This is, quite simply, one of the most addictive games I have ever played.
Catan is a german boardgame that is actually pretty famous for it's boardgame style strategy. Yes, this game does have a dice so there is a lot of luck needed to win. But this is easily the best boardgame I have played in many years and who would have thought I would be playing it on a $400 videogame console?
The goal of Catan is to use resources that you place around the map to accumulate cards that you use to build more resource structures and so on. The end goal of the game is to collect ten "victory points" faster than the other players in the game. This is done by, like I said, collecting resources. But you can also purchase "development cards" which can give you a few nice bonuses.
Basically, this is really hard to explain into words how strategic and masterful this game is. The core game itself is absolutely fantastic and I can't even begin to expain how many different ways this game could be played depending on how you want to try to win.
This Xbox Live version isn't too bad a version, either. Obviously the core game remains, and it is much easier than going out and purchasing the actual board game and finding three other people to play it with. The game doesn't look outstanding, but that's ok. I wasn't expecting much from a board game. The music get rather annoying, however. After awhile you just tune it out, but it's annoying nontheless. And the less said about the single-player, the better. The CPU AI is completely stupid and has the annoying 'catch-up' AI when it's behind at the end of the game.
Catan is best played with three other people over Xbox Live. If you can find three good players, a game can be very deep and fun. The game probably won't be for everyone though. It's VERY slow paced and those of you with 12-13 yr. old attention spans mind not be able to handle it. In fact, just trying to get into a online game is hard sometimes because people have ZERO patience to wait for a game to fill up. But most of the online community is actually pretty cool, which I can't say the same about some big-name, full-priced retail releases (cough.......Gears Of War........cough).
If you like strategic board games AT ALL, you owe it to yourself to download this game right now. Even the achievements are fun to get and a couple with keep you busy for awhile. This is the most addictive Xbox Live Arcade release I have played so far and makes me wonder why they don't put more board games on the service. Monopoly anyone?!! Anyways, I would highly recommend at least giving the demo a try and see if Catan is your thing. It's well worth the time and the $10.