It’s your typical backgammon game. Thank goodness you can turn down the music.

Let’s just get the “Well, duh!” statements out of the way: Backgammon is a game of strategy. A single game lasts 5 to 10 minutes.

In terms of controls, Hardwood Backgammon is pretty intuitive. (Or at least as intuitive as you can get with the typical Xbox 360 controller. I would imagine a Wii version would be even easier to use.)

But in terms of the environment, expect to be annoyed. Quickly. The background music - one song - lasts about two minutes. And then it repeats. And repeats. And repeats. And– you get the point. The song isn’t even that good anyway.

Of course, you can still Bring Your Own Tunes through the Xbox’s music feature - just make sure to turn the music volume all the way down in the game. Kinda sucks for me, since 99 percent of the music I normally listen to is from iTunes, and little of it will work right on the 360, even with that little update.

Graphically, it’s nice enough. I mean, it’s backgammon, but the programmers seem to have done a good job at using as much of the Xbox’s immense graphics power possible (and sanely) in a backgammon game.  

It’s a pretty good game if you’re into backgammon. But if you’re not, don’t expect this to get you into the game.

(Note: The version I tried was on the Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged disc, but I would imagine the downloadable game is the same.)