| Game Reviews From a Parental Perspective! | |
|
|
|
| Home | Forums | Review Archive | Columns | Feature Articles |
|
Home >
Columns > Unplugged > Unplugged Holiday Guide 2004
Afraid your kids will quickly be bored with their gifts? Try a board game that the family can play. Shoot, get Pass the Pigs and your family can be "boar"ed all year!  Comments? It's back for a second year, the GamerDad Unplugged Holiday Gift Guide. Don't limit your kids (or yourself) to gaming solely on computers or consoles. There is something uniquely enjoyable playing a game together with your family and/or friends. While some videogames offer multiplayer game play, you are still just communally staring at the screen while you play the game. In a good board game, players face each other and the focus is directly on the other players and how everyone interacts with the game. Most board games also offer an exceptional tactile component of play, whether that is rolling dice, moving and placing pieces, or just playing around with little plastic army men. With a few exceptions, you might find it hard to find some of these titles at your local chain store. Try to find a specialty game store locally and they will probably have them, or can at least order them for you. Another option is online shopping, feel free to visit GameFest an online board game store that carries most of these titles. Since board games rarely become obsolete due to technology, there is little to no reason to discard any of my suggestions from last year's shopping guide. Feel free to check those out, in particular I highly recommend the following: Lord of the Rings - Made by Fantasy Flight games and designed by Reiner Knizia, this is a great cooperative strategy game. Two to five players play against the game "board" using limited resources in order to try and throw the one ring into Moutn Doom. It is great fun as everyone either wins or loses together. It was reviewed in my Lord of the Rings Boardgame Roundup. The game retails for around $45. Settlers of Catan - Produced by Mayfair Games and designed by Klaus Teuber, this is the game that catapulted the new "European" style to popularity all over the globe. I enjoy it so much I wrote two whole columns about the game, both a review and an analysis of its success. It retails for around $38. Apples to Apples - Produced by Out of the Box Publishing and designed by Matthew Kirby and Mark Alan Osterhaus, this is one of the best party games around. Players contribute cards in hopes that the judge will pick their card as the best fit to a given theme. It is fast-paced, funny, and best of all - no particular talent or skill is necessary so more insecure players are free to play along. It comes in several different sets and the original version can be found for under $20. Larger editions exist which just contain more cards. A slightly longer review can be found at Unplugged #10 - Party Games. On to the new games! Most of the games listed were published in the past year, while the others are classics I recently discovered. The games are divided into five categories: Games for the Young - games targeted at kids aged 4-6 that won't bore an adult to tears, Family Games - playable by both preteens and adults, Party Games - fit for larger groups of people, Two Player Games - for those date nights where you can't find a babysitter, and finally WarGames - a couple of combat-oriented games suitable for middle school and above (remember, they're miniatures not tiny dolls). Games for the Young Game: Chicken Cha Cha Cha Publisher: Rio Grande / Zoch Designer: Klaus Zoch Players: 2-4 Ages: 4+ Time to Play: 15-20 minutes MSRP: $38 It is a bit pricey for a game targeted at this age group, but it is my favorite memory game by far. The lovely wooden pieces and thick cardboard tiles should last for generations. Remember where chicken and egg themed pictures are in the middle of the circle in order to move your chicken around the outside loop. Pass other chickens to steal their tails. The first person to capture all the tails wins the game. For a more in-depth review, see: Unplugged #7. Game: Catch the Match Publisher: Playroom Entertainment Designer: Reinhard Staupe Players: 2-8 Ages: 5+ Time to Play: 15 minutes MSRP: under $10 This is a great game for anyone who enjoys the "Where's Waldo" sort of book. This game has 15 tiles and each tile has a picture of the same 15 items. Set one tile aside as the "matching" tile. Flip over the top tile from the remaining stack and be the first to find which of the 15 pictures exactly matches the color scheme of picture on the "matching" tile. Spot it first - you claim the tile and it is time to flip over the next one. The winner is the person with the most tiles when you have gone through them all. Game: Cloud 9 Publisher: Out of the Box Publishing Designer: Aaron Weissblum Players: 2-6 Ages: 8+ Time to Play: 20-30 minutes MSRP: $13 Great for older "kids" too, Cloud 9 is a board game where you try to push your luck by staying in a cute plastic balloon gondola as long as possible. Jump out to score points, but if you stay in too long, the balloon will "crash" and you get no points. The balloon is only moved to the next highest level if the current pilot can play the correct colored balloon cards from their hand. A lovely gondola and a bright sky-blue game board make this a very pretty