(boardgame; $34.99; 2-4 players; Ages 10+; www.zmangames.com)
(five stars)
Speaking of games that require cooperation, "Pandemic" was a game that held very little appeal for me from reading the back of the box, until I got it home and gave it a whirl. Like most people, the idea of board games means competition - I win so that you lose - and although I have played many video games where players cooperate to beat the computer, I had never heard of such a concept being applied to a board game. And how could playing against a board be any fun?
"Pandemic" involves the spread of four diseases (represented by different-colored cubes) into major cities across the globe. Players take on the roles of specialists from the CDC in Atlanta, each with their own special ability, to travel the world curing diseases in an attempt to come up with a cure for the four diseases before a catastrophic outbreak occurs.
The goal is simple- get five of the same-colored cards and trade them in at a research station such as Atlanta to cure that disease. Cure all four diseases and the game is won. On each player's turn, players can charter flights across the map to treat diseases in cities that are teetering on the brink of an outbreak, meet up with other players in cities to give or receive cards, build research stations, or play special event cards. Information about what cards players are holding can and should be shared with the other players and players really need to use teamwork and cooperation to reduce the spread of disease as quickly as possible while trying to amass enough cards to cure a disease. It's also helpful once a disease has been cured, to eradicate it - a complicated step - in order to contain it an stop it completely from spreading about the board.
The challenge comes from how quickly the spread of disease begins to overtake the board. At the end of each player's turn, cards are drawn from the "Infection Deck" that reveals which cities diseases have occurred. Also, players run the risk of drawing an "Epidemic" card from their pile which causes all of the Infection cards to be shuffled and placed back on top of the deck, guaranteeing another infection in the city and increasing the chance of an outbreak to adjacent cities which occurs when a city is infected with more than three of the same-color infection cubes. Cities can outbreak to other cities, thus causing chain reactions that can escalate how quickly the game can overtake, and defeat, the players.
"Pandemic" is a fantastic game that scales well with two to four players. In fact, the more people playing the game, the more difficult it becomes as each player starts with less cards in their hand and there are greater opportunities for diseases to spread. Additionally, the game has three difficulty settings, so if the "Beginner" setting is too easy for your game group to beat, you can always throw in another Epidemic card to spice it up.
Thankfully too, the game is expanded with the "On the Brink" expansion set that incorporates a whole lot of new play mechanics, character roles, and even the ability for one player to play as a Bio-terrorist, actually causing the chaos that the other players have to try and stop.
What I thought would be a boring play mechanic turned out to be one of the most intense games I have ever had the pleasure of playing. Each time a card was overturned, more tension built as I was sure the game would beat us.
Often it did... But we kept coming back for more.
Highly, highly recommended.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Splinter Cell: Conviction Review
(Xbox 360; $59.99; Rated M for Blood/Drug Reference/Intense Violence/Sexual Themes/Strong Language; www.splintercell.com)
(three and a half stars)
The Tom Clancy-branded "Splinter Cell" series has held a dear place in my heart since its debut on the original Xbox console. It refined and normalized the "stealth-action genre" that had been dominated by the "Metal Gear" franchise on the PlayStation. Instead of awkward, Japanese-inspired camera work and controls, "Splinter Cell" stood out as being easier to navigate and quicker to get out of a tense situation. It was, by no means, an easy game to get into though; even with its refined controls, "Splinter Cell" was definitely a hardcore gamer's game of hide-and-sneak. It took patience and planning to make it through the levels with minimal amounts of detection and using shadows and distractions to your advantage. It also had its fair share of frustrations in levels that would automatically end and force a restart if detected.
But that was part of its charm- it required the player to be methodical, which was such a nice change from the twitchy action games that dominate the consoles.
"Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow," the second game in the series, introduced a multiplayer mode that was refined in the third title "Chaos Theory," and completely overhauled in the fourth game "Double Agent." The multiplayer featured 2-on-2 (or 3-on-3 in "Double Agent") matches pitting Spies versus Mercenaries in high-tech game of cat-and-mouse. Simply: the spies would try to hack terminals for points and the mercenaries would try to stop them. It remains one of the most original and well-implemented forms of multiplayer to this day, though the steep learning curve and real need for teamwork is what probably caused the masses to go back to multiplayer games where you can shoot up guys real good-like.
"Splinter Cell: Conviction," the most recent release in the franchise, has been a hotly anticipated title since Ubisoft showed off its original incarnation in 2007. Back then Sam Fisher, the game's protagonist, looked more like a shaggy-haired, brooding emo-kid than the cold, calculating super-spy that he is. The 2007 version of "Conviction" also showed a lot of mechanics in gameplay, like hiding in crowds and hand-to-hand combat, that would later show up in Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed." For a while "Conviction," like its hero, went off-the-grid, and no one heard about it for a year. At E3 in 2009, Sam was back and his game was completely revamped to look and feel more like something out of the "Bourne" movies.
Sam, who used to only be truly safe in the shadows, now has the firepower to pop out of the darkness and engage in straight-up, cover-based shoot outs. Though the firefights aren't as prolific and eggregious as the would be in a game like "Gears of War," to see Sam do it is a little bizzare and definitely emphasizes the "Action" part of the "Stealth-Action" genre.
In fact, though stealth is still used in the game, and even smartly in some ways, players have to really want to be stealthy and avoid detection instead of being outgunned and forced to do so. In past games, levels were designed in such a way that players felt the freedom to climb in, on, over, or around just about everything to approach the levels from different angles to avoid detection.
Here in "Conviction," there is generally only one way of getting through a situation, and often times stealth will only take you so far and players will be forced to engage in firefights. Certainly at points in the game, the only way through the level is to start shooting, and this really takes away the fun in being sneaky.
Sure, you can use the "Last Known Position" trick where enemies get a bead on where they last saw you and converge on that position, giving you ample time to sneak around them and take them out in creative ways, but when your default weapon is so powerful that a well-placed head shot will drop most enemies with one pull of the trigger, you can pretty much stand your ground.
I would like to be able to play the game in such a way to not take down a single enemy, I do not believe it's possible to do so in "Conviction." Maybe it never was in the "Splinter Cell" franchise, but it should at least feel like it.
Another gripe about "Conviction" is the total removal of the Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer. It is replaced by a full cooperative campaign that can be played with two players which act as a prologue to the events of "Conviction." Working together as a team to take down enemies can be fun, especially when working with a good "You set 'em up, I'll knock 'em down" strategy; but there is nothing in the levels themselves that really require a second player, as evidenced by the fact that a single player can play through the entire co-op campaign alone. The same problems in the single-player campaign make themselves apparent in the multiplayer: you have to want to be stealthy, but now you also have to want to cooperate.
Nevertheless, "Conviction" remains a solid game, and certainly the easier learning curve makes it a good introduction to those unfamiliar with the series, but its refinement in controls and mechanics come at the cost of dumbing down the gameplay too much for me, and the lack of a real competative multiplayer is disappointing.
Ubisoft, I'm telling you: if you design a Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer game for download, you may not have the massess jumping into it over "Call of Duty," but you will have a loyal fanbase that will be thanking you- the same fanbase that supported you to get to the fifth game in the "Splinter Cell" series.
(three and a half stars)
The Tom Clancy-branded "Splinter Cell" series has held a dear place in my heart since its debut on the original Xbox console. It refined and normalized the "stealth-action genre" that had been dominated by the "Metal Gear" franchise on the PlayStation. Instead of awkward, Japanese-inspired camera work and controls, "Splinter Cell" stood out as being easier to navigate and quicker to get out of a tense situation. It was, by no means, an easy game to get into though; even with its refined controls, "Splinter Cell" was definitely a hardcore gamer's game of hide-and-sneak. It took patience and planning to make it through the levels with minimal amounts of detection and using shadows and distractions to your advantage. It also had its fair share of frustrations in levels that would automatically end and force a restart if detected.
