Saboteur is a game of deception and greed. Everyone plays the role of an elf that’s mining for gold. However, some of your party is looking to get the goods through nefarious means. You know that one or more members of your party aren’t on the up-and-up, but you don’t know who. Or maybe you’re the saboteur that’s looking to thwart everyone’s quest for gold. How far will you go to come out on top?
review
Pokemon X/Y Review
Jumping into the world of Pokemon for the first time this late into the franchise’s life like I did is daunting. It immediately throws you into a world where you’re mom is totally cool with letting you travel across a giant city on your own by foot. It’s a world where everyone from toddlers to grandmothers are constantly picking battles with you for no apparent reason. Beyond trying to grasp the ridiculousness of its fiction, I found that Pokemon X/Y is a dense game that assumes you’ve already played every entry in the series before. While I’m sure that master Pokemon trainers would enjoy how this cuts to the chase, as a newbie I floundered through its first 8 hours and almost gave up on it.
Then, after crossing what I thought was the most frustrating stretch of the game, it suddenly clicked for me. I finally got a grasp on many of the RPG elements that the game doesn’t really teach. The path forward became clear…most of the time. Most importantly, I began having fun with it.
Gears of War: Judgment Impressions
I felt like Gears of War 3 was the perfect end for the series on Xbox 360. It further fine-tuned an already great formula while finally providing a narrative that was worth a damn. Had the series taken a hiatus until the next generation of consoles were ready, I would have been perfectly happy with that. Instead, we got Gears of War: Judgment, an unnecessary prequel that let me down in a big way.
Ticket to Ride USA 1910 Expansion Review
Over the past few months, Ticket to Ride has almost become a mainstay at Steff and I’s tabletop nights. I think it’s masterfully done, though if I were to knock it for anything, it’s for the fact that the 30 destination tickets wears a bit thin after playing the game a number of times. They also leave certain swaths of the map largely untouched because they don’t directly map to destination tickets.
With 39 new destination cards, The Ticket to Ride USA 1910 Expansion is a direct answer to this dilemma. However, the expansion comes with a total of 181 cards. What the heck are the rest used for?
Pandemic Review
In Pandemic, the world is at risk of extinction due to four rapidly spreading diseases. With the fate of the world in your hands, you and your team of specialists must work together to contain – and hopefully find cures for – all of the diseases before it’s too late. You won’t always be successful in saving the world, but you’ll almost always have an amazing time trying.
Anomia Review
It’s always a good idea to have quality party games handy. In the past, classics like Scattegories and Pictionary have dominated the space for ages, but as board games continue to grow in popularity and mature with interesting gameplay mechanics, the party game genre is also growing with it. Anomia is one such title that is very different from anything else I’ve played. But is it good enough to break out when your parents are over?
Animal Crossing: New Leaf Review
There was a time in my life when Animal Crossing seemed like the best thing ever. During its Gamecube days, I played that game religiously for about a year. I was fully invested in growing my house into a home I wanted to live in, building relationships with the townspeople and collecting all of cool items that world had to offer. But since then, Animal Crossing has been ported to the DS and Wii with barely anything changed or updated.
To its credit, New Leaf represents the biggest shift forward for the franchise yet. It’s also a game that managed to stay in my rotation for a long time. But did I like it? I don’t know.
Ju-On The Grudge: Haunted House Simulator Impressions
Based on the hit Japanese horror movie that got an American remake, Ju-On The Grudge: Haunted House Simulator is an idea that I think is fundamentally sound on the surface. There’s a segment of casual players that want a scary experience, but don’t have the gamer acumen to take something on as hardcore as Resident Evil or Silent Hill. If put together properly and packaged at the right price, this concept could come to life in a way that most other games in the genre haven’t. After playing a few levels of Ju-On, it’s evident that this falls well short of the mark.
DuckTales Remastered Impressions
I remember the cartoon fondly, but my time with the cult classic DuckTales on the NES was limited. I do remember playing it, and I can hum the moon theme on command, but I don’t remember getting very far. Instead, most of my early Disney gaming came from titles like Chip & Dale’s Rescue Rangers and Aladdin. While my level of nostalgia for the source material was low, I was still excited to play DuckTales: Remastered for a taste of classic gaming with an HD facelift.
Formula D Review
The act of car racing is defined by speed. Video games have almost always done a great job of capturing that sensation as well as the act of racers jockeying for position thanks to their ability to simulate racing in real time. But how do you translate that experience into a turn-based tabletop game? Formula D has the answer. With 2-10 players, you can partake in a thrilling tabletop experience that amazingly simulates the magic of car racing. Continue reading
In Third Person 