game as well. Read more about it in Unplugged #15. Family Games Game: Puerto Rico Publisher: Rio Grande / Alea Designer: Andreas Seyfarth Players: 3-5 Ages: 12+ Time to Play: 1 to 2+ hours MSRP: $38 Puerto Rico is currently my favorite strategy game. Even though it is only a little longer than an hour to play, it has some great, deep strategies, a decent theme, and lots of player interaction. There are many good strategies for winning, keeping the game fresh and new. While the rules aren't too complicated, the game does require a lot of planning and strategy making it more suitable for mid-teens and more logic-oriented young teens. Each player slowly builds up the economy in their colony in order to produce goods which are shipped back to Europe to score victory points. A deeper review can be found at Unplugged #5. Game: Betrayal at House on the Hill Publisher: Avalon Hill Designer: Bruce Glassco Players: 3 to 6 Ages: 10+ Time to Play: 60-90 minutes MSRP: $45 In many ways, playing Betrayal at House on the Hill is more of an experience than a game. Players roam through a haunted house by placing room tiles and occasionally finding items or events of interest. At a random point in the game, an event occurs that turns one of the players into a traitor. From this point forward, the game has two teams - the traitor against the rest of the players. Each team secretly reads their own special goals and objectives from a handbook, and then the game continues until one team wins. With 50 scenarios that can occur, it is a different game every time you play. The possible endings include encounters with the "blob", a mummy, vampires, giant insects, and more - all the classic horror movie possibilities. It is a pretty light game with a fair bit of randomness, but a whole lot of mood. Read more about it at theUnplugged Halloween Special. Game: Ticket to Ride Publisher: Days of Wonder Designer: Allan Moon Players: 2 to 5 Ages: 8+ Time to Play: 30-60 minutes MSRP: $40 This game won the Spiel des Jahres award in 2004, which is one of the highest honors a board game can receive. It has a nice element of strategy while remaining very simple to learn and to play. The goal of the game is to lay down train connections between cities. A map of the U.S. has many different routes drawn onto the board, each route a specific color. Players collect sets of cards and then turn them in to place their tracks. Turn in five yellow cards and you can place your train markers on a yellow track that is five trains long. Points are scored by laying track, but longer tracks are better, as a four card train gets you seven points while a three train only scores four points. In addition, all players start with up to three route cards. Connect the two cities shown on a route card with one continuous track of your trains and you score that special amount. As the game ends when someone runs out of trains, the extra route card points are usually the key to winning. This game is very popular in the board game community and is the current favorite game to play when reintroducing board games to people who think "board game" means "Monopoly". Party Games Game: Pass the Pigs Publisher: Milton Bradley, Hasbro, Winning Moves Germany Designer: David Moffat Players: 2+ (after 10 the games gets a little slow) Ages: 7+ Time to Play: 10-30 minutes MSRP: $10 This is a simple, quick, and very portable game. Two pig-shaped dice are rolled and players earn points depending on how they land. Keep rolling on your turn to collect more points. However, if you "pig-out" and the pigs land in the wrong configuration, you lose all the points you scored that turn. The trick is to know when to quit while you're ahead. Playable by almost any number of people and small enough to fit in a purse or large pocket - play it in a restaurant while you wait for your order to arrive! Adding up the points is great practice for youngsters learning addition. You can read more details in Unplugged #13. Game: Bang! Publisher: Mayfair Games, daVinci Games Designer: Emiliano Sciarra Players: 4-7 Ages: 10+ Time to Play: 20-40 min MSRP: $10 This is a great game for a small party of friends. One player is the sheriff and all the other players have a secret role. Deputies protect the sheriff, outlaws try to eliminate the sheriff, and the renegade tries to be the last player standing. Players use cards to "shoot" at adjacent players in an attempt to eliminate them from the game. Some great mechanisms, including special player abilities, various gun abilities, and downright fun cards like exploding dynamite keep this Mafia-style game moving. Strategy and diplomacy are the order of the day. Not suitable for players who will go into a funk if they are picked on, but otherwise great for some light fun. It is a huge hit among high school students at my school. If you already have the game, there are two expansions available suitable for stocking stuffers: High Noon and Dodge City. The former adds 12 global effect cards while the latter introduces a few new types of cards, new characters, and some rules for 3 and 8 player play. Previously reviewed in Unplugged #10. Two Player Games Games: San Juan Publisher: Rio Grande / Alea Designer: Andreas Seyfarth Players: 2-4 for San Juan, and is pretty good for 2 Ages: 10+ Time to Play: + to 1 hour MSRP: $25 Some call it a "Puerto Rico