Frank Branham: Quick Thoughts on Essen Games; Galaxy Trucker; Rock and Roll

Sigh, I got stuck working a bit late two evenings this week and was otherwise distracted.

Agricola: Aside from my merry trashing of the phenomenon last week, I think I really like this game. It will take a few more plays, but I think it might suit me more than Caylus. I particularly like how the interaction is all focused around choosing actions instead of fighting over turning in sets, and how scoring seems more like you are actually building things instead of just turning in sets of cubes.

Crazy Diamond: I've played only the title game with three. This is, most certainly, not a game for three. It felt almost like playing a pretty form of air traffic control backgammon with multiple paths. You are always trying to find a reasonably optimal move that gives you maximum distance and allows you to advance well on any future roll. This part is remarkably compelling in a kind of good 60s roll-and-move family game kind of way.

The odd part is that the second part of the game where you close down routes doesn't work with three. With three, it is not worth buying routes, and the game seems to need four or five players before that becomes a viable option.

Galaxy Trucker: Most of the comments I've read on this game place it as kind of a mediocre, vaguely interesting game that they perhaps decided to pass on. As opposed to me, who was practically wandering the streets, begging for people to bring it back to me.

Ward did, and our group adores it.

The game does REQUIRE four players, in a way which makes that 2-4 number on the box just seem silly. The building phase where you quickly bolt together your ships reminds me a bit of the classic speed jigsaw puzzle games Situation 4 and Situation 7—or perhaps a version of Factory Fun without so much of the planning and thinking.

Then the journey phase is an extended scoring round with its own drama. The better players have looked at the decks and are trying to remember what the upcoming cards were. There is still quite a bit of interaction in several events, mostly caused by having to keep lead position in the pack. It has a bit of a wacky races feel.

The reason the game wants four players is partially for better interaction during the journey, but mostly because the limited tile distribution actually takes effect. With two or three, you tend to build perfect, powerful, finely tuned ships. With four, your ships end up more like Andy Griffith's homemade spacecraft from Salvage I. Except far less reliable.

The extra peer pressure also makes you build a little too fast. One time I built a nearly perfectly fine-tuned fast battle ship with tons of extra batteries so I would never run out of power, but no shields. Things went badly.

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A large number of old PS2 and Xbox games went away last week, and a massive box containing a drum kit, guitar and USB microphone came back. It is called Rock Band, and it is possibly the silliest excess yet wrought on the videogame world.

One which would seem really pointless to play solo. It completely wants three players playing guitar, drums and microphone. (Bass is so massively and totally boring. Sorry Brian.)

It ends up being like Guitar Hero, except that there is a focus on bailing your bandmates out, timing your overdrive together for lots of points, and arguing over what song comes next. You can also learn what the lyrics to a Nirvana song actually are.

I've only played the drums for a bit on Easy and Medium, and they are brutally difficult compared to the guitar. This is particularly obvious on the Police songs where I'm pretty much playing one note over and over, and Sandi and Copeland are dealing with random sets of colored bars flying by at a decent clip.

The other funny part is the character dress-up portion, which of course has my character Udo in the expected 3D glasses and a pith helmet. Sandi has been playing My Goth Barbie with "The Monsters" drummer, Wods.
© 2007 Frank Branham

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Comments:

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I’d be all over Rockband, except that my wife doesn’t allow wired controllers.  Our TV is 30 feet in front of the stereo rack, so wires need to be really long.  And I forget to clean up....or maybe it’s just such a pain to clean up when I know that I’m just going to play again the next day.  So until we get wireless rockband, I guess I’ll have to stick to GH III. Can’t wait for Agricola, got my pre-order in.  :) Trucker sounds fun too, but it has a common issue with a lot of new games, we mostly play with 5 or 6. Posted by Jonathan Greisz on Nov 29, 2007 at 08:01 AM | #

Re Agricola:  As I’ve said elsewhere, the mechanics and theme mesh REALLY well in this game (no, you are not just turning in sets of wooden cubes, it ‘feels’ like you are breeding animals, harvesting, expanding your family, etc) Re Rock Band:  Can’t wait to get a copy.  Like Jonathan above, I’ll settle for GHIII for now.  Currently working on developing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome trying to complete ‘Barracuda’ on Hard. Posted by Robert Ramirez on Nov 29, 2007 at 09:57 AM | #

Yes, on theme, what Robert said. Posted by Mike Siggins on Nov 29, 2007 at 10:57 AM | #

Yes on what Mike said. Posted by Robert Ramirez on Nov 29, 2007 at 11:24 AM | #

For Galaxy trucker with less than 4, I suppose you could try to remove some of the components of each type.  It would be tricky to keep the proper ratio of connection types, but that may not be a problem since you never know what that imaginary 3rd and/or 4th player may have built his ship like anyway. Just removing the proper ratio of each type of component should help.  Even randomly removing a number of tokens may work, since again, you never know what the other players would have used anyway.  You might end up with a shortage of lasers for instance, but I’d have to guess that 99% of the time, a random selection of tiles should be pretty balanced. The other problem is that with 2 players, you are always at least in second place.  You may need to adjust the Planet cards to only use the first and last planets, or the first and third. FWIW, I love the game and rate it a 10. Posted by Mark Haberman on Nov 29, 2007 at 11:42 AM | #

Hey, if the bass in the game is boring, that’s the fault of the folks that converted it to button-pushes. Songs like “Detroit Rock City” and “Tom Sawyer” have great bass lines...if they have been boringified, that is a travesty. I will have to come over to Swamp Castle and see for myself. Posted by Brian Schoner on Nov 29, 2007 at 02:29 PM | #

The other problem is that we are still kind of slogging through some of the early songs. It takes longer to open up songs because you have this weird world tour mode. So we’re more at the Creep, Ok Go, and My Sharona level. Sandi now has a very special loathing for My Sharona. Posted by Frank Branham on Nov 29, 2007 at 02:55 PM | #

Wow, I just jammed with my buddy Jimmy for about 7 hours today - I can handle many of the beginner songs on easy drums, but you get too much kick drum in there, and I’m totally lost. I’ve got no foot-hand coordination, it seems.  But, I’m gonna work on that. Posted by Brett Myers on Nov 29, 2007 at 10:45 PM | #

Okay ... I’m a different Brian ... but I thought I’d comment anyway! Bass boring? I suppose if you plonk away like Adam Clayton it can be, but if you actually play, like Geddy Lee or Chris Wolstenholme, it’s a far better experience than being a widdler on guitar ;-) I agree with the other Brian (S) ... it’s a travesty. Posted by Brian Robson on Nov 30, 2007 at 03:43 AM | #

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