Customer Reviews

Virtual Kasparov

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

I'll keep this real short. The pieces are nice, the engine is expert strength or just short (1600-1700). BUT there is no way to play BLACK ?!? This makes it useless as a chess game for those who care about chess, and it's already useless for those who don't. You don't see this inability to play black show up in any review or anything, and this is very important to know! I think most people reviewing this game know nothing about chess. (you can control blacks pieces, but only from the white side of the board.)

I naively bought this based on the "Kasparov" title. There are only a couple of workable boards you can use (the more colorful ones have pieces that are undecipherable). I'm not sure about the strength, but I have to put the game on the highest "champion" level just to keep it from making stupid mistakes. At that point, it's still not overwhelmingly strong in play. And the game takes forever to think each move; if it's not using brute force to work out its moves, it might as well. More informational than a real chess game, it's not strong enough for devoted players and not user-friendly enough for anyone else. Don't buy it!

Chessmaster 3000 had a lot more options and variety than this game. There is not much to say about it. You can play several levels of chess. Unless you are a Grand Master, the chess microchip should be able to give you a hard time. As far as variety of options, views, chess sets, etc., this game has very few. I paid [$] for it and I felt it was about comparable to a late 1980s PC Chess game. This seems to have been a game that was put together quickly to make some money, and Kasparov did not care about the product.