Comic Review - 100 Bullets

I just finished an amazing comic book series. And when I say, 'just finished,' I mean 'half an hour ago.' I've been plowing through it for two months, and finally read the grand finale. And oh, man, was it grand.

The book is called 100 Bullets. Like many of the comics I prefer to read, it's done. The story has been told, and tied off with a bow. In this particular case, the bow is stained with blood, soaked in gasoline, and burned around the edges. This grisly bow wrapped the title three years ago, which meant that I was able to read every issue, in order, in the course of two months. Not bad for a book that ran for ten years.

If you read any of the blurbs about 100 Bullets, they will tell you that it's a story where an old dude gives somebody a briefcase with a gun, 100 bullets and irrefutable proof of the person who wronged them. Oh, and carte blanche. They can kill people like it was free.

So this would seem to be a revenge fantasy comic book, but it's not. There's this facade, this fake front of a story that seems to ask you if you would kill someone if you knew you could get away with it. But it's much more than that. It's an enormous tale spun over 100 issues of grime and grit and wholesale murder. It's a tale of conspiracy and crime, villainy and treachery, with a distinct lack of heroics.

Although if we're being completely fair, the bigger story delivered in 100 Bullets also presents the same sort of moral dilemma as the simple attache case with the gun inside. Because the true masterminds of this international conspiracy act with no sense of remorse or repercussion, the story takes on a sort of double image - you've got Joe Street, getting away with murder, and then you've got the people that gave Joe the gun, and they're acting with just as much impunity.

But, the story goes on to ask, is any act as powerful as murder ever without consequence? Just because you don't wind up in prison, does not mean you got away with it. The measure of your crime might be a cascade of violence, where you become a target because you killed your target, or it might just be having to live with the knowledge that what you did is both irreversible and horribly wrong.

OK, that's enough about the philosophy of 100 Bullets. If it was just a head-twist comic, it wouldn't need to have ten years to tell the story. It could sum it up in one issue. For a comic this good to last this long, it has to have something more - and this one does. Great characters, killer fight scenes, intricate plots, and loads of sexy broads make 100 Bullets one hell of a great crime story.

The characters, in particular, bring this book to life. From the Hispanic ghetto girl who finds out she knows hapkido to the conscienceless Hawaiian killing machine with a perpetual mad-on for the entire world, the people in 100 Bullets are more than just plot devices. You can be just as entertained watching Curtis Hughes reconnect with his long-lost son as you are when Cole Burns shoots up a warehouse full of Russian mobsters. There's plenty of action in 100 Bullets, but the best parts happen when the characters, and not the bullets, take the main stage.

This being a Vertigo comic should be enough of a warning up front, but let me emphasize in case it wasn't clear - this is NOT a comic book for the kids. There are boobs. There are cuss words. There are beheadings and fiery death and people getting their hands blown off. And those aren't even the worst of it. Seriously, do not go into this book with a weak stomach. 100 Bullets throws punches that make Tarantino look like Walt Disney.

Now, you could probably do like I did, and get all 100 issues on Comixology, but in this case, I would recommend checking out the trades. There are 13 of them, and when you read the book, you'll understand why that's a lucky number. If you can get 'em for 15 bucks each, they'll still cost you less than buying them off Comixology. And as an added bonus, when you're done, you can loan them to a friend. Good luck doing that with a digital comic.

This link will send you to Amazon, where you can pick up this fantastic book pretty darn cheap, especially compared to what I paid for it:

FIRST SHOT, LAST CALL

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Board Game Review - Descent 2

You should not buy second-edition Descent. I think I can make my case pretty clearly for why you definitely should not get involved with this game.

For starters, Descent 2 is addictive. If you buy Descent 2, you will want to play it. And if you play it, you will not want to stop. You will be sitting in your living room, watching a perfectly good television program, and you will say to your friends, 'I think we should turn off this show and play Descent, because we all know how much we love it.' And do you know what will happen? Your friends will agree. You will never find out if Joey marries Jeannie on the uncharted island. You will only find out if Splig the fat goblin king manages to make off with the shadow binder.

