Catan - Xbox Live Arcade review

Of course, the enjoyment level of board game style games like Catan is always determined by the friends you play with. If you have friends who enjoy playing Catan, then you'll have fun with it, too. With that said, there's nothing worse than that lonely feeling when you want to play a multiplayer-centric game and have no one to play with. Fortunately, Catan is designed to ease that pain, at least a little bit, with 13 different AI personalities to play against. Each character is named after a historical figure (ranging from Lincoln to Cleopatra), and has his or her own strategies and tendencies. For example, Tokugawa might tend to focus heavily on roads, while Shaka hoards ore and tends to use development cards more.

To win in single player on the harder difficulty modes, you'll have to keep each character's habits in mind, which adds an extra layer of strategy and interest to a game that would otherwise be useless as a single player title. The AI characters also respond like real people in that, if you have too big of a lead, the AI will refuse to trade resources with you,and will be more likely touse their development cards to steal from you. If you're behind, they'll be more willing to exchange in mutually beneficial trades.