PSP Chessmaster 11 The Art of Learning and Sealed

My all time hobby is all kinds of chess;eg, backgammon, chess, Checker. Chinese chess and Japanese chess(go, igo, weiqi or baduk in order of English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean).

I am a veteran player in Japanese chess (around 2dan) but only lie somewhere between beginner and intermediate at chess(more likely closer to the former). I used to have Chessmaster edition 10th in my desktop PC and enjoyed it a lot. So when knowing that there's also a mini version of chessmaster on PSP, I immediately go out to the nearest local game store to get one copy.

The game is definitely successful and reasonably cheap comparing to its original version on PC(I don't mean the flash version). It costs nearly 80 bucks(in Australia) for PC version while only half that amount for PSP one-the reason maybe that there are really limited interests in the game, sadly.

Depending on where you purchase the game that whether it can support multi-language (English, French, Spanish) or not.

Preferences:

1) Interface, Graphic:

Shining gross metal background with a small pattern of chess board on the left side gives us impression of being simple yet elegant. Unlike other chess games which it may take you half an hour to know where to play from where to train, The Chessmaster PSP's neat options make you easily tour around the interface in no time.

2) Gameplay:

The game allows you to choose various options ranging from completely newbie to pre-intermediate player.

First, If you just want to enjoy a quick game without caring about the level of AI or timing while riding on public transportation or waiting for your lecturer, then just simply choose Quick Game. The level of difficulty will be set based on your current rating(first time player rating is 500). You will always play White.

Second, If you have more time and want to learn chess or play more seriously, you can choose Classic Chess, Mini Games or Chess Puzzle.

**Classic Chess: in this option, you can go to Learn Chess rules if you completely know nothing about chess. After that, you may want to play some Practice Games before going to "War": Rated game. There are 3 main difficulty Level, like usual: Easy, Medium and Advanced. At Easy stage, the rating is from ~500 to ~750; Medium from 750 to 1100 and Advanced from 1200 to 1850. The cool side of this game rating is that, your PC opponent rating can be changed depending on your match results with them. If they win, their rating will go up while yours go down and vice versa. So it's kind of interesting when a PC player in advanced stage is beaten down to the rating of average Medium PC player. You can set your color or let the game chooses it for you, ie, random; time limit (no time limit or fixed time or time per move). In-game options are Save game, Load game, Review Game(works like viewing a PGN record), Option(choosing to enable Music and AutoSave; showing last move and legal move), Change Sets(you can change the image of pieces and boards; there are 8 sets to choose), Offer Draw, Resign and Quit.

**Mini Games:
These Mini Games are very exciting and useful. They improve specific important skills in Fork, Pawn/Knight/Rook Handling and Various Pieces Combination. Those Minigames are Fork My Fruit(forking skill), MasterPiece(moving your pieces with minimum moves), Breaking the Lines(Knight handling), Chain Reaction, Pawn Charge(Pawn Handling), Minefield(Rook Handling).

**Chess Puzzle:
Enjoy a number of classical puzzles with 2 modes Practice or Time Challenge: Capture Piece, Find Check, Move to Safety, Find Fork, Pin the Piece, Avoid Mate and Mate in One. The names are pretty clearly defined themselves. Although in Practice mode the puzzles appear quite simple, it becomes a real challenge in Time Challenge Mode.

3) Music and other things:

There are only 2 downsides of this game which are music and ELO rating.

First is the boring Music. It's not boring because it's dump(it is indeed nice first time listening) but the reason is that there are only like at most 3 tunes repetitively playing again and again. To me, boring music means being annoying and distracting.

Second is the ridiculous ELO rating. I can beat an advanced PC rating of around 1500 but easily lose to a real-life player rating of lower than 1500. That's weird and that means the ELO rating is wrongly calculated.