a maze. It reminded me of elementary school.

Generally, I've been running a lot of reviews that boil down to 'This is a very minimalist and ugly game, but it functions' - that's only half right in this case. Guess which half? That's right - this game doesn't function! Even in the case of the 'fully implemented' games that were supposed to work flawlessly, the program kept crashing back to the desktop.

The project has been dead since 2003. I don't know why this is even in the packages... it's a broken project that isn't even being developed anymore, and so will never progress beyond the half-coded shambles it's in at present. This one gets a 'don't bother' rating with prejudice. There are better ways to play
virtually everything in this package.

GRhino

While it hasn't reached the level of clone saturation you find in the casual-games market, it's a bit disheartening that there are so many versions of the same games in the open-source community. GRhino is another Reversi/Othello clone. Sure, it's a classic game with time-tested mechanics, but I do have to wonder why they bothered. Was it just an attempt to develop the programmer's AI skills?

I hope so. Iagno (review here), which is the Othello clone that comes with Ubuntu's default installation, is far superior in virtually every way. Prettier graphics (3D, even, I think) and network play are the two most important areas. Ignoring the graphics, the fact that you can play Iagno against other people makes anything GRhino might have to say for itself a moot point.

GRhino seems to pride itself on having an exceptionally difficult AI opponent. If that's true, then maybe there's a place for it in your collection. After you slaughter all the other, prettier, less facile AI players in all the other versions of Othello, you can turn to this one. I saw no evidence that it was inherently smarter than any of the other AI opponents I faced. The margins of victory and length of games ended up the same as those I encountered with Iagno.*

If you are desperate to play single-player Othello and your computer was made fifteen years ago, it may be that GRhino is your only option; its lack of 3D graphics probably allows it to play just fine on an older machine. Outside of that unlikely scenario, I give out yet another 'why bother?' to this pedestrian attempt at porting a classic board game to the desktop.

*Both AIs beat me a lot: this probably suggests that I suck at the game more than that the AIs are comparable.

Gamazons

Weird game. Gamazons is a chess-like game, played on a 10x10 chess board where you get five pieces that move like queens. I'll never play it again, but people who like playing chess on a regular basis should probably check it out, as it's a very different sort of game but it relies on the same sort of tactical thinking, perhaps moreso.

You see, not only do all of the pieces move like queens, they also all have to shoot an 'arrow' at the end of each turn. So the board slowly fills up with these permanent 'arrows' that can't be moved over. You don't take pieces, you eliminate squares. The winner is the last person who can move a piece. Your goal is to trap the opponent's pieces with arrows while leaving your own pieces with mobility. It's just as brain-stressing as a game of chess, but with different strategies.

Graphically, as you can see, it's a bit simplistic. Outside of one or two of the 3D chess games and a handful of other exceptions, graphics haven't been very impressive for any of the logic-puzzle/strategy games we've looked at, so I wouldn't take off too many points for that. Gamazons has no music or sound effects.

There is an AI opponent, so you can play against the computer, watch the computer play against itself, or play against another person locally. There is no network support, but the website states that network support is planned, so just hang in there. Maybe.

If you're a fan of turn-based strategy board-gaming, you should probably check this out. If you're not - and I'm guessing you're not - you should probably not bother. If you don't dig playing chess, you're not gonna dig this any more.

eboard

I can predict the future. Just two posts ago, I predicted that a network-multiplayer enabled chess game was sure to follow. eboard is that game. It followed even closer than I expected.

Interestingly, unlike the other games that had single-player but no network play, this one has network play but doesn't support single-player, out of the box. You have to install a chess engine in order to play with yourself.

Network play works, which is always a good thing in a game which exists primarily for network play.

Graphically, it's 2D only, but it has support for multiple themes, and one of them is even pretty nice looking (pictured above). It's got customizable support for sounds (as in, you can tell it when to make noise; I didn't notice any option for setting what sounds actually get played, but that doesn't mean there isn't a way).

