Author: Michael Cummings
Date: 23:19:10 01/23/00
I got this program today and decided to spend an hour writing a quick review of the game (My first review) Chessmaster II for Playstation Review “Its Always better to sacrifice your Opponents men” Savielly tartakower (International Grandmaster 1887-1956) Those are the words of wisdom that greet you when you boot up this game on your Playstation Chessmaster II from Mindscape has about as much as you would want from a chess program on the playstation as any gamer would ever require. Most people want to know just how strong this engine is. Well to take it from the Chessmaster himself, “Chessmaster is powered by the version 2.61D of the King chess engine. On this System (Playstation), Chessmaster is rated 2468 (US)” For those beginners starting out, the In-Game coaching is sufficient in that you can select to see the following while you play, - All legal Moves - All possible Captures - Threatened Pieces - Pinned Pieces - Skewed Pieces - Isolated Pawns - Passed Pawns - Promotion Threats - White’s Coverage - Black’s Coverage On the Screen while you play you can have shown; Digital Clocks, Board Coordinates, Board Lights, Captures Pieces, Sliding Pieces. You can play with opening books, though there is no option so select different opening books. Openings can be announced, as well as setting your games to any time control you want, even infinite Analysis for those wanting to do some Analysis. Another great feature is that you can even earn a chess rating after playing a certain level of games. Great for those wanting to know how you rank amongst the greats. For those familiar with Chessmaster 6000 & 7000 you will be glad to know that most of your favorite personalities are back to challenge all your playing levels. A total of 94 Personalities to be exact, and 2 which you can modify just the same as you could with PC versions of Chessmaster, and with the same parameters and the PC version of Chessmaster. There are 31 historical Grandmasters to choose from, including Kasparov, Short, Karpov, Kamsky, Bad Boy Bobby Fischer and at the time his disgraced Russian opponent, Boris Spassky. Joining these Masterful and Grandmaster players are 64 fictional players who all have written biographies and comments on their playing style for you to take your pick from. There are two totally customizable Personalities for you to style exactly to your tastes, from how they value each chess piece, to their attitude to calling a draw. This is a truly fabulous lineup of players and is a great learning tool for any person wanting to play chess and to improve their game. The main menu holds a load of features for the avid chess fan. For those starting out there is a multimedia tutorial on the basics of chess, this is a narrated explanation of the concepts of the game, and how to move each individual piece, to the more complex moves such as castling and En Passant. Now to play the game. This is very strait forward, the Chessmaster AI will be a handful for most chess players. You start by moving the flashing cursor over the piece you want to move, and if you have the learning feature on, all those helping flashing squares will pop up to show you where you can move and what is threatened as well as any of the other helpful hints you asked for in the options. When you move the announcer will say the move in the method you choose in the options, which the coordinates notation being the default. If all this gets to much for you or to annoying, it can also be disabled. During the game if you, press the circle button, the computer makes your move for you, pressing square button switches sides. "English Advice," which is selectable from the main menu at any time while you are playing the game, examines the current position, then comes up with written instructions on screen detailing your next few moves that it suggests you make. Pressing the Select button changes the screen to show the best line, Current line, Previous line, Depth, Score, and positions seen all together in a nice little screen. As for how many positions the game can see, depending on the position, about 50,000 positions in about 15 seconds. “Solve for mate” option calculates moves at around 35,000 within 15 seconds to try and find mate with the current position of the chess board. Graphics -------- High Resolution 2D & 3D Pieces and Boards, which you can zoom, rotate to your hearts content at the touch of a button. Chessmaster also has plenty of visual options to play around with. You can play with 24 different sets of chess pieces, ranging from the modern sets to ancient designs, and of course the standard set which are used worldwide today. Both the playing squares and edges of the board can be changed, from various wood boards to marbles and plain colour boards. There are over 20 square colour combinations and 9 boarder effects you can select from. Sound ----- The sound for the voices is clear and crisp, but with chess, thinking and concentration is the most important and any sound is usually met with annoyance from most players There is music, but most serious players will probably want to turn it off, and luckily this can be done very easily. But for those of you who would like to hear some tunes while playing, then there are seven selectable melodies to choose from. Starting with “The Art of War.”, to the haunting “Endgame” tune. And we cannot leave out the “Speedchess” tune which is fast paced and has the suspense of a player about to put the killers moves on his opponent. And if that is not enough, then you can listen to ocean waves as the Chessmaster crushes you more painfully than a big surf ever could. What is not so great about the program. --------------------------------------- Chess clocks, on the 2D boards if you want the board to be nice and large, the clocks do get in the way. The penalty for having the clocks with a 2D board it just a smaller board. This is not a problem with 3D boards as the angle usually gives plenty of room for the clocks. The graphics on some of the 3D pieces are not so great, but the 2D pieces are your best bet if you want to enjoy this game. It would have been better if you could have more than 2 user Personalities that you could play around with and save. There is no option for separate time controls. But you can make the computer move at say 5, 10, etc. moves per second, and you will not have to abide by that time limit yourself The multimedia tutorials apart from showing the basics have very little to offer. It does lack allot of the extras like rate my play and the more in-depth tutorials that come with the PC version, but I suppose there is only so much you can put on one CD. There is no tournament setup feature to play in. There is no Database, or any games to load, apart from what you save. And with memory card limitations, only a few games at that. But that said this is a strong chess games for the mass public, and not a serious tool for serious players. If you love chess then Chessmaster II for the playstation is a must. I rate it a 8/10, as I can lay in bed or sit on the lounge and play this using the controller, which is harder to do and not so comfortable if I had to sit in front of a computer, or use a table top chess computer.
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Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
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