Board Games: Zombicide (Season 1)

I do not have a brilliantly tactical mind.  You wouldn't employ me to be the person who decides when to press the big red button, and chess (never mind that 3d space chess) is beyond me.  It's not what I look for when I play games, I want an experience and some character.  I want soul.  I also want a really solid game that doesn't just come down to luck and I want something that's going to give me a different experience each time I play it.  I'm also a sucker for really nice components...

I have mixed feelings about Kickstarter (you can read about them here if you're so inclined) but I read an article about a really board good game that had been Kickstarter-ed called Zombicide.  Knowing that a friend of mine liked co-op games I picked up a copy of it for him... This was Zombicide.

Zombicide is a co-op zombie movie survival game.  You play a character (or two) and there are some objectives in the (very nicely produced) manual.  The game comes with a number of tiles which you arrange as pictured in the manual and with various tokens you can add which change the setup / layout like doors and objective markers and Pimp mobiles.  There is a nice tongue in cheek motif to the game.  The characters are archetypes (with clear references to various pop-culture icons (for example Doug is very clearly Michael Douglas from Falling Down)) and you can gain objects like Molotovs and chainsaws to defeat your enemy foes.

 None the less the game has a real survivalist feel to it.  Enemies spawn constantly and then shamble towards you at an ominous pace.  The 'theme' of the game is very very strong, it manages to capture that 'Walking Dead' feel (I mean the early films but that's not to denigrate the recent (excellent) tv series.) It is a game where you hold your breath when drawing a spawn card and as the numbers of zombies build up there is a visual sense of dread that accompanies the game!  It encourages some amusingly heroic actions (characters throwing their lives away in a sacrifice to the greater good or passing over weapons to save other people) and in my gaming group at least amusing anecdotal stories build up (like the one pictured below when Phil bit the bullet after his bromance with Doug!)

The game has quite simple rules.  You get a number of actions per round and if you end up in a square with a zombie on the zombies go it hurts you.  No ifs or buts, it just does!  There are four different types of zombie - walkers (they move one space toward you each turn), Runners (they move two spaces toward you each turn) and Fatties (who move one space, are accompanied by walkers and are harder to hurt) and abominations which are really hard to hurt but also only move one space).  As the game progresses you get new skills the more you kill, but as people 'level up' you get more zombies spawning each turn as well... sometimes leveling up is particularly bad!  Characters have different abilities and some choices to make as to  which skills they want which leads to some nice variation.  

The components are nicely produced - the card products are good quality, colourful and well illustrated. and the miniatures are lovely.  The game is produced by Guillotine Games  in conjunction with Cool Mini Or Not (I admit I'm not sure of the link but I think they're maybe run by the same people or something!) and so I suppose great figures should be expected, but that doesn't detract from the fact that they really are cool minis with lots of nice detailing!  I read that lots of people like painting them.  As ever I wish that there was some sort of better storage offered for the game.  It all just has to be thrust back into the box when you're done, but besides that I think that the box and all its contents are excellent.

Of particular note I like the idea of the noise mechanic (shooting guns makes a noise and if zombies can't see you they move toward the noise, whenever you make a noise you put a noise token down.)  There's a 'make noise' action choice to distract the zombies.  It's not brilliantly practical in general but it is a lovely idea.

The game is pretty tough.  It took us quite a few goes to beat the first proper mission, but I like that challenge and it was a buzz when we managed it!  

My only other criticism is a kickstarter related one... There are 6 characters that come with Zombicide and they're cool, but the original Kickstarter offered lots more as stretch goals and add-ons.  They can be found on the website... but I will never have them.  They were Kickstarter exclusives and (apparently) they can sell on ebay for huge quantities of gold coins!  I didn't care / wasn't worried about that for quite a while - but now I feel slightly like I miss out - it's always the same characters that I play with because we don't have the extras to choose from.  I know there needed to be incentives to get the game funded, and I'm glad that it was... and yet I still feel like I'm missing out.  [It's worth noting that I think I could download the stats and there are card generators for them too, but still...] 

