Catan

What It's All About

Catan is based on the board game with the same name (which I however, have never played). It is essentially a strategy game, in which you gather resources (by having settlements near a resource area) and trade resource cards between other players. The game has a varied amount of emotes, to make your statement without words as well. The goal of the game is to obtain 10 victory points before anyone else. You gain victory points from a variety of different things, such as having the largest army, the longest road - and building cities to name a few.

Single Player

This, like many other board and card games is not something that can be played as a single player, but you can play against computer AI opponents. The CPU players are based on famous historical figures and they all have a different play style, keeping the game fun and challenging even when you are not playing against actual real life players. A ton of stragety should go into your turn, where you decide to start your player, what you decide to build, and who and what you decide to trade - all have a very big impact on the expansion of your empire.


Catan Screenshot

Multiplayer

The exact same game as with the CPU opponents but with friends (or random new people that might become friends). This I would guess will be the prefered method of play, would you rather a fake historic person in your game, or an actual friend that you can chat with while playing? Furthermore, playing against another player becomes more interesting - because their strategy could be just as random as you, or they have everything planned out to block your strategy that a computer player might let slide right by.

Graphics and Gameplay

The graphics are nothing super special, I mean it is a board/card game. You are not really playing it for its graphical abilities. I do have to say the emotes are rather pretty though. The gameplay is where it is at, an interesting strategy game that with every move you determine your ability to make future moves. There is a nice variety of things to do during your turn such offer trades to other players (or the port trader if nobody is willing to barter and you absolutely must get that card), use special cards such as a soilder or a card in which you obtain every resource of a specified type from all players, etc etc. If you roll a seven, you get to move the thief piece, which blocks people from gathering resources on that number, as well as giving you the ability to steal one card from a member that has settled on that block. I find the game very addicting, I fully expect the popularity of this game to either compare to or surpass the following that Uno has, especially for us more mature gamers.

Achievements

The achievements are split out pretty well in my opinion for this game. There are some achievements for playing local games against the AI, which is a great way to practice and increase your skills for those player matches, and also achievements based on obtaining the various special status’ (like longest road) multiple times, and simply just compiling the victory points. The achievements are something that you should obtain in time by simply playing the game, and enjoy the game while doing it.


Catan Screenshot

Value

Being this is based on a board game, I see tremendous replay value in the game. Just like any arcade game most people won’t play this exclusively every day for hours, but some might. In any event, you can go away for a bit play some other games and still come back to this game and have the same fun you had before you stopped playing it. Even after getting all the achievements the replay value is still there, in my opnion.

In short...

A very adictive strategy game for those of us looking to flex our minds a bit. Based on a apparently very popular board game (though I didn’t know a single thing about it until it was released on the arcade). I feel that the replay value of this game is going to keep it around for quite a long time.

 

Review by Dave [Squidpunch] Larrabee