Preview – FunTown Mahjong (Xbox Live Arcade)

FunTown Mahjong is a four player competitive game played with a set of 144 Mahjong tiles.

The closest Western comparison would probably be Gin Rummy – players draw and discard tiles in an attempt to get a hand made of up nothing but triples, quadruples, three-tile straights and two ‘eyes’.  This particular version is played with a set of Chinese rules I’m not completely familiar with, but makes its rule set pretty clear, and comes with a tutorial.

But is it something you’d want to drop 800 points on?

For me, the answer is a resounding… maybe.

Full disclosure:  I was ready to slam this game harder than processed meat products.

But it’s actually all right.  I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who isn’t jonesing pretty hard for some 4p Mahjong action, though.  The game looks like it could run just fine on a PS2.

I’m going to make the assumption that FunTown is the same company as the FunTown game portal in China.  I don’t know very many details about it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they just ported one of their online-only games to XBLA, stripped out all the pay-for-extras/customizations stuff common in these sorts of games. Which might explain why, after loading, the main screen has a weird, up-scaled look to it.  Like it was originally designed to run at a much lower resolution, and they just jacked the thing up to 720p.  The font that’s used in game has a similar problem: exceptionally plain and jagged.  Reminds me of an 8-bit font, so it has got a bit of retro feel.

The player models in game are very simple, and loop through a little animation when they idle.  When they have to discard a tile, there’s a hilarious fling animation that would make GLaDOS proud, and they announce their discards.

So, it looks rough.  And it plays… actually kind of decent.

Game deals, and presents the player with their hand.  Choose a tile and press A to discard.  Or press X to bring up a list of context-sensitive commands (Chow, Pung, Kong, Ting, Mahjong).  As the turn progresses around the table, the game will automatically prompt the player if any of these commands apply.  Cursor speed is a little weird, but nothing that isn’t manageable.

I rather like Mahjong, although I haven’t played it in quite a few years.  Having a console game that automates a lot of the tedious aspects (figuring out where people sit, shuffling, assembling the wall, scoring, etc.) is a definite plus.  It’s too bad the rule set can’t be customized (there’s a greyed out option for changing it – hello DLC!)

I haven’t had a chance to try the multiplayer yet, which could very well make or break the whole package.  So far, I’m giving this one a ‘recommend to try’.  Five minutes is all you’ll need to figure out whether you can stand the presentation enough to get at the (admittedly pretty fun) game underneath.