Fun for the whole family!

About the game: Pandemic is from Z-Man games and its considered a Co-Operative game. Everyone works together instead of against one another. It came out in 2008 and there is even an expansion out for the game.

Components: There are quite a few components but they are easily organized

- Giant pieces for each player
- Cards for every city
- Different colored cubed tokens to represent the diseases
- Role Cards
- Cardboard pieces representing each of the diseases.
- Little houses representing Research Stations

Gameplay:
The game is pretty simple. You as a team have to cure the four diseases.

Each player takes a role (one of 5), and a piece to represent their role. After the board is set up with the random diseases on x number of cities. Play begins with the person who was most recently sick (a cute addition).

That player can take up to 4 actions on his turn.

Actions:
Moving - Moving a few spaces or flying to a city.
Treating disease - Removing 1 cube of any color from a city your in
Curing disease  - Discarding 5 cards of the same color
Build a research station - Discard a city card, placing a station on that city
Passing cards to another player - Must be in the same city as is on the card

Once that player has taken his actions, he draws 2 cards from the player cards and turns over a certain number of infected cards. Play continues in this way throughout the game.

This is a co-operative game though so everyone is working together to win. You talk with each other to explain what you think will be your best move and then do it. You cannot show each other your hand (other than in your first game). This makes it more difficult to communicate what you have, but its not a huge hurdle.

The Roles all bend some rule in the game, like the Medic can treat all of one type of disease on a city as one action. The Research can give other people cards without having to be on a specific city.

What makes the game interesting is when an epidemic card is drawn from the player cards. At this point a bunch more diseases are put out and the infected cards are put back at the top of the deck. Also the outbreak counter is moved and the infected counter is moved.

The game ends if any of these 3 things occur:

-There are no more cards to draw from the player pile.
-The outbreak counter reaches the skull
-There are no more cubes of a specific color disease to put on the board.

You only win the game if you as a team discover all 4 cures.
 
My Thoughts: This is the perfect family game as everyone is working together. The game comes with 3 levels of difficulty and having only beaten the first level 2 times, I can say the higher levels will be extremely difficult.

The game does not move super quick but its since everyone is involved on every turn this makes it more involved. Also there is an expansion that adds a bit more to the game including making one of the base roles a bit better.

Cost: It costs about $35.

Verdict: This is one of the most unique and fun games I have played. It is very Playworthy!.

Flight Control

About the game: Flight Control is a semi newly released title for download on the DSi. It was previously on various Apple devices.

The premise of the game is you are an air traffic controller and you have to guide all the air vehicles that appear on the screen to a runway or somewhere to land. If you crash the game is over.

Its a casual game that can be played in 2 min but can go for however long you can last.

Controls: You use the stylus to pick an air vehicle and then draw a line to a runway. Pretty simple and intuitive.

Graphics: Nothing special.

Sound: The sound/music of the game has a light feel to it. Like not too intense but it fits the game well.

Gameplay: The game is pretty simple. There are various levels that you choose from. Once you have chosen that level you keep playing it until you lose.

Each level takes place in some area and you have to guide the aircrafts to a runway. This is very simple and easy to start but when you get 12 aircraft on the screen at once, it can get very hectic.

The aircraft will vary from level to level and thats what makes the game interesting. The more successfull landings you pull off the higher your score. 

The only thing the game is missing is a high score list with online capabilities. It have been nice and easily added it seems. Something pretty sweet that I find nice, is you can speed up the gameplay to make it go quicker when there are only a few aircraft on the screen at once.

The game was 5 bucks which is not exactly cheap but is not too bad for how long you can potentially play the thing.

Verdict: Playworthy  

Is it a Small World after all?

As everyone knows I am a pretty avid Videogame player, as evidence by this blog. To go along with that I also enjoy boardgames quite a bit. Not the casual type of boardgame/cardgame, but the real ones. I am going to change it up a little by reviewing a board game. So bear with me while I review:

About the game: Small World is a reimplementation of an old game called Vinci by the same creator (Philippe Keyaerts). I never did play the game, but I heard it was a bit more complicated that small world but still very fun.

The story behind the game is there is a world that is too small for the vast amount of races. You play as a race that you pick and use troops to conquer the board. Each race comes with a random special power that will help you do a variety of things.



Components: The game comes with a ton of components. Here is just a small list of them

Boards x2

Cardboard cutouts x 40

Troops (what you use to conquer regions) x too many to count

Other pieces
Victory coins that come in denominations of 1,3,5,10 also too many to count

Thankfully the game comes with a nice box to store it all.
Even with that box it is a pain to take out the troops. I have been looking for a good replacement that is not too expensive and have been unsuccessful at this time.

