Since a New Year’s gift introduced it to me, I’ve been having a really good time playing the board game called Settlers of Catan. It’s a flexible Risk-like game based on building and expanding, not on fighting, with a board that can be rearranged in thousands of ways. The most fun part of it, I’ve found, is sitting around a table with a bunch of dear friends and watching them stifle (or not stifle) their rage or their hubris as the cycles of the game pass. Trading sessions are a particularly good outlet for creative thinking: the rules don’t forbid any kind of deal, really. If you enjoy the company of friends and the intricacies of strategy, I strongly recommend Settlers of Catan to you.
Last night, I was all by myself and wishing that I had some companions with which I could play Catan. In lieu of that, I downloaded a trial of a Settlers of Catan video game by Oberon media. The mechanics of the game were OK, I suppose, as good as any other video game, but I still didn’t have a good time. There was no witty banter, there were no cocked eyebrows, there was no visible frustration, there was no consolation. Nobody entered into any hasty, poorly-thought-out alliances. There were no pretzels. It just wasn’t the same.