In fact, when you play Descent 2 and discover that it's about as close to a role-playing game that you can come without having to work on a fake English accent and learning to use 'methinks' in a sentence, you may find that you cannot stop thinking about playing this game. When you discover that you can play out exciting stories, even an entire campaign with continuing, improving characters, and never have to do any accounting or erasing on a three-page character sheet, and never have to recalculate move speed in feet per round or carry weight for encumbrance, you may find that you lose your friends because you quit showing up at the Saturday D&D 73.75 Edition sessions.

And it gets worse. Because when you play Descent 2, you will be inclined to spend an awful lot of money. Yes, you can get by with the base game - but you won't want to. You can expand your experience with the Lair of the Wyrm expansion, and then you will want to spend more money. And when you hear that all you need to play with every single monster ever published for this version or the last is a relatively affordable card expansion that restats the monsters for this version of the game, and then when you further learn that you can actually use all those monsters in the base version of the game without having to change anything, you will want to go out and buy every single expansion for the first edition of Descent despite the fact that first edition Descent is Latin for 'look something up.'

You should also avoid supporting a company as diabolical as Fantasy Flight Games. They have created a game that will appeal to you on so many levels - tense adventures, fast gameplay, exciting battles, and thrilling stories - you will be powerless to stop yourself from throwing more money at them. You will want to buy one or two extra sets of dice, so that you don't have to pass the blue die around the table every turn. You will want to get an account at the FFG site so that you can access the quest vault and download more adventures. You will want to spend all your free time creating adventures, or more immediately, playing the crap out of this horrifyingly awesome game. Should you really be giving your money to a company so willing to profit off of your addictive nature? No. You should not.

Some of you may remember first edition Descent. You might laugh at my warning, because you remember how effortlessly you shrugged off the advances of the original game. You may think that you can as easily ignore the second edition, just because you remember the clunky mechanics, the constant puzzle-solving trying to make sure every corner was covered, the endless accounting of gathering and spending evil points (or whatever they were - second edition Descent has made me block out painful memories of the original). But don't be so sure you can resist the siren call of Descent 2. Everything that was wrong with first edition is gone, and everything that was great about it is improved. Descent 2 is better than its predecessor in every insidious way, and you will not laugh off its seductive allure so easily.

You may even decide that you can just dip your toes in the pool, that you can try Descent 2 without becoming hopelessly addicted. Well, heed my warning - just because you finish the main campaign that comes with the base game does not mean this game goes away. Because FFG is supporting your developing habit with a burgeoning online resource where you can try dozens of new quests, your addiction will not end simply because you finish with the quests in the base game. There will be no limit to your new addiction. You will be helpless. Descent 2 will come to your house, open your wallet, spend your money, and then force you to spend every waking moment either playing this incredible game or thinking about the next time you can.

Still not convinced? Heed this last, personal warning - Descent 2 is better than Warhammer Quest. And until I allowed myself to be hooked by this devil in disguise, Warhammer Quest was my favorite game of all time. But now, after my own failure to tear myself from the clutches of Descent 2, I am a victim! I am a slave to my new addiction! I cannot wait to play Descent 2 again, and I have hundreds of dollars of Warhammer Quest stuff that will now be collecting dust!

Please, for the sake of your family, don't play Descent 2. FFG has made a game so habit-forming that it may take professional counseling to turn away from it, and in the meantime, your social life will suffer (at least, your social life outside the people with whom you play Descent 2). Your wallet will suffer (well, only as much as you want it to, because you really can get by with proxies if you get the conversion kit). Your love of other games will suffer (because this one will make other games look like used kitty litter). And most of all, you may find that you don't need to own seven-hundred games, that you only need this one, and then nobody will be impressed at the photographs you take of a bunch of cardboard boxes on the bookshelf in your game room.

Summary

2-5 players

Pros:
None. This game is evil and insidious.

