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.

Midnight Movie Review: Thor

Fails of the Week

It took 31 episodes, but I'm finally back on Achievement Hunters' Fails of the Weak. Hop to 2:03 for my clip, but the rest is pretty funny too.



Just so y'all know I'm the one armor-locking, not the one flying into the drink. :)

Also, this...

Portal 2

The first part of this review is spoiler free. Spoilery thoughts are at the bottom and greyed out.

The first Portal game was not merely "good". It was an inspired work of sublime genius that gave rivaled Half-Life 2 as the greatest video game of all time. One of the most memorable aspects of Portal is that is that the game seemingly came out of nowhere. It was a super awesome surprise of gaming sunshine that brought enlightenment and fun to a world dominated by World of Warcraft and random space marines.

In many ways, Portal 2 had the deck stacked against it from the get-go. First off, the announcement by Valve that heralded the release of Portal's sequel was a disappointment for fans anticipating the eagerly awaited Half-Life 2 Episode 3. It's reached the point that waiting for an Episode 3 announcement is a bit like waiting for Guffman, and Portal 2 was a focal point for this anticipatory rage. The game could have been "Boobies and Girl-On-Girl Snogging" and Half-Life fans would've still raged. Secondly, the original Portal was an insanely difficult act to follow. Like Ninja Gaiden Black hard (that's "really fucking hard" for you casuals out there). How could any sequel following Portal actually be good, let alone better than the original?

As it turns out, Portal 2 isn't better than Portal. It's longer, and has more content, and to say that it's just as good as Portal is extremely high praise. It will rightfully take it's place among the pantheon of Half-Life 2 and Portal as supremely exemplary video games. Some of the story seems a bit contrived. Oh, we're escaping from the run-down Aperture Science facility! Now we're doing test chambers. AGAIN! It seems like a cop from some 80's action movie should've turned the corner and stated gruffly, "NOT THIS SHIT AGAIN."

In the original Portal, the story was mostly told by GLADoS while your character, Chell, performed portal gun tests. The game then switched to more haphazard, emphasis on "hazard", missions outside of the testing environment. These levels were more story related, and weren't part of the normal numbered test chambers. The transition between these seemingly contrasting levels was very smooth, and some of that seems to be lost in Portal 2. Characters sometimes spell out where you are precisely, and that seems to border on pandering. The ending Jonathan Coulton song is also not nearly as memorable as Still Alive from the first Portal. It's a fine song, but it really doesn't stick in the mind the way Still Alive did.

That paragraph were the only spoiler-free nitpicks that exist for Portal 2. As for everything else, it's outstanding. Playing the game, solving the puzzles, and most of all listening to the characters is pure joy. It's a familiar feeling to anyone who played Portal. Portal 2 also feels much bigger and grander than the original, from beginning to end. Portal 2 delivers in every way, and is easily the best game released so far this year. The only difference is that this is expected from the franchise. Where Portal was an unforeseen delight, Portal 2 is a fantastic game that was expected to be fantastic. To meet such high expectations is certainly high praise, indeed.

Also, I finished the game without any help or cheats. Someone give me a goddamn medal.

Now for some spoilery thoughts (highlight to read).

* I'm a bit disappointed in the final boss fight, which is yet another giant computer thing. Granted, it was fun and had a most epic ending, but I was hoping for something more different than the original Portal.

* When I was referring to characters spelling things out for the player, I was specifically referring to Wheatley. He mentions "Just X test chambers to go!" so many times that I overshadowed the otherwise outstanding voice-acting and writing. GLADoS did this once as well, and it just felt a little cheap.

* All that said, Wheatley's betrayal, while not entirely unexpected, was still very well done. GLADoS' embarrassing potato situation was also hilarious.

* J.K. Simmons' Cave Johnson comes very close to rivaling GLADoS as a test chamber "companion". The journey through past Aperture facilities was the highlight of the game, and was the perfect combination of hard puzzles and engrossing story.

* I fucking DIED during the turret choir scene! REALLY. That was insane. Also ANIMAL KING TURRET IN THE BACKGROUND!!! EEEEEE!!!

* Finally, I'm in space.

WWE All Stars

I'll be frank. This game has absolutely no business being as awesome as it is. I'll qualify that later but for what it is, this game is just about perfect. First off, this isn't a professional wrestling simulator in the least. Think along the lines of NFL Blitz or NBA Jam; over-the-top games that feature super-spectacular moves, caricatures of real-life players, and relatively easy game play. This kind of game fits the already cartoonish WWE expertly.

OK, I'll start qualifying that now. This is definitely one of the best party games I've ever played. Yes, that's what this game really is at it's core. A game you can break out while all your IRL buddies are hanging out drinking. The mix of new and old wrestlers will also appeal to the most casual of wrestling fans, who may only know Andre the Giant because he was in The Princess Bride. The moves are pretty simple to pull off, and look amazing. Street Fighter or Soul Caliber, this is not. Even though there are 4 different classes of wrestler most every character has the same basic set of moves, which means you can try out your favorite fighters with ease.

I do have some gripes, though. Even though the game is supposed to be easy to pick up, the move list is pretty extensive. Almost all of the buttons have different functions depending where you are in the ring. Not nearly to the extent of a UFC game, but it can get confusing when you try to pick up a chair with a the same button you use to climb a turnbuckle and instead exit the ring. Also, the single player is boring and repetitive, with a goddamn exponential difficulty curve to boot. One match you're chugging a long with that one combo you know really well, and then next match everything is getting countered and reversed. The only interesting cutscenes are The Undertaker's, with his threats of soul-taking and corpse-buring. Unfortunately those are in the first campaign, and every other heel's trash-talking pales in comparison.

