Reviews 16 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Hey, That’s My Fish!

Paul: Hi Brendan!

Brendan: Paul.

Paul: Would you like to get together and review Hey, That’s My Fish!? I am not incredulous, it’s just that the title of the game ends with an exclamation point and then I wanted to add a question mark because I am asking you, Brendan, a question.

Brendan: What is your question?

Paul: Why is your hood up? I am asking you this question to highlight that your hood is up because our readers, at home, cannot see how you have decided to array your attire.

Brendan: My hood is up because it is cold. It is cold because we have been playing Hey, That’s My Fish, which is a game set on some melting ice. Melting, probably from global warming, but still cold.

Paul: That’s good! Because I just asked you if you wanted to review it would you get with the program please okay I’m going to insert a page break and we’re getting down to this and I want a lot less of your attitude today because frankly-

Eurogamer review: Talisman Digital Edition

Quinns: Morning, ladies and gents! Let’s start the week with a clatter of dice a scream of horror. I’ve reviewed the digital edition of Talisman: The Magical Quest Game for Eurogamer, though the article is mostly my thoughts on Talisman.

Stuff like this:

Talisman isn’t just random. It is riotously, hilariously unfair. I remember my friend crying with laughter because my pious Knight kept finding money. Nothing but bags and bags of money under every single rock, and never anything to spend it on. I was still waving around my crap Fisher Price sword while she was wielding a magic lance atop a benign unicorn. Finally, I arrived on a space where I could draw three adventure cards at once, and the first was a merchant caravan. Success!

The second card was a group of brigands who stole all of my money and dumped it on the other side of the board, for anyone to take. And as always in Talisman, you resolve nasty cards first.

…And so on. You’ll find the full article right here. I had a ton of fun writing it! This box is all magic and problems.

Quinns: Readers with their finger on the pulse (of strategic wine-making board games) might be aware of this Kickstarter for Tuscany: Expand the World of Viticulture. Totaling $277,258 at the time of writing, it offers a copy of the much hyped Viticulture, unavailable since the first Kickstarter in 2012, as well as a new, massive Tuscany expansion.

In other words I finally have a reason to review the ludicrously heavy copy of Viticulture which Stonemaier Games sent me a year ago, before triumphantly flinging it out of my window, killing a passerby in my desperation to get it out of my life.

OR WILL I? As you’d imagine from Viticulture’s continued bobbing atop the public consciousness like chunks of cork in a bottle, this game’s really very good.

Quinns: A lot of you guys said you were really excited about Rampage, and it’s easy to see why. A game of destroying a real-life three dimensional city? AND enjoy misadventures with real-life spit? Sold!

I just gave my review to the mighty Eurogamer. It starts like this…

In Rampage, everybody plays a big, stompy kaiju monster, and the game ends when you’ve all levelled a town. Like a board game from the ’80s (think of the merciless TV advertising, the photogenic kids shouting and high-fiving), a game of Rampage starts by offering you an immaculate, three-dimensional city, and wants you to delight in knocking it over. At the end of the game, the player who caused the most destruction to the city, its inhabitants and the other monsters is the winner.

And then, like the lashing of a great monster tail, the review goes on to have not one, but TWO separate twists. Go have a read, people! And definitely don’t write this one off as too silly for you. It has a lizard brain to it, full of animal cunning.

Brendan: It’s simplicity week here on Shut Up & Sit Down and I am celebrating with margherita pizza, simplest of the foods. But also with a board game. Concept is a new party game from the French publisher behind Mascarade and City of Horror. But it is about as far removed from those games as you can get.

This is a game all about guesswork, language and stifled communication, about creating brilliant new ways to express old ideas – oh, I forgot the game. Hang on, I’ll go get it. Quinns, don’t eat my pizza while I’m gone.

Quinns: Of course not!

Brendan: Okay, I’ve got the … You’ve eaten my pizza.

Quinns: …

Quinns: Heya Matt. What’cha reading?

Matt: It’s Second World War Infantry Tactics by Stephen Bull. An excellent introduction to the infantry doctrine adopted by the antagonists of that famous conflict. I picked it up because it’s listed in the bibliography of this game, Band of Brothers: Ghost Panzer.

Quinns: Oh my god! UNDEAD TANKS?

Matt: …No. Ghost Panzer is the sequel to Band of Brothers: Screaming Eagles which was about the 101st Airborne of televisual fame. This one concerns the exploits of the 11th Panzer on the Eastern Front, and they get their name from the spectral stencil they sprayed on their vehicles. It’s all in the bibliography.

Quinns: A game with a bibliography? It’s not the sexiest of selling points, but what the hell! Let’s play!

Matt: No.

Quinns: What?

Quinns: Full disclosure! Guts of Glory is the work of a couple of friends of mine, and their background isn’t in table gaming, but the prestigious New York game design scene. And you can tell.

The manual’s hilarious. The box has some kind of space age linen finish, and art that goes all the way around it. Most importantly, it’s a game with a theme that isn’t contemporary, historical, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, adventure or steampunk, which is something I can say about zero of the eighty games in my living room. Here, finally, is something inventive.

Guts of Glory is a post-apocalyptic, surrealist, competitive eating competition. A game of using motor oil to wash down boxes of spiders, or snatching an extra jaw from another player to help you chew a time machine. If that doesn’t intrigue you, my last recourse is the following line from the manual: “Play begins with the hungriest player. If there is a tie, play begins with the angriest player.”

Paul: Hey Matt! Quinns and the others are going down the pub and they asked me … well, they didn’t ask, exactly, but I thought you might get … erm, wanna come?

Thrower: No. Can’t you see I’m working?

Paul: Is that a ledger? Are you an ACCOUNTANT? I presumed you lived on secret backhanders from the Pentagon. What’s this game here?

Thrower: That’s A Distant Plain. It’s got solo rules, so I was hoping to play during my break. But I think I made a poor choice.

Paul: How so? It isn’t very good?

Thrower: I wouldn’t say that. But let’s step back. A Distant Plain is a game about the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and its ongoing consequences. In this, it’s an astonishing rarity. Politics isn’t generally done in board games which, when you consider it, is an appalling dereliction of duty. These are social games, things you drink beer and chat over instead of hunched on the sofa, half-dressed, shivering and alone before a flickering flatscreen.

Review: 1960: The Making of the President

[We’re very sorry. Unfortunately, this week, we’re not able to give you a new video. We were planning to post another Opener, one of Matt’s friendly introductions to both gaming and cooking, but circumstances have thrown us, as Matt explains:] Matt: Hello there, Openerererers! I’m sad to say that this month’s unlikely blend of a … Read more

[Order, order. All rise for his honour Matt Drake, who returns to us once again with another review, this time of a game that’s gaining quite the reputation around these parts. Is such a reputation deserved? Well, Mr. Drake has a few things to say. Please, take your seats and remain quiet while the review is in progress.]

The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game came out a couple months ago, and the internet has been a-go-go with praise. I have read glowing reviews, had friends tell me it was simply amazing and heard people compare it to solid-gold toilets with built-in bidets. (I made up that toilet thing. I don’t actually know anyone who thinks a gold toilet would be a good idea.)

Well, allow me to retort.

Review: Hey, That’s My Fish!

Eurogamer review: Talisman Digital Edition

Review: Viticulture

Review: Rampage

Review: Concept

Review: Ghost Panzer

Review: Guts of Glory

Review: A Distant Plain

An apology, a look back at an old review, a breakfast calzone

Review: Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

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