Review: Reversi FE 2006 for S60 3rd Edition
Score:
69%
Version Reviewed: 1.4.9
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Reversi FE 2006 for S60 3rd Edition
This is a review of the S60 3rd Edition version of Reversi FE, and was tested on a Nokia E61. Reversi FE is also available for UIQ 3 models.
Well, what can be said? This is good old Reversi (also known as Othello) pure and simple. In case you've been living on another planet, the idea of Reversi is to conquer as much of the game board as possible by trapping the opponent's counters between two of yours, either horizontally or diagonally, with each of you taking turns to lay them on the table. If you can't trap any counters, you can't lay a counter down and play passes to your opponent. The winner is the player that occupies the most spaces when no more moves can be made.
It sounds simple, but for someone new to the game it can be surprisingly difficult to get to grips with the strategies involved, and even when you do start winning it's often difficult to pin down exactly how you do it. Most of what you do is about instinct, and enough defeats give you a feel for what moves make you vulnerable and what moves make you strong.
Reversi FE features no-frills graphics, but it does come with all the standard features you'd expect from a computerised boardgame:
- Five skill levels (Novice, Beginner, Amateur, Difficult, Expert)
- Undo Move and Redo Move
- Show Legal Moves, if you're wondering what your options are
- Show Last Move, if you missed what just happened
- Hint, if you're plain stuck
- Results statistics, to see how often you've won, lost and drawn since you installed the game
The game's intelligence on the Novice setting seemed challenging enough for a beginner like me, and the initial learning curve seemed good with several defeats in a row to begin with but victories steadily increasing over time. The response from the computer player was fast on the lower skill levels.
The Expert setting was another matter however: it would sometimes get slower and slower to the point of frustration, not something that should ever happen on a portable game. It was also quite bizarre to find myself struggling on Novice when I first played the game, but after getting to know it at the lowest intelligence level I was able to immediately draw and then defeat the game several times at its highest intelligence level on Expert. Either the game's artificial intelligence needs some work done on it, or there's not much to know about winning a game of Reversi. This is very annoying because everything else about this software is as it should be.
The price of the game is fair at US$9.90, and (except for the problems on the highest intelligence setting) Reversi FE is a decent user-friendly version of an old favourite. It's not for you if you're after a serious challenge, but if you just want something simple to pass the time with then you could do a lot worse.
Reviewed by krisse at