Gameplay: The game is pretty simple to explain, but hard to master and there are complications when it comes to how certain races/powers work together.

Everyone starts with 5 victory coins and there are 5 races/powers sitting on the side of the board. If you pick one at the top of the line then you just take it. If you pick one at the bottom you have to put a victory coin on each of the ones you passed over.

After you have picked your race you get the number of tokens equal to the total written on the race/power pieces.

First Turn:
Your first time conquering something, you have to come in at the edge of the board. You have to pay 2 tokens, plus however many tokens are on the region you wish to conquer.You place the required number of tokens on the region. From there you have to conquer adjacent regions always paying 2 plus the number of tokens on the region.

As your final conquest if you do not have enough tokens you can roll a die that has 3 blank spaces and a 1,2,3. If you roll successfully you take over that region. If not you place your troops in one of your other regions.

At the end of your turn you can spread out your troops into your regions in any way you want. You then take victory coins equal to however many regions you have.

And thats it.

Obviously, this is not taking into account the various powers/races. You can get quite a few more victory coins depending on your combo. Or quite a few less as well.


Subsequent Turns:
On your next turn you have 2 options. You can either conquer more territories or you can go into "decline".
To conquer you take back any excess troops you have on your regions (leaving one on each region you control) and then go about conquering more regions. You can also take back all your troops and start over, but you have to re conquer the regions you abandoned.

Going into decline is what makes the game interesting. By going into decline, you put your power at the bottom of the stack, you turn over your race card, and you flip over 1 token in each of your regions and discard the rest back to the box.

On your next turn you can choose a new race/power combo, and still collect victory coins for as long as your in decline race is on the board.

My Thoughts:
The game is real fun and there is quite a bit of strategy involved. "Do you go into decline?", "Do you conquer more regions?" etc..

The game can take quite a bit if your playing for the first time, but subsequent games can go pretty quick. I also liked that they give you 2 different double sided boards depending on how many players are playing. If your not into the risk type of game, this game is not for you. If you are looking for a good time with lots of thinking involved this is the right game for you.

Cost:  I bought it for about $40, it retails for $50.


Verdict: This is a very unique game and one that will definitely see more playtime. Playworthy!

Grill off with Ultra-Hand

  
Its been awhile since I posted, but since a few of my friends have been creating new blogs, I decided to pick this up.

On a whim, I decided to buy this from Club Nintendo after reading about it on www.kotaku.com. It was only 80 coins which is a pretty small number compared to what most stuff from Club Nintendo cost.

About the game: The game is a pretty basic casual game. You are an Ultra Hand which is an extendable claw type device. Your sitting in front of 3 bbq's and your job is to take the food that is on top of each of the bbq's and plate em. You have to extend the claw, grab the food, retract the claw and drop the food onto a plate.

What makes the game interesting is the "Just Right's".

Controls: The controls are pretty intuitive. You hold the Nunchuk and Wii Remote Vertical and when you bring them far apart the Ultra Hand extends. When you bring them closer together the Ultra Hand retracts.

Holding down the A grabs and holds the food. Letting go of A drops the food. These controls work pretty well and if you get into a rhythm you can go pretty quick.

You can also control the fire with the B button or the Z button.

Graphics: I was not expecting much here, but they are a cutesy type of graphics. There is some detail with the fire and lightning, but nothing too spectacular.

Sound: This makes the game pretty fun. The sound/music has a good beat and gets your heart pumping as you get closer to a big number with the "Just Rights".

Gameplay: The game is pretty simple, but its the "Just Rights" that make it more interesting. The food will sit on top of the bbq and after about 5sec (depending on the food) the food will get bigger. This is the point in time where you want to grab it. The more consecutive "Just Rights" you get in a row the more points you will get and the more hectic the game becomes.

Something that also makes the game interesting is that you can control the strength of the fire on the bbq. You can either leave the fire alone, or you can make it blazing which cooks the food quicker.

The game ends if you leave food on the bbq for too long or if you drop it.There is a High score list, but its only your scores not anything from other people on the Internet.

Verdict: Playworthy  

Ultra Hand is a pretty fun game for so cheap. The only thing I would have loved to see was some sort of online interactivity. Even if the high score list was able to connect to other players, that would have been better than nothing at all. Even without the online connectivity the game is still very addicting and fun.