Light", while Puerto Rico purists think it isn't quite the same. Whatever you call it, it is a fine family card game that can also be played by two players. As in Puerto Rico, players take turns choosing roles which give them an action with a special benefit and then all the other payers get to do the same action, but without the special benefit. In this way, all players are involved in the game at almost every point. It is almost as important to keep track of which of your choices are good for your opponent as it is to figure out which role is best for you. More details can be found in Unplugged #5. Game: Balloon Cup Publisher: Rio Grande / Kosmos Designer: Stephen Glenn Players: 2 Ages: 10+ Time to Play: 30 minutes MSRP: $23 In this two player game, you can play cards on your side or your opponent's side of a set of four central tiles. The cards you play must match the colors shown on the cubes placed on that tile. When the cards on each side of a tile exactly match the cubes in color and quantity, that tile is scored. The lowest card total wins on plains tiles, while the highest card total wins on mountain tiles. There are five colors of cubes to collect and they vary in quantity: 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. The first person to collect a majority of cubes in three separate colors wins the game. It is a nice mix of planning, strategy, and a hint of luck. The end game can get close as 3 leftover cubes of one color can sometimes be turned in for a single cube of another color. Check out the earlier review in Unplugged #6. Game: Blink Publisher: Out of the Box Publishing Designer: Reinhard Staupe Players: 2 Ages: 7+ Time to Play: 2 minutes MSRP: $10 Most people are familiar with the card game, Speed, where two players are trying to get rid of all their cards by playing them onto two central decks. Cards are played by number sequence or matching suits. Blink is a modification of speed that has made some nice improvements. The Blink deck has five colors, six shapes (or suits), and the shapes appear in sets of one to five. Players play out of a hand of three cards onto two central piles. Legal plays are where a card matches the pile's top card's shape, color, or count. It is a fun, quick filler game that usually spawns a lot of laughs. Inexpensive, and a short playing time make it a winner in my book. WarGames Game: Axis and Allies (revised edition) Publisher: Hasbro / Avalon Hill Designer: Larry Harris Players: 2-5 Ages: 12+ Time to Play: 2-3 hours MSRP: $45 Axis and Allies was listed as a recommended game last year. It is back again because last spring Avalon Hill released an update to the game. The original was fun, but had a few minor problems and took a long time to play. The new version has fixed some of the production costs for army units and implemented victory cities in such a way so that the game can now be reliably finished in 2 hours or less. If you are unfamiliar with the series, it is a bit more complicated than Risk, and has lots of nifty, fun little plastic pieces to play with. World War II is somewhat recreated on a world map, and players team up as the Allies (US, England, and Russia) or the Axis (Japan, Russia) in order to try to achieve victory. A full blown report on this new version appeared in Unplugged #8. Game: HeroScape Publisher: Hasbro Designer: Rob Daviau, Craig Van Ness, Stephen Baker Players: 2-4 Ages: 8+ Time to Play: 60 minutes MSRP: $45 (Get it at Amazon for only $40!) Released in the Fall of 2004, HeroScape is a young boy's action-figure war dream. It is a simple miniatures game with lots of nifty figures as well as customizable hexagon terrain that can be used to build three dimensional battlefields. With miniatures of dinosaurs, dragons, robots, and army men, there are plenty of pieces to choose from when constructing your army. While the price looks a little high for someone used to a $20 Monopoly set, at $45 this could be one of the best bargains of the year for what you get. Careful shopping at your local value chain store might uncover additional discounts. Read last month's glowing review of this simple, but fun game in Unplugged #20. Looking ahead Finally, two very new games that may be of interest to readers of GamerDad are Doom: The Board Game by Fantasy Flight Games and Bootleggers by Eagle Games. Both aren't really appropriate for younger games due to the themes, but should still be OK for most high school teens and some middle school kids. Doom ($55) comes out in December and is a fast-playing board game with nifty figurines and a slick combat system requiring a single die roll. One player is the aliens and up to three others are the marines in this tactical game that does a pretty good job of capturing the feel of the computer game. Bootleggers ($40) is a resource management and trading game where players use influence and money to build up a bootlegging operation during the 20s. The mobster theme may put off some but it fits very well with the wheeling and dealing nature of the game. With its healthy balance of strategic opportunities and a little splash of luck, I'm looking forward to testing out this 3-6 player game.
|
Read the GamerDad 2007 Holiday Guide!
|
Please Note: GamerDad is not intended to be read by anyone under 18. We stay clean, but be warned! Content Management System developed by Redbird Solutions. |
