Games against human opponents tend to be better because it plays just like the card game and it’s popular for a reason. It’s easy, quick, is lightly strategic and you can play several games in one sitting. But there are still some issues. The graphics are a bit fuzzy, even on a nice HD display (it looks much worse than Sierra’s other board game port, Carcassonne) and the cards are too small. It’s not that it‘s hard to read but the card game comes with these nice, big, easy to see playing cards and here they look somewhat tiny, which was an odd design choice.

The best thing about playing Lost Cities against a friend over XBL is the auto scoring. There’s no need for a pen and paper to keep track of the overall score. But you do miss that head to head feeling that only comes with sitting down with a friend or family member – face to face. No console version of a board or card game, even with built-in chat capability, can replicate that.

You’re left with a light filler card game that has nowhere near the staying power of the other board game ports that are on XBL, but if you don’t have time to play Catan and are looking for a quick card game fix, Lost Cities isn’t a bad choice, and you can do a lot worse for $10—just don’t expect the AI to give you much of a fight.

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