Today I Smiled: Too Much of a Good Thing?

My little cousin stayed over for a night of boardgames and did we go through a whole bunch! Won two rounds of Pandemic (easiest level then easiest with mutation), lost two rounds of veteran level Flash Point: Fire Rescue, lost one and won one novice round of Forbidden Desert, and surprisingly won two games of Eldritch Horror, without any detective casualties, against Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth!

We then moved onto more competitive rounds of regular playing cards and a game my cousin calls "Chinese". She won 4 out of 5 of those, followed by me winning two rounds of Bluff and finishing off with two games of Lords of Waterdeep where once again my wife proved she was the ultimate Lady of Waterdeep winning both games by a huge margin. As you can imagine a little bit of board game fatigue has since followed. :P

I've also finally gone through all the "vigilance quests" (just shy of 200, counting repetitions) introduced in Neverwinter Online's Elemental Evil and am now level 70 on my rogue. At least you get a lot of good gear for going through all of that - an artifact main hand and off hand weapon to boot! I normally put video links at this point, so for those who don't play or haven't reached any of the dragons, here's a clip taken by my brother. That's me with the knives and the weird helmet! Or, if that doesn't interest you - have a trailer to Batman vs Superman instead. :D

Hope you all have a great day!

Police Precinct: A city full of crime, but only one Murderer!

For a kickstarter game, this is actually a pretty well balanced and tested offering, in coop mode anyway. The artwork is decent enough and the gameplay is only just slightly more involved than the game I consider to be the best for people new to board games, Flashpoint: Fire Rescue. In Police Precinct everyone is plays as a cop (with each officer having some semi-unique special ability) and are either depicted as a marked police car (moves faster) or an unmarked police car token (better for investigation) as they drive around the medium sized city.

To win the game the cops must collect enough evidence to fill up their investigation board and catch a murderer. This is slowed down by the ever increasing thug numbers on the streets as well as what appears to be an insane crime spree as literally emergencies ranging from traffic accidents and gas leaks to car thieves, bank robbers, and kidnappers. If the crime meter goes to high or the murderer escapes without being caught the good guys lose.

In the groups I played in we found victory as the murderer was halfway through his escape. What really takes the cake though are the unknown circumstance cards which play in addition to an emergency. For example you can try deal with a suicidal employee but when you get there find that he or she has an angry dog, or try to nab a pickpocket who also has a bomb. These WTF moments actually make the game better for me as you can share the laughs all around the table.

There's also a version where one or two players could be "dirty" cops where they secretly try to let the crime escalate and the murderer escape but being a coop guy I haven't tried that out, nor do I want to really. With a bigger variety of things going on but still being easy to learn and pretty quick to play (1 - 1.5 hours at most per game), it's a pretty fun experience all around. I just wish the manual was a bit easier to read. Overall I give it 2.5 out of 5 police sirens, and my tick of approval.

Score after re-review: 1.5 out of 5 police sirens.

Improved Shooters

A few weeks back I finished Operation Flashpoint: Red River which is the sequel to Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (and totally unrelated to Operation Flashpoint: Fire Rescue). These games are semi-realistic in that one bullet can see to your quick death, yet still has the convenience of "magic" first aid kits you can use to stop bleeding and repair yourself. Don't worry, it's rare that you will be able to use them and survive anyway. :P

Dragon Rising had a steep learning curve (for me anyway), with enemies who liked to hide in thick foliage and objectives that if failed could end your game prematurely. The night time, stealth missions frequently come to mind. Also it was a bit jarring given that you cycled between different characters in different units each mission. While this opened up the variety of missions you could do, you never really got to know who you or your guys were, or why you were doing silly things like capturing a village on the far side of the map.

Red River fixes most of that and is basically a more polished and more user friendly game. As a marine grunt most of your sorties are all out strategic adrenaline pumping firefights - just the type I like but most importantly it also gives an easier to follow story. While your overall general sounds like a bit of a douche during the mission briefing screens, the true star of the piece is Staff Sgt. Knox who is out on the field with you giving you tips, assessing your performance and generally telling you how it is with often funny foul language.

Follow his rules to stay alive!

 

Another first person shooter that has seen some nice improvements is Orion: Dino Beatdown, now called Orion: Dino Horde. New maps, new dinos, new vehicles all add to the fun but it still has its fair share of problems. In my case it doesn't like my mic, lags a bit with four people, nor can it sync with my steam friends list. Despite that it is a very fun romp trying to make those dinosaurs extinct once more. Honestly, they've been the ones winning every round I've played so far. :P

One hot board game! :)

I got Operation Flashpoint: Fire Rescue around two weeks ago and have now played it almost as many times as my other cooperative game, Arkham Horror. It is a lot of fun, goes pretty quick (in comparison to Arkham) and obviously my playing group (which includes my grandparents!) really like it. The premise is simple: there's a house on fire and your team has to control the flame while getting people out. Sounds easy, and on the novice level it really is - especially with more people. The less players in this one the harder it is - that's what I've found anyway.

A typical game lasts from 30 minutes (2 players) to 2 hours (6 players) and it also is pretty quick (10 mins) to setup from the box (as opposed to Arkham's 25+ with all the cards and tokens). Veteran level starts seeing the fire being -very- annoying though and more so with heroic as the odds that the flame gets extra "turns" increases exponentially. If you like co-op dice rolling stuff then I highly recommend it! :)

Score after re-review: Two dangerous materials out of five.

As an aside we also did play another round of Arkham Horror, this time against the King in Yellow. We just couldn't seal the gates with his extra power and after 6 hours were not lucky enough to defeat Hastur in combat, even with a shotgun-wielding, blessed nun. :p