Zombicide Season 2 + Expansion were recently on Kickstarter and I backed it quite heavily, I'll be getting lots of extra characters and even some add on characters... BUT even sponsoring it there were lots of characters that I am not getting (solely because each new one was an extra '$10' or similar) so I guess I'll still be missing out.  But at least I'll be able to look down at those people who haven't got them... Oh gosh I've joined the ranks of the Kickstarter Zombie Elite!!!  

"BRAINS..."

Kickstarter: A Love Hate Relationship

Oh Kickstarter, how I love / loathe thee...

I have extremely mixed feelings about Kickstarter, I have a Kickstarter profile and have backed a number of projects.  I really like the idea of a way that people who couldn't get a project off the ground have a way of accessing money if enough people like the idea.

I love that it is is getting board games a bigger name and that there are components being made for games that otherwise wouldn't.  I like that there is support of 'Indie' markets where there might not be otherwise.

I love browsing it looking for projects and I like the communities that develop on there on a popular project. It's great that some developers are responding to the comments sections.

I love getting free stuff and exclusive offers / options, and being able to buy add-ons and seeing how much / little some projects achieve. I like checking what stretch goals we might have achieved today.

All of these things are great, funky, cool, boo-yah.  (Or something)

But all is not right in the state of Kickstarter...

I hate that there are things I feel like I'm missing out on when I don't get all the add-ons I might want and know I can't get them later.  I hate having to look at so many things with SUCH HIGH postage because I  live in the UK, not the USA

I don't like some of the communities that look down on people that haven't been involved in a kickstarter before or who whinge about a manufacturers decisions (especially in regard to free stuff).  I loathe the elitism of people who think they're better because they've sponsored more / higher / better kickstarter projects.

But here's what I hate the most.  I really really don't think that Kickstarter should be used by big companies who are just using it as advertising.  Those companies that cold have got the funding anyway (or in some cases had the funding necessary to fund the project but chose to use it as a booster.  I'm sure (almost sure) that it's not against the rules but it feels against the spirit of the rules.  People WILL buy your games anyway, where as 'Johnny who lives up the road' doesn't have a chance without it.

What I hate most most of all (even more than the most of all above) is that I am a hypocrite.  There have been a couple of notable examples recently that I have backed, after all I'm going to buy them anyway, and if I do it here I get it cheaper.  I might even get some extra stuff... But I could just have pre-ordered.  And  I would have if that had been an option.

I also worry that at some point it's going to all backfire.  People seem to think they have some ownership when they back a kickstarter project, that their opinion matters, and at some point I can see them getting grumpy when their thoughts are ignored.

All in all Kickstarter makes me a little uncomfortable whilst liking it at the same time.  I am officially 'discombobulated'

Board Games: X-Wing Miniatures

Anyone who knows me or reads my waffle will know I'm a Star Wars baby, I was born in '77 and grew up with the films, toys, breakfast cereal and all manner of paraphernalia, but when I wanted to 'play star wars' I had to make my own games.  I flew my x-wing toys around the front room (making appropriate vrooom and lazor noises) and shot at tie fighters destroying them as I saw fit.  Needless to say my shots almost always hit and they almost always missed...

Then I graduated to X-wing on the pc (ibm?) and then the much missed Tie Fighter.  How I miss those days of blowing x-wings out of the sky and escorting the emperor...

And, just for the record, anyone who looks at that picture and thinks 'that looks a bit naff' - well, you don't know man... you weren't there!  Phenomenal.

I am not a big nostalgia fan, but I still have very fond memories of this game, the star wars roleplaying game I played (West End Games v1) and then there was Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars Battlefront, the amazing Timothy Zahn trilogy and some of the follow on books.  And of course Tales of the Old Republic...  Yes, I'm a fan.

When X-wing Miniatures from Fantasy Flight was announced I was in two minds, I'm not a big 'wargamer' but as it got closer to the launch I thought I would give it a try and I picked up a copy when they were still in stock in the UK.  I have to say it's a great game.  It manages to flow extremely well and the balancing of the stats - points - abilities - dice is extremely well thought out.  I am a big fantasy flight fan, and often their games are quite complex with quite a lot of rules.  Not so here.  Colour coded dice, templates, all the oddities on the cards - it's very very elegant.

