Xbox 360
Chances are you haven't seen anyone playing dominoes since your local old-man's pub got turned into a trendy wine bar, their trusty domino sets having been dumped in the cellar alongside the dart board and old bar stools. Bearing that in mind dominoes isn't really the sort of game you would expect to be playing on your Xbox 360, the console that brought us Halo and Gears Of War, yet here it is, Domino Master by Tikgames is now available in Xbox LIVE Arcade.
First of the five different domino games is Straight, classic dominoes where everyone takes turns to add one of their dominoes to the ends of the line, first person to play all their dominoes wins the points for that round. You can immediately see why dominoes has stood the test of time, it's a great little game with as much strategy as you choose to apply. Like a good game of cards.
All 5's, All 3's and Bergen all essentially play the same way except that you earn points every time you play a piece if the numbers at the ends of the line match up in a certain way. Sounds about as exciting as your granddad's cardigan on a Tuesday but these simple tweaks really liven up the game making it more immediate and less predictable.
Finally you have Mexican Train easily my favourite and the furthest removed from the rest. If you can imagine a four player puzzle game using loads of dominoes you are on the right track (sorry). It does take a bit of trial and error to figure out though as the games otherwise excellent tutorial didn't quite manage to explain this mode.
This is definitely a comprehensive dominoes package, options in each mode let you tweak the game to suit your play style by changing difficulty, the size of the domino set and the length of the game. Domino Master also plays just as well either against one of the three difficulties of computer opponents, against local friends or online against anyone in the nicely active LIVE community.
Microsoft are clearly trying to reach as many gamers as possible these days and as a casual game Domino Master is a great success. Anyone wanting to play dominoes on their widescreen TV or across the internet need look no further. For the rest of us though, it is little more than a nice distraction if you want a change of pace from the usual guns and cars and monsters of the rest of our videogames.