Cons:
Fixes everything that was wrong with first edition
The closest thing I've seen to an RPG in a board game
Online resources and a conversion kit mean you can play hundreds of hours with just the base game
Beautiful art and fantastic miniatures
Very, very addictive

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Board Game Review - Viva Java

If we were to start listing themes that make me want to play a game, brewing coffee would not be anywhere near the top of the list. It's safe to assume it would be near the bottom. However, for someone, this is a gaming dream come true, so they made it a game and even went so far as to publish it.

Viva Java is one of those European-style games with an unlikely theme that tends to make the top ten lists for Euro nerds. (Seriously? Your number-one game is about farming?) However, despite being a game about going to work, it's still actually a pretty cool game. Not one I will show to my friends who like games where you break things, but one I can show to my friends who like games where you pay your taxes and cook dinner.

Coffee might be the theme of Viva Java, but rationed cooperation is the name of the game. Every turn you'll have to work with one or two other players to decide whether you want to try to score or improve your position, and you can't succeed at anything by yourself (well, theoretically you can, but you probably won't). You'll have to work with the other players if you want to get ahead - but you'll have to be careful about who you help, and when. It's great to get in on that top-selling brew, but if you're scoring points for the guy who is winning the game, it hurts you more than it helps.

One huge upside is that for a game about brewing coffee, Viva Java has a ton of interaction. Like I said, you can't play without working with other people, so unlike nearly every other game where you actually do something to the other people at the table, most of the interaction in Viva Java is nice. Help this guy research coffee growing, and you can earn the right to invest in the brew he makes later. Help the other guy whip up a mad batch of caffeine glory, and the two of you make millions together. Then help the third guy to get the beans he needs to make an even better brew, and you'll win by being the smartest at being nicest.

I don't usually spend a long time talking about the pieces in games, beyond mentioning whether they look good or not. However, Viva Java bears some discussion, because while the graphic design and art are outstanding, there are a lot of things not to like. My main beef is with these (insert favorite profanity) coffee beans. They are tiny, like a quarter-inch across, and they are half-spheres. Which means flip them one way, and they don't stay where you want them, flip them the other way and you can't pick them up. Trying to make these fantastically irritating little half-beads stay put is so difficult that it actually makes it less fun to play the game. I can think of half a dozen better ideas I've seen for markers. These things are infuriating.

And to make matters worse, you have to continually place these miniaturized frustrators on cards - which you then pick up and move all over the place, thereby spilling the 'beans' all over the table and then forgetting where they were supposed to go. The actual physical mechanic of manipulating these cards and beans is like a dexterity game all by itself, but one that if you screw it up, everyone at the table just gets mad at you.

If Viva Java were better, I would be willing to give the horrible little wood irritants a pass, but the game is only above average. One a scale of 19 to 203, Viva Java is better than mediocre and not as impressive as awesome. Granted, I would have liked it better if I could have killed something, but I really did like that a game that makes you play this smart also makes you play nice. Most games that require interaction force you to hurt your opponents; Viva Java rewards you for giving them a leg up. For people who hate to screw your friends (we call these people 'pansies,' but we like them anyway), Viva Java is a cool drink of water.

Summary

3-8 players

Pros:
How many games play 8 players? Yeah, not that many.
Actually a pretty clever game
Almost all the interaction is in the form of helping people
Engaging and attractive graphics

Cons:
Making coffee is a morning chore, not an idea for gaming
OH HOLY GOD THESE STUPID COFFEE BEANS!!!

You can only get Viva Java from Game Salute, but if you have enough people to play it, and you like to help more than you like to hurt, you can get it right here (ignore the 'preorder' tag - it's out now):
http://shop.gamesalute.com/products/viva-java-preorder

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Expansion Review - Thunderstone: Root of Corruption

Well, will you look at that - my old man to the rescue. I was all 'man, I haven't written anything tonight' and 'I have stuff to do' and 'man, I am one lazy son of a bitch.' And then I open my email and there it is - a review by my dad!