Players decide what they're going to do at the same time, pop down a dial and then move according to pilot skill (least skillful first) and then shoot in descending order (most skillful first).  Pilots skill levels are on the cards and weaker pilots cost less points (meaning more ships potentially).  Each ship will have a couple of abilities which they choose and you get tokens to represent what you're doing (all beautifully made by Fantasy Flight).  The game flow is fast and the rules become second nature very quickly.  It makes for a wonderful play experience.

The box set (shown above) comes with 2 tie fighters and 1 x wing which is enough to play with, but you can buy more ships to enhance your choices - tie advanced and y wings were out at launch and they've since added the falcon, slave I, a wing and interceptor.  All of these can be combined for some pretty large scale battles, come with enough tokens for easy use and there are objectives and missions that you can undertake too.

The models are fantastically made - they look great, are beautifully painted and work really well in the game (robust enough to move, detailed enough to still be 'pretty') and are apparently 'to scale' (of imaginary ships!!).  Size difference can make a big difference in the game though, the falcon model is huge and this impacts on it's flying into asteroids (Han Solo must have had some good dice rolls in that scene in Empire!)

The balancing on the game really is phenomenal, and the way the dice roll against each other, especially combined with the add-on abilities pilots can buy.  I have (because I am a cynic) two criticisms of the game, but they are pretty minor ones.  The game should come with more dice.  FFG sell more dice, but really to easily run a game you want a set of dice each.  It's easily solved and I suppose would have added to the cost of the product but even so, lack of dice frustrates me.  It's also really difficult to store.  With models this nice you want to store them carefully and that's pretty difficult.  Battlefoam offered an elegant solution which was foam that fitted in the original box and held your miniatures (still not really enough space for tokens) and have now released one to hold wave two.  It STILL doesn't hold all the tokens and is quite pricey.  I'm not sure what the good answer is here - lots of people online offer suggestions, but I do wish that FFG thought more about how to store their (beautifully made, extremely well crafted) models.

Game mats are something that the game would benefit from too.  I bought myself a 3' piece of felt from amazon which was cheap and does the job perfectly, but some people have bought / made very extravagent ones.  It adds something to the game feel that is better than a tabletop, but isn't necessary.  I also quite often play some Star Wars music in the background when we're playing.  It again just boosts the feel of the game.

It's hard to do this game enough justice, its very well thought out, extremely smooth and plays like a dream.  It has some of the best mechanics I've experienced in any such game.  

Punchboard Joy

I enjoy all sorts of video games but I am also a great lover of boardgames,  I grew up with such joys as 'Game of Life', Monopoly and Upwords.  Now as an ever-increasing adult my love of boardgames grows greater and greater and of late I've been playing quite a number of different games, so I thought I would write some bits and pieces about some of those games and my thoughts about them...


Boardgames are a fantastic way of learning about rules because nobody else interprets them for you; they have to be read and understood by the players, as opposed to the computer doing all the calculations for you and not letting you do the things you can't do.

There's a particularly good games shop in Reading that will sell you games you want called Eclectic and can also advise on other games and new things to try, or of course well known online retailers can help you out.  I have also used Spirit Games and Infinity Games online for good service on mail orders.

Why is this called Punchboard Joy?  Well, anyone who plays any Fantasy Flight games (as well as a number of other brands) will know that they usually come with a piece of card which you push out tokens from.  These are called Punchboards.  I take a certain pleasure in pushing all the tokens out and then finding ways to store all the bits in a user friendly way.  I realise that this really is incredibly high up the OCD-sounding scale, but I like to tell myself that it's ok - I don't mind if they get a bit mixed up during play and mostly I only do it to make the actual gameplay easier.  I don't know if that's true but I like to think it is...

