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The second someone tells me a game is "budget," I replace the word with "garbage." A regular retail game for just $40? Alright, what's wrong with it? The vast majority of the time, budget games are terrible -- remember Secret Service and Jurassic: The Hunted? I didn't think so.
Its price point hits the feared 40-dollar mark, but Battle vs. Chess is one damn-fine-looking game. It's a traditional chess game, naturally, but developer TopWare put a ton of creative energy into it.
One of the coolest examples of this is the Slasher mode. Here, you'll duke it out in God of War-esque action segments rather than simply taking enemy pieces.
Heresy? You bet. But it's awesome.
What's cool is that you're not just one pawn fighting another. During battle sequences, you'll cut and clobber your way through a small army of enemies until everyone on either side dies. If you prefer the idea of a mano-a-mano brawl, the Duel mode's turn-based alternative is exactly what you'd expect.
It's also totally hilarious to see an anthropomorphic horse smack an unmoving, freaky-lookin' demon in the face.
Another addition I enjoyed was the "Madness" placement. You can boot up a regular chess game with units dispersed randomly across the board. Hopping into a game like this is probably more chaotic than it is strategic, but I dig the unpredictability of where your king goes, how well he's protected, and what kind of units you have near him.
These are simple additions, but I feel like they're long overdue -- we haven't seen anything like it since Archon: The Light and the Dark. This game came out in 1983.
Even if this is the kind of thing that'd have Bobby Fischer rolling in his grave, TopWare's modifications are an interesting step in an unexplored direction. And that you can get it on the cheap is pretty cool, too.