Still not ready to give it a rest.

We’ve all had that moment when we thought, “Oh, for crying out loud!  Would you give it a rest!”  Most often it’s when someone is droning on and on about a topic you have absolutely no interest in, like the guy who wants to talk without interruption about his fight with his girlfriend.  For gamers, maybe it’s the latest variation of Monopoly (there are HUNDREDS of versions of Monopoly, including pet dog versions, the Simpsons, the gay version, and, well, more than any genuine gamer, who believes one was adequate, wants to ponder).  There are several games that I think publishers should quit trying to wring another nickel out their topic and “give it a rest.”  I was beginning to have some thoughts about this with Thunderstone, and when Root of Corruption arrived at my door I had those vague thoughts waft through my mind.  And then I opened the box.  I just have to hand it to AEG, they continue to come up with great innovations that really work and add more interest and fun to Thunderstone. 

The first thing you see when you open the box is a folded gameboard – it’s big!  My cynical nature was a catalyst for those “oh, no, not a folded-map-that-will-never-lie-flat-on-the-table game mat!”  Visions of SPI.  (When a cat jumps on your game of USN, those folds lead to disaster.)  But go ahead and set that aside and tear the shrink-wrap off the cards.  There are some freakin’ cool cards here!!  And again, the artwork is awesome.  (Not like that sissy artwork in that other deck-building game.)  Do those guys at AEG lose sleep over thinking up new cards?  OF COURSE THEY DO!!  Well, after opening a few of the shrink-wraps, my cynicism was gone.  I was ready to get some friends around the table and get the cards into play.

You can’t hit a homer with every card, and from my old grognard perspective, some of these cards range from silly to down-right stupid, but then I’m an old grognard and not your average Thunderstone player.  (I know some guys will love the Moonclaw hero, but it looks pretty silly to me.)  But for a few exceptions, I really like the majority of the cards in this expansion.  In fact, in most my reviews I only single out a few cards for “honorable mention,” but as I sit here and look at all the cards I’ve set apart for honorable mention, I know I can’t list them all or I’ll lose you before the end of the review.  So I’ll pare it down.  Point is, there are a lot of awesome new cards AND concepts in this box.  So let’s get to the cards:

Treasures: First off, Gold Hammer.  (First thought when I saw the card was “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” and if you know what that is, you’re dating yourself.)  Useful in the dungeon and in the village.  Sweet treasure. 
There are two shields you find on the dungeon floor; very useful and you’ll be happy to pick them up. 
Then there’s the Immolation Orb.  It’s kind of like throwing a white phosphorus grenade.  It’ll take out a lot of monsters, but it takes one hero of level 1 with it.  (If you didn’t know, you really can’t throw a wp grenade further than its bursting radius.)  It can be a mixed blessing. 

Spells: Circle of Protection definitely gets honorable mention.  I bet someone really did lose sleep thinking up this card.  It cancels some very bad things that can happen.  Very clever.

Items: LOTS of good stuff here!  To mention just a few: Elven Waybread = Lembas.  About time.
Mind Control: A card that promotes player interaction – not that the other player will appreciate it when you play this card in front of him, but it’s a cool card.  It forces the other player to fight a specific monster.  Play it on your wife in a friendly game, and you could end up on the sofa for the night.
Tincture of Victims: This is a POWERFUL card.  It grants Attack and Strength points, and converts Magic to Physical Attacks.  But it can also add a curse card to your deck.  Well, I like it.

Monsters: Lots of curses comin’ your way!  Djinbound: Not all that powerful, but they’re all a pain to take out. 
Elemental Earth: Level 3 and look it.  Kind of like Thunderstone Panzers.  They hurt you every time.
Royal Guard: For some reason beyond me, they all sap the strength of all heroes taking them on.  I suspect it’s their b.o., but I can’t say with any authority.  I haven’t played them in a game yet, but they might elicit a groan when one is turned up.