A few minutes ago, I found it hard to get excited about another chess game. Imagine how un-excited I am now. At least eboard fills the one feature-niche that none of the others did, by allowing you to play games over the internet. There is officially no need for another chess game to be on this list. I will bet good money that I end up with another one anyway. Any takers?

DreamChess

The open-source community is apparently obsessed with chess. DreamChess is further proof of that, not that I was looking for any. It's the best of the bunch so far, though if Brutal Chess continues to improve, I 'spect it will end up my favorite.

It's got everything the others do (i.e. Brutal Chess and GNU Chess). It's also got more themes than either, and its 3D implementations are as good as Brutal Chess's, although jagged-looking as hell, like GNU Chess's 3D mode (thankfully without the horrible lag of GNU Chess). It doesn't have the fun-but-useless rotate-board feature that Brutal Chess does, so it loses points there.

Still, though, it's got all the functions of either as well a bit more graphical flair than either (DreamChess looks cooler, even though Brutal Chess looks sharper). Especially amusing was an 'Elemental' theme, where instead of white vs. black you have fire vs. ice. Also adding a bit of whimsical flair is the fact that each theme portrays a life-bar for each of the players, which goes down as pieces are captured by the other team, and also keeps a running list of which pieces each side has captured along the side.

When you get right down to it, any of these games will let you play chess with yourself or against someone else locally, and none of them will let you play chess over a network. Apparently chess games improve according their location in the alphabet, though, so I expect we'll get one with network play before we make it all the way to zed. Onward!

CGoban

Cgoban* is some sort of computer-version of the ancient game called Go. I can only make it work in multi-player mode, though there seems to be some sort of support for bots that will play as one of the players. As near as I can tell, you have to set up an account for your bot on a Go server on the internet, and run a program that connects to that server under that account and plays with you.

All I can say for certain is that it doesn't work as a single-player game with AI right out of the box, and I can't find any instructions for making it work. At least, the instructions I found are for getting it to work under Windows, with the assistance of a few .exe programs custom-coded for the purpose, requiring tons of configuration and batch files, and possibly aren't even for Cgoban but instead are for GNU Go, which according to Synaptic is a command-line, text-only version of Go. The instructions mention Cgoban so I'm not really sure what the deal is.

I can also tell you this for certain: I'm not going to bother. This is just too much work, even if it would work, and certainly too much work for a solution that possibly wouldn't. I didn't look very hard, but I looked at the first twenty results in Google searches for a number of different search-strings and got nothing that would do it for sure. If I get linked to a quick how-to for making it work, fine. Until then, this game will remain un-reviewed.

*This is actually the website for the KGS servers. I think they're connected to Cgoban somehow, and they offer the client for download. Actually, I think they offer a newer version of the client - the one in the package manager is years old. I think. Lot of uncertainty in this one, eh?

Brutal Chess

With a name like Brutal Chess, I was hoping for something along the lines of Battle Chess. While I didn't get that, I did get a much more attractive and 3D-capable version of the classic board game than GNU Chess offers.

I suspect the AI in GNU Chess is brighter, but I am only guessing. On all other fronts, Brutal Chess is superior. Graphically it's very pretty, and 3D, while GNU Chess was ugly in 2D, and hideous in 3D. It was also sluggish and processor-intensive in 3D; Brutal Chess handles like a dream.

The developers' SourceForge page has some screenshots that suggest that multiple tile-sets are planned - including some tile-sets that fulfill my Battle Chess wish - but there don't seem to be any included in the current package. Oddly, the version available via package is two releases out of date; the most current version was released in January of '07, and fixes a bug that allowed white pawns to move backwards, which is sort of game-breaking. Or at least game-altering.

There are pretty reflections, and smoother animations. Holding down the right mouse button allows you to rotate the board in any direction, which is neat.

Other than these graphical tweaks, there's not much else to say. It's chess, and it plays like chess. It allows for two-player locally, and there's talk on the dev's page of adding network-play support, but it's not in the current build. These guys are doing a great job.

Atlantik

This is essentially a placeholder. Atlantik is multi-player only, and therefore not something I feel compelled to review for the purpose of this blog. In addition, I was going to give it a shot, but at 3AM EST there wasn't anyone on the server I checked, and it won't let you begin a game until you've got at least two players.

