The best part of the Chessmaster series has always been the tutorials which are perfect for beginners and intermediate players. Another great thing was playing against it despite the fact the “personalities” weren’t very realistic. You can play “rated” opponents, but I don’t think the ratings are very accurate compared to real human players, but it was great fun. This is a major problem with all engines when trying to duplicate human play. Engines seem to generate a series of GM-like moves before committing a gross blunder then they go back to playing GM-like moves before repeating the process. Either that or they play totally ridiculous moves from the beginning.
These days, unfortunately, the manufacturers have put powerful copy protection on the program so that a disc is required every time you boot the program! As a result, some users have had problems getting it to run on their PC’s. This is major issue. One user complained it will not start even though he had the original CD in the drive. The 2-D sets have been all but eliminated in favor of 3-D animated ones including a "stereo 3D mode" with a set of red/blue 3D glasses. All this silly stuff uses (wastes) a ton of processor power. Chessmaster 10 images.
The menu interface is messy because doesn’t scale things. Another aggravating thing is the lack of arrow keys to navigate when playing through a game. Its auto-annotation feature is just plain horrible; I think it always has been. There are other reasons not to buy this program, but I’ve listed enough. Instead of improving their program over the years, they have been unimproving it. Suggestion: spend your money on some other program!
This is the way I see it.
ReplyDeleteIf you want a study partner, you might want to get an "obsolete" program. So older version of Fritz or almost any program created since 2000 will do. You get a fairly large database, and that database can be updated.
Those older programs are cheaper and more forgiving with reference to copy protection.