Rather than make this a horrifically long post as I waffle about each one this will be a sort of index, which also means I can update it later as I play more games.  So, here's the list, each one will link to a new page on my blog (linked to as they're completed):

X Wing Miniatures
Zombicide (Season 1)
Descent
Gears of War
Village
Ghost Stories
Chaos in the Old World

Playing / Played of late

I've been playing a LOT of games recently, possibly because I haven't found anything to truly hook me in, but more realistically because I've had a lot of time on my hands of late, which I've only partly been using productively!  I'll probably miss some things here but before I begin I will add that I've played even more Civ V and the news about there being a new update later this year excites me.  Civilization remains an excellent game.  I wish the multiplayer didn't always turn into a war (we played a game where we were at war from 1200 BC until 1963!) but even so it remains fantastic.

So some newer (at least to me) games:

Magica.
Now I know that Magica is a few years old, so I admit that I am out of date here, but none the less it's a great deal of fun.  I am a huge fan of the way the magic interacts and the complexity of the button pushing involved to find what combinations you can.  I was very slightly dissapointed that the campaign seemed so very short.  I know that there's a LOT of DLC for it, but even so, none the less I intend to go back to it and play some more, it's a lot of fun with friends and certainly deserves a look in, it's also very cheap on steam quite often so worth picking up.



Tomb Raider (the new one)

I was looking for a game to buy and fancied a bit of a change and was debating over a few (TR, ACIII and Dishonoured) and after a review from a friend decided to pick up TR*.  I have to say I was extremely impressed.  I'm only part way through at time of writing, 38% if you believe their tracker [I'm not sure I do by the way - 100% might be if you've found all the things to find etc], and it's an extremely engaging game.  I had my worries after playing demos at Eurogamer (I wrote about them somewhere) that I didn't want to be responsible for the obvious pain I was putting Lara through, that I was worried about some of the gender implications and all sorts but I was out of place.

Visually it's stunning (even on my hamster driven PC), the exploring is intuitive) and the level design is excellent.  It makes me want to explore.  I'm not big on finding every bit of every hidden random object in obscure corners of the map but TR is encouraging me to do so.  The climbing is good, the story so far is intriguing (it's very Lost at the moment, which I also loved), the fighting is tough but not insane and the puzzles are well constructed.  The only thing I don't very much like is the Daley Thompson mechanic... for those of you who didn't experience Daley Thompson's Decathlon it involved you having to waggle your joystick (or mash you keys) left and right to simulate the effort of the sporting event you were taking part in... it was 'extreme' and I remember vividly the frustration of the experience.  It's echoed a little here with some timed buttons as well...  I am a little unconvinced of this BUT at the same time I'm not sure I can think of a better way.  How do you make the player experience some of the frantic nature of certain scenes, how can that be conveyed in what is basically a binary challenge.  Answers on an e-postcard.  I'm also still concerned that I seem to spend a lot of time looking down Lara's top or at her tight-trousered-posterior just through automatic camera work, but the game has a history of that I suppose so I should get over it.

Sim City

The much maligned Sim City is really rather good.  It is a dreadful shame that the game was plagued with such a lot of problems, it almsot put me off but I was encouraged to buy it by someone brave enough to try and it's excellent and very elegant.  Buildings spring up in a very natural way, they evolve as your city does and the things you produce are shipped away on ever increasingly congested roads.  I can see why it's come in for criticism.  It's hard.  It's tricky to get the balance right.  It's difficult to arrange your roads so as not to end up with so much congestion that your city stops working, without doubt there are problems with traffic management and worker migration, but it's still... compelling.  quite work, at least not as expected, yet.  I had a town whose factories were closing and my partner in mayoral crime had a city with loads of unemployed clamouring for jobs.  Our cities were linked up and established yet still the problem didn't go away... who knows why.  However if you can get over the hiccups and the teething pains it's terrific.  It will probably draw me back again and again with a new attempt to build a megalopolis.  It's not the same game as it was in the past (albeit it's very similar), but I think that's a good thing.  I don't want to just pay for better graphics, I want better game play, more options and so on.  Sim City gives me that and that's just great.  I don't really get the problem with needing to be online to play, that doesn't bother me incidentally.