This is here so the list of games on the blog will be complete, and also because I may, in the future, play a game of Atlantik. If that occurs, the review will go here.

Iagno

Okay, I got a bit hysterical there with that Gnometris review. Not a lot of sleep, a hell of a hangover, and (let's face it - there was some truth there) an abysmal port of a classic game will do that to ya.

Iagno is much better. It's a port of Othello and it's well implemented, with a decent (minimalist) interface, nicer graphics than it needed (it could have just been a bunch of circles; instead it's like, a bunch of texture-mapped circles with wood-grain around them, or at least a couple of tiles that look that way), and more features than I expected.

I should mention that I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I hit the multi-player only games, as I really have no interest in playing multi-player games. I know they're all the rage these days, but I cut my teeth on single-player CRPGs, and while I make occasional forays elsewhere, I generally don't venture anywhere near the online-only offerings that Microsoft is determined to destroy solid franchises with (I'm lookin' at you, Shadowrun) because... well, I'm not social. I don't want to get to know you better, and I don't want the guilt of letting you down while I learn the ropes.

Which is to say, I decided to test the 'Network Play' of this game only to discover that the game (and anything else that uses the same gameservers, apparently)
doesn't get much network play. The default server had two people on it, and one of them was called "ServerBot" which sort of leads me to believe s/he wasn't a people. Sigh of relief! I don't have to awkwardly approach someone and ask them to play Iagno with me.

The game itself is the Othello you remember from your childhood, if you're old enough to be from an era when people still played board games. I kinda suspect that outside of Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit no one really does, anymore. Obviously, those board-games which are marketed to my friend Doug and have zombies or ancient battles don't apply; I'm talking about straight-up old-school board-games. And I'm really talking a lot about irrelevant things, aren't I?

Chin up and onward we go! There are two players, black and white. I'm not going to bother explaining the basic rules because a.) I think most people know them already, and b.) I tried and it was very wordy and not very helpful, so I erased it. You click on the board to place a piece; it tells you if a piece can't be placed there, which is always nice. There are appealing smooth animations every step of the way, and appropriately subdued sound-effects. It allows for alternate tile-sets, although there are only two by default, and the other one is a hideous red n' yellow combo. What's up with all this yellow in Linux-game tilesets?

To sum up, this is yet again more of the same. I am beginning to regret starting with the games that come with Ubuntu because they're all marketed at... well, boring people. I can't imagine what sort of person comes home from a 9-hour day at work and says to himself "I think I'll play Othello against my computer." Unless they have set themselves to playing every game available via Ubuntu's default sources, anyways. It's just not fun.

Mind you, it's a solid enough time-waster. If Solitaire didn't exist, this would be something I wouldn't mind playing while I waited for a download to finish. As long as it was a short download. But with its pass/fail nature, playing multiple games in a row turns tedious rather quickly, as opposed to addictive, and it just seems kind of sad. If I were playing against my room mate, I would probably enjoy it, but setting up another Linux box in the living-room just to play Iagno against a real human opponent seems even sadder.

In short, while it's well done, I don't see any reason for this to exist. I'd rather play it on a real board, or not at all. It does, however, get bonus points for a.) an amusing making-of story in the help-file, and b.) stating that its 'known bug' is that the computer opponent is too easy. I suppose it goes without saying that the computer opponent mauled me pretty regularly.

Four-in-a-Row

Everyone knows Connect Four, right? Four-in-a-Row is GNU Connect Four, basically. This is an old nemesis of mine. I've installed Ubuntu three times on my system, and every time I've wandered over to Four-in-a-Row eventually, and I have yet to win a game. I've played the PC to a draw once, but other than that, I lose. Every time. I've had friends play it, just to see if they can win, and none of them have, either. Not even my friend who works at the Pentagon.

Which either means that Four-in-a-Row at the easiest setting is harder to beat than terrorism, or that we're in a lot of trouble. I'm going with both, actually.

