Pure Chess

Genre: Board Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Alternating / Online Alternating)

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Review:

Pure Chess is a version of the classic Board Game released in 2012 on PlayStation Vita, then released in 2013 on mobile devices, PlayStation 3, then in 2014 on PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Nintendo 3DS, and finally brought to Xbox One in 2016.

The Wii U version of the game is fairly unique compared to most other versions of the game for a few reasons. Firstly, the touchscreen allows players to interact with pieces directly if they prefer to, though traditional gamepad controls are also here and work just fine. Also, the dual-screen nature of the platform allows players to choose which view to have on both the Wii U gamepad’s screen and the TV screen, including a more practical angled view, a top-down view, and a more dramatic view rotating around the table.

The presentation in this game is pretty good, featuring detailed 3D pieces in a nice-looking 3D environment. However, this comes at a cost, as the framerates do seem to suffer due to the detail here. In addition, some of the rooms and sets you can opt to play with are quite dark and difficult to see on the screen(s). Also, while you do have a few different rooms and chess piece styles to choose from, there aren’t many, as most of these seem to have been saved for paid DLC, which is a bit disappointing.

The visuals in this game are backed by some nice music in four different styles: classical, jazz, “chill” (synthesized music) and “nature” (more synthesized music, not nature sounds as you might expect). Players can opt to turn off one or multiple of these genres in the playlist, but they are unfortunately unable to select which individual songs they want playing.

When it comes to features, Pure Chess has a pretty good selection of options. There’s a full interactive tutorial to teach players everything from the basics to strategy, players can opt to turn on or off the ability to undo moves, and there are the other usual features you’d expect like the ability to set AI difficulty and whether to start as white, black, or random. This game also includes 100 chess puzzles (ranging from “mate in 1” to “mate in 5”), as well as the ability to play tournaments against AI opponents.

Speaking of opponents, I should note that while this game does support online play, when I tested the game there did not appear to be many online opponents to play against, so if you want human competition, you’ll have to bring your own. However, if you do happen to find someone to play against online, know that the game uses cross-platform profiles, so as long as you log into the same profile on different platforms, you can continue the same online game regardless of what platform you’re using at the time.

Overall, Pure Chess is a fairly satisfying game of chess, and the $8 price tag mostly seems pretty good. The presentation is nice, the options and features here are satisfactory, and while there are places where this game could do with some improvement, probably the biggest flaw is a lack of content. Still, if you’re looking for a Chess game on Wii U, this is… well, this is the only chess game on Wii U. But thankfully, it’s a decent one.

tl;dr – Pure Chess is a version of Chess with a good presentation and a good selection of features for the $8 price tag. The only area it’s a bit lacking is in its content, with only a few room and piece types to choose from. However, this is overall a solid game of Chess.

Grade: B-

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