Mindscape Casual Games: Hoyle Board Games 2003, as it is called once you’ve installed it on your computer, is a collection of board games that you’ve likely encountered throughout your lifetime. They have been recreated in flash format and a few things have been sped up here and there to try and help move the games along at a quicker pace. There are a total of eighteen board games in this package, which at first glance makes it quite substantial. After all, to purchase just one of the games in physical form from below will likely cost the same, if not more than this one disc.
Hoyle Board Games starts you off by having couple of options for creating your own character. It’s no EA game face but it does give you a variety of options and even pre-created templates. Some of these templates were silly faces such as a donkey or a bunny. On top of that, there are numerous options for each game to change the template or to change the options such as difficulty and game speed. From there, it’s just up to you to jump into the many games that are on offer.
You will be owned
There are a total of eighteen games:
- Mahjong Tiles
- Gravity Tiles
- Double Cross
- Word Yacht
- Wordox
- Reversi
- Backgammon
- Chess
- Chinese Checkers
- Master Match
- Rummy Squares
- Mancala
- Battling Ships
- Yacht
- Dominoes
- Checkers
- Pachisi
- Bump ’Em
We’re all for having such a great variety of games, especially at a nice price. However, there has to be a line drawn at a point between affordability and playability. Unless you’re coming across a copy of something rare like Radiant Silvergun at some ignorant chump’s garage sale, (as if that would ever happen anyway) you’re not going to expect much of something that costs $10-$20. Still, you would expect to have some fun or at least, get a little enjoyment out of the games. The issue with this compilation, is despite the variety, the majority of the games are either broken, exceedingly difficult, poorly interpreted or poorly explained.
If only I could flip my dominoes
Firstly, the broken. How one earth do you break checkers? Easy. By not allowing the player to make a move, other than making it mandatory that you take the other players piece, when you could have made more intelligent or strategic moves. A lot of the word games are too limited too, as you’ll make a move, only to get stuck because you weren’t allowed to make such a move.
Secondly, exceedingly high difficulty. Pretty much every game that has you going up against an AI opponent, they have all the odds stacked in their favour. The chess and reversi games are almost unbeatable because the AI will always pick you up with the best possible move for themselves. Even games like Yacht and Word Yacht that involve dice rolls are made impossible because you get the worst rolls and the AI always get the best rolls. Furthermore, they can recognise words and winning combinations much better than the player. This is even when the game is on the "beginner" difficulty level.
The first two issues lead to the third, poor interpretation. If you are knowledgeable with some of the games, you will be infuriated to see the computer pull off shifty moves that are normally not allowed and at the same time, you’re restricted by poor control options and poor interpretations. Finally, even when there are games that work, such as Mahjong, if you have never played the game before, you’re unlikely to understand it, with rule interpretations not making much sense. It really is a shame because there are some decent games on this package. Mahjong, Gravity tiles and Battling Ships stand out as the most functional and enjoyable games, once you understand them of course.
One of the better and fairer games, but not by much
There is an option called “Internet Games” but clicking on this link caused nothing to happen. We’re guessing that because the game was actually released a while ago, this option closed down between now and back then. Unfortunately, that means that you’re stuck with the computer AI, which is a real pain in the rear end. The one last gripe with the game is that it doesn’t play very well, in that the flash animations were constantly stuttering across the screen and we often pulled off wrong moves or couldn’t do what we wanted in time.
In terms of the presentation, it’s actually quite colourful and vibrant, albeit very simplistic. The flash animations aren’t the most endearing that you’ll see but some games put them to good use. Unfortunately, most games end up being rather dull and lifeless. There is one amusing option that allows you to take “revenge” on your AI opponent by clicking a button next to them. This will showcase an animation of the character being maimed in some way (it’s obviously been put in place to take out your frustrations) but has no impact on the game itself. Sound-wise, there are enough sound effects to convey what’s going on, some comic voicing that will get repetitive and some sedate, but appropriate music.
If you take a look at efforts such as Sudoku and Kakuro, they are technically efficient and flawless interpretations of their respective games. Hoyle Board Games loses the appeal of the budget price by being critically flawed in so many ways. Even though it’s only a budget title, we’d at least expect it to be functional. Given that the internet option went out the window, so did pretty much the rest of the redeeming value of the game, you are much better off by playing these games in their physical form and/or learning them off someone who knows how to play.
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