But that was part of its charm- it required the player to be methodical, which was such a nice change from the twitchy action games that dominate the consoles.
"Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow," the second game in the series, introduced a multiplayer mode that was refined in the third title "Chaos Theory," and completely overhauled in the fourth game "Double Agent." The multiplayer featured 2-on-2 (or 3-on-3 in "Double Agent") matches pitting Spies versus Mercenaries in high-tech game of cat-and-mouse. Simply: the spies would try to hack terminals for points and the mercenaries would try to stop them. It remains one of the most original and well-implemented forms of multiplayer to this day, though the steep learning curve and real need for teamwork is what probably caused the masses to go back to multiplayer games where you can shoot up guys real good-like.
"Splinter Cell: Conviction," the most recent release in the franchise, has been a hotly anticipated title since Ubisoft showed off its original incarnation in 2007. Back then Sam Fisher, the game's protagonist, looked more like a shaggy-haired, brooding emo-kid than the cold, calculating super-spy that he is. The 2007 version of "Conviction" also showed a lot of mechanics in gameplay, like hiding in crowds and hand-to-hand combat, that would later show up in Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed." For a while "Conviction," like its hero, went off-the-grid, and no one heard about it for a year. At E3 in 2009, Sam was back and his game was completely revamped to look and feel more like something out of the "Bourne" movies.
Sam, who used to only be truly safe in the shadows, now has the firepower to pop out of the darkness and engage in straight-up, cover-based shoot outs. Though the firefights aren't as prolific and eggregious as the would be in a game like "Gears of War," to see Sam do it is a little bizzare and definitely emphasizes the "Action" part of the "Stealth-Action" genre.
In fact, though stealth is still used in the game, and even smartly in some ways, players have to really want to be stealthy and avoid detection instead of being outgunned and forced to do so. In past games, levels were designed in such a way that players felt the freedom to climb in, on, over, or around just about everything to approach the levels from different angles to avoid detection.
Here in "Conviction," there is generally only one way of getting through a situation, and often times stealth will only take you so far and players will be forced to engage in firefights. Certainly at points in the game, the only way through the level is to start shooting, and this really takes away the fun in being sneaky.
Sure, you can use the "Last Known Position" trick where enemies get a bead on where they last saw you and converge on that position, giving you ample time to sneak around them and take them out in creative ways, but when your default weapon is so powerful that a well-placed head shot will drop most enemies with one pull of the trigger, you can pretty much stand your ground.
I would like to be able to play the game in such a way to not take down a single enemy, I do not believe it's possible to do so in "Conviction." Maybe it never was in the "Splinter Cell" franchise, but it should at least feel like it.
Another gripe about "Conviction" is the total removal of the Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer. It is replaced by a full cooperative campaign that can be played with two players which act as a prologue to the events of "Conviction." Working together as a team to take down enemies can be fun, especially when working with a good "You set 'em up, I'll knock 'em down" strategy; but there is nothing in the levels themselves that really require a second player, as evidenced by the fact that a single player can play through the entire co-op campaign alone. The same problems in the single-player campaign make themselves apparent in the multiplayer: you have to want to be stealthy, but now you also have to want to cooperate.
Nevertheless, "Conviction" remains a solid game, and certainly the easier learning curve makes it a good introduction to those unfamiliar with the series, but its refinement in controls and mechanics come at the cost of dumbing down the gameplay too much for me, and the lack of a real competative multiplayer is disappointing.
Ubisoft, I'm telling you: if you design a Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer game for download, you may not have the massess jumping into it over "Call of Duty," but you will have a loyal fanbase that will be thanking you- the same fanbase that supported you to get to the fifth game in the "Splinter Cell" series.
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