Big Bang Board Games is a compilation of board games by Freeverse. There are 7 games in the suite: 4-in-a-row, backgammon, tic-tac-toe, chess, reversi, checkers and mancala.
All the games have a multiplayer component which uses Gamesmith's servers to let you connect to and play with other people. You can of course play against the computer. I tested the Chess and Tic-Tac-Toe games. I tried to get an online match of Tic-Tac-Toe but there weren't any available opponents online at the time. The chess game didn't work online, either. I played against the computer and was able to complete a few games of tic-tac-toe and chess. The games use 3D to render the boards and the elements of the game, and surprisingly, when I was running the Chess game, my Mac became unresponsive and incredibly slow. It all went back to normal after I closed the App.
All in all, these games are fun to play, but I found they weren't fast enough for me. The Tic-Tac-Toe game was particularly slow. I had to wait for a few seconds after each move. You can probably decrease the graphics quality to improve speed from the Preferences menu.
Pros
- It includes a variety of board games
- They play mostly well
Cons
- The multiplayer element didn't work for me
- The games crashed a few times
You know, I'm not into all these MW and BF, they're a bit gaudy for my taste, a bit over the top. When I want to play some games on my computer, I usually launch this package on my Mac and play all the good old backgammons, reversi, etc. Just can't stop when I begin. The only problem about this package is the fact that it's commercial and costs 5 bucks. But c'mon, we're Mac users and are used to paying much more money for software that brings not even hlf as much pleasure as this suite.