Other than its impossible level of difficulty (at the "Level One" setting on the computer player - it goes up to three), this game is perfect. Actually, I'm going to go ahead and say the level of difficulty is perfect as well. I'm playing Connect Four, which is almost checkers for dumb people, or tic-tac-toe for smart people at best, and I'm thinking about the moves I'm going to make in the future. I don't even do that when I play chess, as much as I do with Four-in-a-Row. Which is why I also always lose at chess, but I'm betting that if I ever beat this game playing against the computer, I will beat the computer at chess, because although in both, I try to anticipate the computer's moves, it feels manageable in Four-in-a-Row. So it's the perfect training ground for developing that Kasparovian mental discipline. It's like training wheels.

When I make a successful bid for world domination, I will have Four-in-a-Row to thank for making it all possible.

Graphically, they changed the default tileset from that hideous red and yellow that I had been playing with the last time I installed Ubuntu to some milky-looking marbles in red and blue, which is a very positive step. All of the themes it comes with are attractive, actually, although the "High Contrast" ones made my brain hurt to look at, and also belittled me (they're X's and O's in black and white - a reminder that I was losing at glorified tic-tac-toe).

The controls are a minimalist's wet dream; you just click on the column you want to drop a check/marble/whatever in. Absolutely nothing extraneous is going on here, but also absolutely nothing that is needed is left out. If you need to, you can play with the keyboard; the keyboard controls are equally intuitive.


This is yet another casual, click brainlessly or click with a brain, but just keep clicking sorta game, but it's absolutely perfect. They hit this one out of the park! I mean, it is just Connect Four n' all, so how hard can it be?, but as far as the default-installed games under Ubuntu, this is the best so-far where form meeting function are concerned. And it's a worthy foe, much like Moriarty to Sherlock Holmes, or ham to turkey at holiday dinners.

Chess

I'm going nuts; it's been days since I played a game with a storyline. And I'm really tired of playing games I've already played before, without a PC even. I'm not sure I even consider these games.

Still, Chess is a winner. I was dreading this, because I remember playing Battlechess in CGA when I was like 10, and I remember the games taking forever to play. Playing GNU Chess at the age of 27 did not match that experience - either I'm worse at chess than I was at 10, GNU Chess is smarter than Battlechess was, or my sense of how long "a really long time" is has changed immensely.

Probably all three. Anyways, I had a blast getting my ass kicked by the computer in this chess game. I was using about as much strategy as, I dunno, an earthworm lying on the sidewalk after a big rain, and the computer player made me pay for it, so I assume it's a competent opponent. I should note that I had the difficulty on "Normal" so it's probably even better on "Hard" - I don't think it could possibly get checkmate quicker than three moves, which it did to me (twice! the same way! ouch!).

As far as basic functions go, this game is pretty much perfect. It's a no-frills, eminently usable interface for playing chess. Nothing more, nothing less. In 2D mode, the pieces are easy to distinguish and aesthetically appealing if not
exactly impressive. The only real feature that isn't a chess-piece and a chess-board is the board numbering, which was useful for me as I learned that the letters go from right to left, for some reason, but otherwise unattractive and pointless.

Activating 3D mode required installing some packages through Synaptic for OpenGL support, and proved to be totally not worth the effort. On my Athlon 2000+ XP with a 512MB nVidia AGP card, it was sluggish, ugly, and very jagged looking. Rather than black and white, they were two different colors of brown (I assume they were supposed to be wooden; they couldn't spring for the virtual onyx n' ivory? Or whatever they're traditionally made of?), and I've never been a fan of brown, but they were also kinda hard to distinguish at times, and the texture that was mapped to them was really ugly.

My issues with 3D mode may have been user error - for all I know there's some anti-aliasing setting in some text-file that configures OpenGL to not look like utter crap when being used to display static chess pieces. But if so, it wasn't mentioned in any of the menus for configuring the game, and since I got no errors, I'm going to assume my OpenGL is working optimally. In which case, just avoid the 3D mode; it blows.

Outside of that, this is a solid port of the classic board game chess. There are snazzier, prettier versions of chess, but this one is free, comes with Linux, and plays single or two-player chess just fine; all the rest is unimportant.