User Reviews (1 - 11 of 14)

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Terrific Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Great game. I never had so much fun in my life. Everybody in my family loves it.

Chess for lazy people.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 75
Date: March 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is chess for people who are too lazy to set up their board or have no friends. I think it should be a 9.99 bargin title.

Worth the $20

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: March 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The first person to review this product, SleepyJD, must own a copy since he stated that this is chess for people who have no friends.

Loaded Chess Teaching Game for Great Price

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

In case you are not familiar with the Chessmaster series, like I was when I initially purchased this game, Chessmaster is an excellent teaching chess game. Players of all skill level will be able to find something worthwhile to take away from this game. Whether you are starting out from scratch and don't know a Rook from a Bishop, or you know the basic moves but are wonder how the heck people ever develop chess strategies, or even if you're searching for Bobby Fischer...this game has everything to meet your needs.

The basics are taught to you via lessons ranging from explaining what each piece is and how it moves, and even the best ways to play said piece...to some of the more advance moves like "castling," but it's not all about teaching; Chessmaster includes a rigid points system that allows you to play ranked and unranked games on or offline, whereby you can play opponents below your level, at your level, or that far exceed your level in hopes of improving your skills.

Whether you are looking to learn how to play chess, wanting to dust the cobwebs off of your collegiate game you once commanded, or looking to challenge current day chessmasters...Chessmaster is definitely the game for, and is a steal at its' current price.

king of games

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: November 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

this game is pathetic.I had chessmaster 2 for ps1 and it was much better (larger chessboards +actual controls)do not buy this mini screen squinter!now you know K.G. out

Chessmaster Disappointing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 14
Date: June 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I had become addicted to the Chessmaster for the PC so when I heard the new one was coming out for PS2 - I pre-ordered it. The day it came I walked right in and started playing. Let me just say I was highly disappointed. The graphics compared ot the PC version are not that impressive and there weren't a whole lot of options for different boards, pieces, etc. And the so-called "Battlefield Chess" leaves a lot to be desired. ....

Ridiculous amount of bugs

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: April 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game could be a 5 star, if it worked properly. I've only had the game one month and I've found several bugs in it. I'm a computer programmer and if my work had this many errors in it, I'd be out of a job.

If you win a match within the time limit in 'Rated Game', half the time it'll declare your victory a 'Stalemate'. This has happened probably a dozen times.

Also, it sometimes overwrites your save files. I had a profile with a 4-0 record and this morning it was overwritten. I recreated it, won a game and saved it. Thanks to another 'stalemate' that I didn't deserve, I rebooted after a 2nd game. I come back and my new profile with 1 victory saved has been overwritten again.

If you love chess, try to get this game used at GameStop or some other used game store. But be warned. It has more bugs in it than Windows 2000.

You really do learn, but...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: January 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game on New Year's day 2005 as part of my resolution to learn to play chess. I read all the review and weighed the good and the bad, and bought the game new at a video store.

The good thing about the game is that you really do learn to play chess. From the main menu you click on "tutorial" and then you are directed through screen after screen which explains each chess piece in detail, teaching you the legal moves for each piece. After a while I got a little impatient and went to the Battle Chess when I hadn't finished the tutorial, but after 2 moves I got my (...)kicked so I'm back in the chess school!

The bad thing is that this game is hopelessly boring. I have to admit that I thought the game would be like the front cover of the disc case but you will see nothing like that. While you're going through the tutorial, low-register easy listening music plays in the background while a male voice reads from the instructions on the screen. Also, what the other reviewers said about the mini chess board is true. I thought it wouldn't matter to me since I have a large TV screen but it's set up so that half the screen is the chess board, the other half is taken up by the on-screen instructions. Why couldn't they put the instructions as a moving caption below? In the battle chess, you can barely see the pieces -- as if the figures are extremely fuzzy and once they start moving, you don't know which figure corresponds to what chess piece.

This being said, I would still recommmend this if your goal is to have an intelligent and intimate knowledge of the game. You learn different strategies, how to gain a holistic perspective of the board and it is easy to navigate. I admit I've only done the tutorial and Battle Chess so far, and I might even buy that cartoony looking chess game designed for kids (Fritz and something?) just to make it a bit more fun for me to play. There is no doubt that you will learn, but like me, you may fall asleep a few times in the process!

Dissappointed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: June 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am really very disappointed at the poor thought that went into designing this game. I was really looking forward to it, having for many years owned Chessmaster II for the Playstation One. I was dismayed to discover that in many ways the Playstation 2 version is a step backwards. The graphics and interface of the Playstation One version are far more user friendly, with many more options for customization.

