#HOW TO PLAY CHESSMASTER 10 UPDATE#
#HOW TO PLAY CHESSMASTER 10 SERIES#
#HOW TO PLAY CHESSMASTER 10 SIMULATOR#
#HOW TO PLAY CHESSMASTER 10 WINDOWS#

I have to admit that the effect is initially impressive but the novelty soon wears off, particularly if you're trying to fit the glasses onto a head as large as mine.ДЇor whatever reason, this latest edition of Chessmaster does not support Windows 95 or 2000. In any case, Chessmaster 10 comes with a set of those red and blue glasses that bring the game to life in glorious stereoscopic 3D. Why in the world someone thought to gussy up this package with a technology usually associated with 1950s black and white horror movies is beyond me.

#HOW TO PLAY CHESSMASTER 10 SERIES#

The Queen in the kiddie set drops a pink elephant on her enemies but most of the time a simply sword swipe is all you see.ДЄnd now we come to what is quite possibly one of the silliest additions the series has ever seen, the 3D glasses. While there's a certain coolness to the fantasy-themed sets, this isn't Battle Chess so you won't see lots of terribly exciting combat animations. Cooler still, this marks the first time that the series has included animated sets. Personally, some of the sets are a bit too abstract for easy piece recognition but if you stick with it, you'll soon learn to read the board well enough. After a few hours, you'll learn where everything is soon enough.ДЈ5 chess sets are included with this latest edition so there's bound to be something that suits your mood at any given time. Sadly Chessmaster 10 suffers from an abundance of options that makes navigation between game types and teaching tools slightly confusing. I still think that too much of the screen's surface is taken up by things that aren't the game board but you can easily move the windows around (or remove them altogether) in order to get a better view of the action. The windows-heavy presentation of the previous games has been lessened quite a bit in this new version. The previous couple of games have come with almost half a million recorded games, and this latest addition includes more than 50,000 new games that have been played in the two years since Chessmaster 9000 was released. This new version includes the learning sessions found in the previous games.

Waitzkin reprises his role as teacher, showing players the basics of the game, while Larry Christiansen offers comments on another set of games. To help you get a leg up on the more skilled AI players, there are all kinds of learning tools here. This edition brings the total number of players up over 200. Thankfully, there are a range of opponents to choose from of all sorts of skill levels. If you can't pick up a rock that weighs four-hundred pounds, would you feel more challenged trying to pick up a rock that weighs 420 pounds? At this level, only Grandmasters are likely to notice an improvement. The King AI system has been improved again but, as I've said when it was introduced in Chessmaster 8000 and then strengthened in Chessmaster 9000, the higher limits of the AI are well beyond any player's ability to distinguish them. And while it offers some new features, you can pretty much read our reviews of the previous games and substitute '10' for '8000' or '9000.'

#HOW TO PLAY CHESSMASTER 10 UPDATE#

Chessmaster 9000 added even more teaching tools and brought back the much-missed Chessmaster Live multiplayer options.Д¬hessmaster 10 includes yet another update for the King AI system, more learning courses, a less cumbersome interface and a pair of 3D glasses. And while that game's switch to 16-bit graphics made it stand out a bit from the previous versions, you'd be hard pressed to say that the improvement made that big of a difference in terms of your enjoyment of the game. Chessmaster 8000 added the new King AI system and introduced a lot of teaching tools. So how do you keep the series fresh? Going back over previous versions, I can definitely see some incremental improvements.

#HOW TO PLAY CHESSMASTER 10 SIMULATOR#

And where Microsoft's Flight Simulator series necessitates almost yearly editions to keep pace with improvements in graphics technology, chess games don't (and shouldn't) sell on the strength of their visuals. While it makes some sense that successive iterations of Madden can tweak the action somewhat, that flexibility just doesn't exist in the more abstract, straightforward world of chess. Each edition of Chessmaster is better than the last but the world of computerized chess hardly requires four separate editions over five years. So while we can say that Chessmaster 10th Edition is the best chess game in town, it simply doesn't add enough over any of the last two versions to make it a necessary upgrade. The essential contradiction at the heart of this review is this: While I think Chessmaster is simply the best chess program available, the small list of new features added to each iteration make it hard to recommend the new version over the previous one.

How to play chessmaster 10