Mega Tic Tac Toe

I’m pretty sure there are only a few people out there who are unaware of what Tic Tac Toe is (or as some prefer to call it Noughts and Crosses).

The game consists of getting a row of three symbols (either an O or X) in a grid by taking it in turns. Now, what makes this mobile game any different and better than playing your friends or family is that there are plenty of different versions of the game to keep you puzzling and playing for much longer than you ever thought possible with such a childhood classic.

Of course there are the familiar 3x3 grids where you must try and get a line of three symbols either vertically, horizontally or diagonally. Not very ‘mega’ right? Wrong! There are also 4x4, 5x4 and 10x10 grids to pit your wits against the cunning AI. Also if that’s not quite enough for you, you can even define your own game by setting up the number of rows and columns (up to 10 on each). To make it even more challenging you can set the difficulty of AI opponent from easy, medium and hard and also how many symbols in a row you need to get to win the round (3, 4 or 5).

If you’re still thinking this is all just a little easy, you’d still be a little off the mark with that thought. This is down to the level of complexity you can play. You can pick the game to stack the X’s and O’s on top of one another from the bottom (a bit like another board game you’ve probably played). Alternatively you can restrict the movements to that of the chess Knights move (the L shaped move) where you must play from the last position placed by your opponent.

Without going into the finite details with this game, you have as much logical and puzzling fun from this simple game as you could ever care to. The best thing about this game is you can warm up and learn the basics and gain confidence in your skills and ability before launching into more tricky games. The other great thing is as simple as the game may be; you’re bound to get caught out more often than not by the AI, even at the easy level if you’re not careful.

The only drawbacks to this game (other than the dreadful music that automatically launches whenever the game starts), is the inability to switch off the AI and just enjoy the game with one of your friends and that you must always be the X and can’t play the O, regardless of who starts in taking turns. Although the AI is pretty good opposition – particularly on medium or hard settings, it still seems a little short sighted by the manufacturers of the game, who’ve put so much effort into all the other areas of the game, that you can’t switch it off at any time.

Despite this fact, it’s still overall a pretty well rounded game and offers a lot of tricky moments and endless possibilities. This is ideal for some distraction from the day-to-day activity or to keep your mind active when returning from school or work.

Rating 75%

Positives

Challenging with nearly limitless possibilities

Plenty of different game styles to keep it refreshing and interesting

Negatives

Terrible theme tune that automatically starts at every launch

The AI does have the odd glitch and doesn’t behave as you may expect – lets you win easily at times

You can’t switch off the AI to enjoy playing your friends at any point