The most irritating thing about Chessmaster for Playstation 2 is the size of the chess board, which is tiny. This means you have to strain your eyes to make out the pieces, which all look alike - unless of course you like sitting 10cm in front of the screen, which rather defeats the object of using a game console rather than a PC. It is as though the designers thought of everything except the one thing that really matters: the comfort of the viewer. I find myself using the 2D display, ignoring all the 3D options, simply because it is easier to make out the pieces, but even on the 2D display they are uncomfortably small.

What's so frustrating is how much space is pointlessly wasted, which means that the chess board could easily have been twice as big if only the designers had given the matter of viewer comfort some thought. For example, the designers included displays of the pieces that have been captured. Now how pointless is that! As if it isn't obvious which pieces have been captured simply by looking at the board.

The overall interface isn't much to shout about either. For example, you might have thought that taking back a move would be possible at the touch of a button. But no, you have to bring up a separate menu, scroll down it and only then can you take back your move. There is no way to reset a game to the start, so analyzing finished games can only be done by taking back each move (which means bringing a new menu up each time, remember). If it was a rated game, the computer won't let you take back moves even when the game is finished.

Certain preferences, such as your preferred time controls, do not appear to save, which means that you have to reset them each time you load the game. Don't even get me started on the controls for playing through master games or browsing the list of opponents, which are so confusing and unintuitive it is almost a joke.

Of course, at the end of the day chess is chess, and once you get used to the irritatingly small board and clunky interface then this game is obviously enjoyable if you enjoy chess. But it is so frustrating that this game could have been so much better, if only a small amount of thought had been given to addressing the issues above.

Entertaining but Horribly Put Together

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Some group of computer designers decided to make a bunch of money and spent a minimal amount of time sloppily compiling this program to market because they knew people with PS2's who liked chess would buy it.

That said, it's actually well worth the 10 bucks you can buy it for now, especially if you are a mid-level player or beginner.

Good things about the game:

Excellent tutorials. The Josh Waitzkin annotated games are awesome and instructional. The famous game library is cool. The Pandolfini chess rating exam is highly entertaining (though I think you can find it on the web now for free). The number of potential opponents and their different styles is entertaining. You'll get better playing this game, which is what it's good for.

Bad things:

This game was lazily and sloppily compiled. The controls are totally unintuitive and not user friendly. As far as I can tell, you can't even hit a button to return to move one of a game when analyzing it. You have to slowly go from move 70 back to 1 move by move. The game analysis may seem impressive at first, but it's totally flawed. You can't follow it easily because the computer starts talking before its moved all the pieces back to their starting positions- its totally frustrating. Also, the computer will often not finish announcing your opponents move, so if you are playing over your own board in a timed game, you may not even realize it's your turn while your clock is ticking.

Probably the most frustrating thing about this game is the time controls. The computer opponents are rated, but as far as I know, the given rating is only accurate if you play at the time-wastingly plodding tournement time of 40 moves in 120 minutes. I don't have time to do this. So if you pick an opponent with a 1600 rating, he will not play at 1600 unless you want to spend 6 hours playing one game of chess. So, you'll have a lot of people claiming to beat a really high level chess personality because they were using faster time controls. Subtract about 50 from the actual rating. To test this, there are a couple of personalities who move instantly no matter what time control you set it on- Max and Vlad for intermediate players. For those who don't have all day to play one game, these players are fun to play against. Max will move instanty no matter what time constraints he is on. But if you set him to 40/120 he will ALWAYS beat himself at 40/60. If you set Max at 40/120 he will beat higher ranked players playing at 40/80. This is really stupid I think. Another problem is that the computer sees all tactics no matter what level you put it on. This is unhumanlike. It might see a complex 6 move mating attack at a low 1300 level while the same personality will hang a piece. Very silly. The computer can't discern a brilliant and hard to see move from a an obvious one. Also, the graphics are virtually worthless. I can only play using the 2-d figurines. I usually play over my own board. The battle-chess mode is literally unplayable. You can't even see what piece you're moving. I just can't even believe that someone marketed this game before improving upon this. Its just a money making scheme.

Overall:

This is fun, not user-friendly, poorly and quickly constructed to make money for UBISOFT, but entertaining nonetheless. However, to improve and make the use of your time its better to have a computer opponent who moves quicker, and analyses positions better such as Fritz. The tutorials alone are worth the current price. You can pick this up for cheap at any gamestop store or here on Amazon. But you can also get a version of Fritz at Target for 10 bucks which is better in many ways. I say get this game mainly for the tutorials and play Fritz for the chess.

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