Windows Phone Thoughts: "Centipede & More Classic Games" Reviewed

Kasparov Chessmate
It has been a long time since I played chess so I must confess it took me a while to get into playing it again :D. Luckily the game includes a set of rules and guidelines. Opting to play a game allows you to pick against the computer, a human or the Kasparov Chess Club!


Figure 6: Which sort of game do you want to play?

Selecting to play against the Chess Club gives you the further choice of a friendly game or entering into the championship - a massive undertaking where you have to try to defeat every club member. There are three championships (bronze, silver and gold) and six rounds within each championship, finishing off with a seventh match against the current champion of that level.


Figure 7: Chess Club options.


Figure 8: Playing in the championship.

Playing is, in itself, quite straightforward. The board is well drawn (as you can see from Figure 9) and you move by dragging a piece from one square to another. If you are just starting out, you can ask "Gary" to suggest your next move for you. It is also possible to turn on a feature where the software will highlight the possible squares you can move to for the piece you are dragging - this is a great learning aid.

Another option highlights the last move that has been taken. Without this option turned on, I found it incredibly difficult spotting which pieces had been instantly moved from one square to another. Unfortunately, the rules of the software are that if you are playing in championship mode, you can't use this feature.


Figure 9: Getting a hint on what to play next.

Once you've played a game, you can save it for later review. It is also possible to review historic matches.


Figure 10: Historic Kasparov games that can be reviewed.

The review process, though, is possibly the weakest part of this software. As you can see from Figure 11, if you have the move list displayed, it almost obliterates the chess board. If you don't have the move list displayed, all you can do is let the software play through the moves, so you are then struggling to figure out the moves that are being made, again because it is so darn hard to spot instantaneous piece movements.


Figure 11: The moves of a game being reviews.

This implementation of chess offers a lot of depth and could keep an avid chess player occupied for quite some time. However, there are some annoyances with the user interface.