Carcassonne - a strategy board game turned into pixellated crack.

Two of the greatest things about the X360 are the Live Arcade and Marketplace. The Marketplace allows you to download all kinds of media entertainment crap - i.e. movies, tv shows, trailers, and miscellaneous crap. The Arcade allows you to download free trials and, for a pretty reasonable fee, games. Granted, some of these games are rehashes of classics with a bunch of spit and polish to make them look and play better on a modern console - Contra for example. Some of these games kick ass - Worms, Hexic, and a couple of other puzzle titles. The revamp of Doom looks great but the music is completely asstastic, really terrible metal garbage that replaced a truly creepy score. Lately I've been fiending for puzzle/strategy games and have found a good one - Carcassonne. From what I gather there was a German strategy board game Sierra Games got a hold of and made a nice little game out of. When I say "nice little game" I mean crack. Not just crack, I'm talkin' nuke - the stuff from Robocop 2. It took willpower not to play a few games after getting home from the movie last night. I would have if I didn't have to work today.

Basically it's a tile based game set in the Middle Ages. One player puts down a tile with a castle wall or road or monastery or something along those lines then the other player places a tile. The whole goal is to build castles, connect roads, and build up your areas before your opponent.

It's a lot more fun than I am making it out to be. I'm actually thinking of buying a second controller so Amanda and I can play against one another...though I don't know if we'll kill each other or not.