"You sunk my battleship. Wait, explain the rules again...?"
I’ve always considered getting taught how to play chess by ones father a right of passage for young men. I certainly remember my old man explaining the rules to me when I was around ten years old, and good job he did too because otherwise this review would have been a far lengthier and more frustrating process. While I'm not going to be winning any chess tournaments any time soon, I feel my understanding of the game sufficient for me to tell you, dear reader, that Chess Pro is a very competent simulation of the game indeed.
There's only so much one can say about an electronic version of chess. When it is your turn, you tap on a piece which in turn reveals the moves available to you via a series of highlighted circles, tapping one of these circles moves the piece to that location. In terms of controls that's pretty much your lot. It's extremely simple and as a result extremely user friendly, there is no need to read the help page here (unless you don't have fingers but if that's the case you may have purchased the wrong phone).
The difficulty of the game can be manipulated from the options menu, a slider lets you choose the speed with which the computer AI has to make its decisions, the shorter the time the more prone to mistakes your opponent will be. I found this extremely reassuring, if, like me, you haven't played Chess for a number of years, it can be quite daunting to suddenly take on a super advanced artificial intelligence programmed to do nothing but dominate feeble human minds at the game. Thankfully this isn't an issue. Other options that fall under the "nice to have" category are the three different chess board themes, wooden, metallic and a 2D view plus there are three variations on the standard rules of chess that you can play by if you feel like mixing things up.
Chess Pro is the first virtual game of chess I have played and enjoyed since Interplay released Battle Chess (which ran on DOS) and featured animated chess pieces beating the crap out of each other. Until somebody releases a remake of that I feel confident in saying that 99 Games have brought one of the, if not the best, games of chess to the iPhone.
- Sound: 7
- Graphics: 7
- Gameplay: 8
- Longevity: 8
8
Great
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