It's much better as a multiplayer game.  Those people who have been saying it's a social game (as in Facebook social) are wrong, but I see the comparison.  You can buy services from other people (although they'll eventually run low) and workers / shoppers will migrate between towns.  It doesn't seem to

Here's my reservation about it though.  It's very expensive.  I bought it on Origin and downloaded it at the hefty price of £44 (or similar).  That's quite a lot for a game with undeniably more than a few frustrating bugs.  The dulux edition is an extra £20 on top of that.  As far as I see (from reading reviews) for that I get the option to build a super-hero mansion / evil villain tower and British / French / German cities, each of which give you a one building upgrade.  That feels like an LOT of money for some fairly minor options and a few (only a few) cosmetic upgrades.  I still might do it, but I am not yet convinced.

Sim City is tricky and it's hard to know what I'd think if it hadn't been so surrounded by the hype it has been.  I don't think it's a game I will play for weeks.  I do think it's a game I will come back to again and again over years.  That probably makes it worth it by quite some margin.

Wireframe

I gave Wireframe a try (FTP on Steam) and I am afraid that I couldn't get to grips with it; it's tutorial was shockingly lacking and its controls unintuitive.  It's missions, which I think are on procedurally generated maps felt bland and the options you were tied into with the FTP were poor.  Not just that but it wasn't clear when / how I could pay and when I worked it out it felt like the pricing structure was wrong.  The game wsa dark, so much so that it was difficult to see the detail they'd put in and overall I was left not wanting more.  It was rapidly erased despite a valiant effort.

The Guild 2 Rennaisance 

This is another old offering (I think it was 2010) and is a 'standalone add on' to other games.  I'm not quite sure that's a real phrase!  It's terrifically complex and there's no tutorial.  The buttons are hidden and aren't the ones you expect them to be and quite often the person you are playing dies of plague.  I have however enjoyed it immensely.

The Guild and The Guild 2 were fan favourites and this was sort of the culmination of all the games.  You play a person in 1400 building up their life and reputation.  You can build a building and operate a shop, find a spouse and have children who grow up and you play them later as part of the dynasty and so on.  It's easy to get ill, get robbed, have your house burn down and so on, the game is quite unforgiving, made all the harder by not quite knowing which buttons to press!  However when you start to 'get it' it's brilliant.  Shops are moderated by supply and demand, burn down your competitors and the prices go up.  The law will try and arrest you though so make sure you have evidence to protect you.  I am playing (at the moment) a grave digger who has learnt to make demonic pacts, which sell very well!  The game has a lot of breadth and I am enjoying the options that open up as you get better at all sorts of skills / unlock new buildings and so on.  I'm told that once you 'master' it it becomes a bit formulaic, but I'm not at that stage yet so have lots of time left on the game.  I found watching the basic tutorial on You Tube very helpful, (perhaps essential).  It can be frustrating at times (I hit a point when none of my goods were worth very much, but it turned around) but so far it feels very rewarding when I manage to 'achieve' something.

I'm pretty sure I have forgotten something significant I've been playing, but for now I can't think what it is, I am however very much looking forward to NwN when that comes out... So many games, so little time.

*It came down a bit to cost: TR is a new game and so unlikely to reduce in price for ages, where as ACIII and Dishonoured are more likely to be on sale sooner.  Happily two days later ACIII was 66% off and I bought that too, it's in the 'still to play list' of games.  Also when I bought Sim City I got Mass Effect III for free, which sweetened the whole deal immensely.  I have games to play for ages now... Poor Bioshock (which I planned to pick up) will have to wait, still I suppose by then it too will be on sale!!

Plot Without Conflict

An interesting article on different plot types is featured here - it's on the differences between plot with and without conflict.  The adapted comic strip illustrates the point extremely well and I've copied one part of it below, to see the other part you should go to the page and have a look :)

I'm not sure who it's by unfortunately, but you can (I think) contact them via the page if you're so inclined.

Enjoy

The Daily Grind...

There's been a lot written about grinding in games and as someone looking for work in the industry that too can feel like a necesary grind through job sites, web pages and adverts, but I rather liked this article's take on the process of Grind in games, which was a little more thoughtful than some of the others I've read.

It's written Patricia Hernandez and was featured on Kotaku.

You can read it here