Midnight Movie Review: Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides

TL;DW, don't bother unless you really REALLY like Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow.

Ubongo 3D

The original Ubongo happens to be one of my favorite games of all time, as it invokes memories of tangrams and other puzzles from my youth.  Then I tried Ubongo Xtreme and found that I was apparently not as smart as I thought I was.  Never before had a puzzle game handed my ass to me so handily than with Ubongo Xtreme's hexagon based puzzles.  I felt like an idiot and resigned myself to a life of simple plain Ubongo and maybe some Ubongo: The Duel.

For some reason that totally didn't involve alcohol, I decided to give a new flavor of Ubongo a try at the last BGG.CON.  Ubongo 3D was awesome looking, sporting hefty three dimensional puzzle pieces that are as well made as they are intimidating.  My brain was already hurting.  In a further sadistic twist, we decided to try the advanced puzzled.  My brain was already screaming in agony.  The first couple of rounds didn't go well for any of us players, and it wasn't until mid-game that the puzzles began speaking to me.  Not in a schizophrenic kill-'em-all kind of way, but in a gentle, less murderous fashion that allowed me to solve every puzzle after that.  I ended up winning by a good margin, and I was resolved to own this game very soon. 

Not long after getting my copy of the game, I gave it a try with my normal gang of gamers.  Since my friends aren't the biggest Ubongo fans we opted to try the normal puzzles at first.  My brain was confident it wouldn't get hurt.  My brain was wrong.  The puzzles mopped the floor with all of us, and after 5 rounds of no one solving a puzzle we called the game.





There were a couple of factors that led to our utter failure.  One was the game pieces themselves.  Unlike previous versions of Ubongo, the players are not given their own set of pieces, and must instead draw from a community pile.  This was a jarring and most unwelcome change from the games past, and something I clearly didn't remember from my first play-through.  The next was the difficulty of the puzzles.  The game is simply much harder than regular Ubongo, and almost rivals Ubongo Xtreme in sheer frustration.  Finally, my clear lack of booze no doubt contributed to my personal woes in the game.

Despite all this, Ubongo 3D is fun.  Playing with the big bulky pieces is like playing with live Tetris blocks, and there's few awesomely cathartic feelings as completing one of these mind-bending puzzles.  Try this game, if you dare.  It's not for the faint of mind.

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