WWE All Stars is very cool. It's fun with friends and reminds me of one of my favorite Dreamcast games, Power Stone. Sure, it's got it's issues, and it's not completely perfect, but it's does what it's meant to do better than a lot of other games. Plus, it's great to see Andre the Giant, Rowdy Roddy Piper, John Cena and The Rock all in the same ring duking it out.

Fresco

This may seem shallow, but a games art and presentation can count for a lot more than it should when deciding if a game is good or not. Just look at Mecanisbergo, and who horribly bad art can almost sink a game before it starts. Such is not the case with Fresco, which stands as one of the most colorful games I've played in recent memory.

For a game that deals with paints and painting, this game had better be colorful. What we have is a pretty straight-forward worker placement game. The players have a number of apprentices that are sent to buy paint from the market, restore part of the cathedral's fresco ceiling, paint portraits, or mix paints for more exotic colors. There's an interesting mechanic for determining who goes first, and it involves how cruel you are to your minions. Wake them up early in the morning and their able to act first on everything, but they become unhappy to the point that the number of available guys are reduces for you. Going first also means that you pay a premium for paint, so money could be an issue for the early birds.

Another interesting idea at work in Fresco is the fact that the "full" game is actually composed of a simpler base game with several expansions played alongside. Confused? Think of it like this. Imagine Monopoly. Now imagine that when you bought Monopoly that it came with several other rules and pieces that added a stock market mechanic and airlines. You could still play basic Monopoly and have a good time, but for advanced players the extra expansions could make the game more interesting and replayable. This is the case with Fresco, as the base game eliminates several steps in the round for the easier core game. This means that you're not required to teach the full game to new players or to people who are not hardcore board gamers. Agricola actually works this way as well, with a Family mode that leaves out many of the extra cards that can make the first game of Agricola very confusing. I don't begrudge Fresco for this, but I don't see myself or any of my group ever playing the basic game. The full game is still straight-forward yet challenging, and the random elements of the game allow for a good degree of replayability. In fact there's already a separate expansion that allows for even more portrait options.

Fresco is all about deciding what's the right play at a particular given moment. Overall strategies must change with the flow of the game, and there are very few "bad" decisions to be made. I would say the only lackluster aspect of gameplay is the Happiness of your workers. I've played just about every game with the lowest amount of Happiness, and usually will play an entire game without one of my minions as a penalty. While the extra guys are nice, they're usually redundant since the best options are usually already taken. Going first always seems to trump having more actions, and I've never really felt hindered by being down a worker.

Fresco will fit in just about anyone's collection. I can heartily endorse it for any gaming group of any skill level. Families, light gamers, and the seasoned veterans will all find something to love about Fresco. I guess you could say it's the "freshest" game to come around in a while.

Also, I'm very VERY sorry about that last line.

7 Wonders

It's rare that a game truly ropes me in the way that 7 Wonders did.

I remember seeing the game at the last BGG.CON, and was immediately hooked after more than a few drunken sessions. I was finally playing my last game of the weekend sober when I realized how special 7 Wonders really is. Here's a game that's easy to learn, plays very fast, and scales to 7 players with very little impact on total playing time. This was a game that I had to absolutely have as soon as inhumanly possible. My frantic and somewhat obsessive search for the game led me to do something that I've never done for a board game. I ended up buying three copies. Now, I do have a somewhat rational explanation for that.

I googled and internetted until I found a store that not only had a good price for the pre-order of 7 Wonders, but also had a couple of other games that I wanted to get in my hands. A few weeks after placing my order, I was informed via email that it was possible that my pre-order of 7 Wonders would not be fulfilled due to demand. I called back to see what was up, and was given the option of canceling my order or waiting to see if I would indeed get the game. I was a little annoyed, but I decided to keep my order and hope for the best. Despite this, I was determined not to be denied a copy of this game. I called my local game shop (Little Shoppe of Games here in OKC) and reserved a copy. I then felt like I had all of my bases covered.

The exact date of the games release wasn't set, so all that we had to go by was when the publisher was shipping the game to retailers. After that, it was up to the stores to get the game into our grubby little mitts. A few days after hearing that the game had shipped, I got a call from the game store. My copy was there and ready for pick-up. I was SO GIDDY. I was like a fiend hearing that the local guy had just re-upped. I raced to the store and got my copy. I then saw that they had another copy on the shelf, where then I called my gaming buddy in town and asked if he wanted a copy as well. He said yes, and I walked out with TWO copies of my coveted game. Eventually, I did get the copy that I had ordered online. Yup, three copies for all the right reasons. :)

Obviously I think the game is awesome, because I wouldn't have gone through all that trouble to get it. What makes the game special is not that it is heavily replayable, because it's not. You'll definitely start seeing the same cards over and over, so limiting your plays to once or twice a session is a good thing. Actually, an expansion would do this game "wonders". :D The game is special because very few games can be played with a crowd of people in under 40 minutes. There are times, surprisingly enough, when you don't want to sit and play a game for a couple of hours, and that goes double for playing a game with more than 4 players. 7 Wonders ingeniously serves 3 players just as well as 7, with a very small difference in playing time for each group. It's also very easy to learn and by the 2nd round of the game most people will have a good handle on how to play. There's also many different ways to actually win, save for the military route which has a hard cap on how many points you could possibly get. Still, there's more than a few ways to play the game, and all of them are fun.

7 Wonders is a rare gem of a game. Do yourself a favor when buying this game and make sure to buy some sleeves for the cards, as they see very heavy use and there aren't that many of them.