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| Source // Microsoft |
It's no surprise that I like video games. I wouldn't be going through this many of them if I didn't. I've grown up with video games, I've not really stopped playing video games, I get a lot of my entertainment from video games.
But my other big passion is gaming on the tabletop. It was once in the form of mass-market board games, then of pencil and paper RPGs, and then, a few years ago, mostly thanks to P2 (though I will admit I took the ball and didn't so much run with it, but outright blast it off to space), board and card games.
They're big business these days, we're quite defensive about them, we will fight you on your incorrect opinions - it's very much like video gaming, actually. Give it twenty years and we'll all look back with a different set of eyes and appreciate some of them a little more, though The Mind can piss right off.
That's another topic for another day because we're talking about a video game version of Carcassonne, which, according to P2, is the absolute best you can get from a board game. She's wrong, but not by much, and it's the Xbox Live Arcade that plays host to this version.
Grab your Meeples. Yes, the things that look like fat people. Just pick them up already and let's get tiling.
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| Source // Microsoft |
Fond Memories
Our board gaming revival was thanks to single child P2 wanting to actually play board games, rather than use the components for soup. You'll have to ask her on that. While many new players gravitate to Catan, we headed to Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, and Carcassonne, the tile-laying game of castle-building, road-paving, field farming frustration that is devilishly cutthroat with the right opponents.
After quickly learning that Pandemic wasn't for us (that's the nicest way I can phrase that) and that Ticket to Ride was a bit too family-friendly (but still damn fine), it was Carcassonne that rose to the top of the favourites and continues to be played to this day, years later, with expansion and variant and digital adaptation all featuring in our gaming sessions.
It arrived in 2000, and was only available digitally in Germany in 2006, before it, along with some other classic titles, were brought to the Xbox in 2007. Digital adaptations of board games continue to be hit and miss today, but often make life much easier for those of us who can't be bothered to keep score, don't know the rules, or want to immediately play again to definitely win this time without having the faff of resetting everything physically.
Let's play some Carcassonne.
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| Source // Microsoft |
Frustrations
While there's a much better digital version now available on Steam, I'm playing the demo of the Xbox version that the 1001 list wants us to play, and it's colourful and chunky visuals do a great job of recreating Carcassonne for a screen.
The aim of the game is to score points by placing tiles and meeples to complete features that you are in control of. A tile might have a road on it, and you can put that tile down onto the evergrowing map of medieval France that lays before you such that all the sides of the tile seamlessly connect to any that surround it, roads to roads, fields to fields.
Once you do, you've the option of putting down a Meeple onto an occupied feature present on that tile, if you have any in your supply. A Meeple can go on a road, or in a castle, a monastery, or chill out in a field, each scoring differently.
As soon as a road is completed, its ends blocked by castle walls or villages, the Meeple on it will score one point per tile. A castle, or a walled village, by the time they finish sprawling out, that is finished off will score two points per tile, and bonus points if there are any shield icons present within the walls. A monastery wants to be bordered by 8 adjacent tiles before it scores its points, and farmers sit and wait for the end of the game before scoring points based on how many completed cities are present in their field.
That's where the competitive aspect comes in. It seems all twee and friendly, gradually building a road or a castle, finding that one perfect tile to finish your efforts, score your points, and return your Meeple to your supply, ready to be used in the next feature... but nothing is as safe as it may seem.
You can muscle in on your opponent's features, eventually joining two cities, for example, into one giant mess on the countryside. That feature is now contested. Whichever player manages to put the most Meeples into it will score the points, but each new Meeple needs to be placed in such a way that they might sneak into a feature at some point in the future - you can't put a Meeple directly into a feature that another Meeple exists in, even your own.
As time goes by this is very prevalent in the fields, as you learn that Meeples who you once thought to not be a threat are suddenly scoring double digits at the game end if you don't do something about them. But what can you do? Putting a Meeple into a field effectively loses you a Meeple for the entire game, and to outnumber your opponent in the field means putting at least one more Meeple of yours into that field, but you can't do so directly. You need to start a new field elsewhere that may, with the right tile or two, happen to merge into the field you want dominance over.
All the while, you're neglecting other features that may be more fruitful to you, letting your opponents score quick little land grabs or lengthy roads that were forgotten about. And the stack of tiles isn't infinite. It's going to run out, and that'll spell the end of the game. Does the one tile you desperately need to plug this or that gap even exist? Will you draw it before your opponent will?
It is, without doubt, a more complex game than it first appears. It has an amazing depth to it that new players don't notice until someone well versed in the tricks comes along to show you how to play it with ruthless aggression. It is an incredible game.
So why is all of that tagged under "Frustration"? Because this Xbox Live Arcade demo of Carcassonne doesn't even let you finish a single game before asking you to pay for the full game.
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| Source // Microsoft |
Do you know how annoying it is to dominate an AI in a game like this, only to be told you need to cough up nearly £7 to actually win? Yeah, sure, it offers online play against real people, friends and strangers alike, and is a technically sound adaptation of a classic easy to play, hard to master board game, but this version isn't where Carcassonne players are found these days.
It's been digitally done better since 2007, in versions that look much more appealing, and that contain a great many more expansions than this one, which was said to offer them all but simply doesn't. You can't come close to offering them all, it seems - even recent versions are slow on the uptake, such is the huge number of expansion tiles and fancy Meeples there are.
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| Source // Microsoft |
Final Word
And breathe. The fact of the matter is that Carcassonne is fantastic, and in 2007, had I known about it and had I owned an Xbox 360, I would have definitely paid the small amount of money XBLA wanted for this title. As digital adaptations go, it works wonderfully, and today's versions by other developers don't differ too much from this one.
All of the above can and should be under the "Fun Times" heading. If anything, it's under "Frustrations" to see if P2 actually reads this blog or not. She really, really, really, likes Carcassonne - to the point where she bought a copy with winter artwork, snow instead of fields, just so that we could play a more thematic version at Christmas. I don't even think I've been allowed to look at that version, let alone play it. We've owned it longer than a year, I know that for sure.
Simple rules and appealing graphics lead to a fun time here. We like to create things as a species, and Carcassonne can be that creative outlet. You might utterly waste your time making that megacity that just won't be completed before the end of the game, but if you manage it, you get that feel-good buzz as the points roll in, your Meeple comes back into your digital hand and when it's your turn to place another tile, you get the urge to create something else once more.
Win or lose, it's a smashing game. It has to be, because I don't often win. Do yourself a favour and play Carcassonne. Not this version, unless it's the only one available to you for some reason. But play Carcassonne.
Fun Facts
It was this game, or rather an early player of it, that coined the term "Meeple" to describe the vaguely human-like wooden tokens that populate board games, a portmanteau of "My" and "People".
Carcassonne, developed by Sierra Online Seattle, first released in 2007.
Version played: Xbox 360, 2007.