Board Game Review - Dungeon Twister: Prison

A guy asked me the other day if, having reviewed games for going on a decade or so, my taste in games had changed. I would not say it has - my favorite game is still an old-school dungeon crawl from the early 90s. But one thing has changed - I don't really like Dungeon Twister any more.I reviewed Dungeon Twister more than three years ago, and back then, I thought it was a pretty cool game. Even now, as I write about how I really did not enjoy Dungeon...

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Update - The Dogs Are Back

I want to thank everyone who was concerned for my dopey dogs. It's been a tough week and a half, and it wore us down worrying about our stupid pets. But yesterday Animal Control decided they were harmless jackasses, and not hardened killers, and so as of last night, both dogs are back home. They cost us a mint in boarding fees and animal-at-large citations, so we may be feeding them ramen noodles for a few weeks, but they're back home where they belo...

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Expansion Review - Jungle Elves and Cloaks

I usually like to have something worth saying before I start typing up one of these reviews. Like, I want to tell you reasons you will enjoy the thing I'm reviewing, or reasons I hated it, or ways that it is better than some other thing. Optimally, what I say in a review will have some bearing on your decision to buy (or not) the thing I review. You know, in a perfect world.So I find myself a little non-plussed at tonight's review. The thing about...

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Movie Review (Sorta) - To Kill A Mockingbird

Last week, I took my kids to the movies. This was a big deal because for one thing, the theater didn't actually open until the next day, so it was kind of a celebration pre-opening thing. For another thing, we went to see a digitally restored copy of To Kill A Mockingbird, which is an absolutely amazing movie. I realize that it's not exactly a nerd movie, or one likely to appeal to gamers in general. I also realize that my event reviews are not usually...

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Board Game Review - Castle Ravenloft

This might be the least timely review ever written. By this point, every other reviewer alive has chimed in about Castle Ravenloft. It was one of last year's biggest releases, and everyone had to talk about it and argue about it and disagree about it and either proclaim it the best game ever created, or call it a heaping pile of rabbit pellets. And while all that was happening, I found myself completely unable to get a copy, so that when I do finally...

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Event Review - Fixing the Fence

I was going to write a review of To Kill A Mockingbird tonight. I took my kids to see a remastered version of the 1967 classic last week. Then the next morning my dogs got out, ran a mile in the middle of the city, and killed some lady's cat on her front lawn. Now they're in quarantine and we're waiting to find out if they're going to be euthanized (which is a pretty way to say that some city employee with an eighth-grade education is going to stick a needle in them and pump them full of poison). So the movie review got canceled, because my mood...

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Board Game Review - Forlorn: Hope

Victory Point Games has a slogan that's kind of a double-edged sword (as well as a cheesy riff of an old Shakespeare line). The slogan is, 'The gameplay's the thing.' On the one hand, that sounds like a company that specializes in games that are fun to play (as opposed to all those game companies who are chasing that elusive demographic of people who like games that are not fun to play). But the flipside of that slogan says, 'we focus on gameplay,...

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Card Game Review - I Say, Holmes

I just decided that this is Victory Point Games week. I'm saving the best for last, so for the mid-week review, I'm going to tell you why you should, under no circumstances I can imagine, play I Say, Holmes.I like Sherlock Holmes. I like stories about Sherlock Holmes, and games, and even that total reinvention-slash-blasphemy that featured Iron Man as the title character. So I was pretty excited to play I Say, Holmes, because the VPG site said that...

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Board Game Review - Loot & Scoot

I talked to a guy one time who said that you can't judge a book by its cover. It didn't really make sense. I mean, if the cover says, 'Introductory Theoretical Physics,' it's a safe bet that the romance dialog is going to be a little forced. And if the picture on the front looks like it was drawn by special ed kids in a second-chance reform school, it's probably not destined to be a New York Times bestseller. I mean, I can judge a lot about a book...

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Card Game Review - Warhammer Invasion

My wife is awesome. I'm going to tell you why.First, she's a trooper. She's had chronic, near-debilitating back pain since an idiot doctor couldn't stop talking golf long enough to do her epidural properly and gave her permanent damage to her spine. She has fibromyalgia, which was misdiagnosed by her doctor, who then proceeded to overdose her on vicodin and predisone. The overdoses resulted in a weakened bone structure, so that her knees were so...

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General Video Game Rant - Video Games Are All Grown Up

Video games are just about as old as I am. I was just young whelp when pinball halls started to feature stand-up arcade games, and we were the first family on our block to own an Atari (probably because the other families on our block were retirees). I’ve watched video games grow up with me, from the Nintendo Entertainment System and the original Playstation to the Xbox 360 and the rise of online video games. And one thing I’ve noticed is that where...

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Expansion Review - Thunderstone: Dragonspire

Once again, I'm handing over tonight's review to my favorite (read: only) guest reviewer - my dad. He likes Thunderstone, and I don't, so I sent him Dragonspire and he reviewed it for me. Saves me playing the game (which, as I mentioned, I don't like) and gets me out of writing a review. It's like a one-night vacation. So while I kick back and go to bed early, you can enjoy this in-depth look at the newest Thunderstone expansion. Give it up for my...

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Card Game Review - Death Angel

Space Hulk is one crazy fun game. The new one, with all the different sculpts and the embossed floor tiles, is both fun and stunning to gaze upon. I like the quality versus quantity aspect of the game, and it's fun to blast creepy aliens with space marines in power armor. So I was really surprised when I played Death Angel, the card game based on Space Hulk, and didn't like it at all.The story is the same. You have a team of marines, and they go...

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Board Game Review - Pastiche

The other day, a friend of mine mentioned in passing that I hated Euro-style games. The thing is, I don't. I like lots of games that are made in Germany and are all about harvesting beans or preparing dinner. And to prove that I like games that aren't all about gunfire or topless women, here's a very positive review of a game called Pastiche, in which players make copies of historic paintings. No bodies anywhere.In truth, you're not actually creating...

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