And of course, the Heroes: Honormain Gallant: Every time he goes to the village or enters the dungeon, you have to “discard 1 card or destroy a disease.  I’m puzzled.  Does this mean he has tuberculosis (ala Doc Holiday) or that he’s overdosed on vitamins?  He’s not my best friend.
Profaned Acolyte: Whatever this poor sap does, he gets a curse.  Next expansion we need a lucky rabbit’s foot to counteract these curses.
And my favorite in the box – The Silvertongue: He’s kind of weak as a fighter, but he can pull down gold, attack points, strength, and cards.  Every deck needs this guy.

In the box you also get new cards for all the previous “Ambushers.”  Thoughtful of them.

Now about the folded-map-that-will-never-lie-flat-on-the-table.  This is a new “game-mat” for the siege rules that come with Root of Corruption.  In honest fact, you can’t get it to lay flat on the table.  Time to pull out the plexiglass.  If you’ve followed my reviews of previous Thunderstone games, you know that the only one I gave a less-than-enthusiastic review was for Thunderstone Siege.  If it’s a siege, you shouldn’t need light.  But this time I’m more intrigued by these rules.  For one thing, Thunderstone now has a cooperative rules set – how cool is that?!?  If the monsters get inside the walls, they pour in and all the players lose together.  I love this new twist to the game.  And,  what if the monsters are coming in beneath the walls?  It could happen.  Then you need light to fight in the tunnels.  OK, I’m stretching, but I do like the rules here.  Unfortunately, I don’t own a sheet of plexiglass.

And one last work that’s become kind of a trademark of my Thunderstone reviews, when you buy this expansion you get yet another large box that’s three times larger than necessary to hold the new cards.  It’s like AEG doesn’t get it, EVERYONE WHO BUYS THIS EXPANSION ALREADY HAS A WAY BIGGER BOX TO HOLD THESE CARDS!  Well, I’ve been carping about this since my first expansion review and they don’t care.  So now I have to find room to store another Thunderstone box.


Summary

Pros:
Continues to turn out great artwork.
New concepts that really work.
Blends in great with your other Thunderstone Advance cards and game play.

Cons:
OK, I HAVE to come up with some negatives.  Let me think about this.
The siege mat doesn’t lay flat.
The box (sigh) is way bigger than needed for the cards.  Still.
OH!  I have one honest complaint!  My cards were all curved from side to side, so they don’t stack well in a deck with my other Thunderstone cards.

I found a copy of Root of Corruption at Noble Knight Games. You can probably find it cheaper somewhere else, but it's real easy to get a picture from their site, and like I said in the intro, I'm lazy.
GET A GAME OR SOMETHING

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Board Game Review - Wrong Chemistry

There's this wacky little game company in Greece or Istanbul or Constantinople called MAGE Company. They make, well, games, including a Kickstarter they have going for 12 Realms, which I guess is kind of a big deal. And they sent one to me called Wrong Chemistry, though they apparently tied it to the back of a mule which they then guided by remote-control carrot all the way to Texas, because it took months to arrive.

When it did finally show up, the anticipation was killing me. I couldn't wait to play, because I had waited for almost half a year to see this little slice of genius. I'm happy to report that it's not as bad as you might assume a game would be if it came out of Bulgaria. And really, it's not fair to assume that Bulgaria would produce bad games. They have smart people there. They have modern technology like cell phones and remote-control carrots. Why would you just decide Bulgaria makes inadequate games? I'm ashamed of you.

The game itself is astonishingly light, but will still stretch your brain into salt-water taffy. The rules are two pages. And really small. There's this collection of hexes in the middle of the table, and you play a card and try to rearrange the hexes in a limited number of moves to match the image on your card. It's like an IQ test for game nerds. (You remember those grade-school IQ tests, where they made you rearrange blocks to look like stuff? I loved those. But I didn't want to make cats and question marks, I wanted to make robots and dragons. Sue me. I was eight.)

Anyway, the more complicated the card you attempt, the more points you get for it. And since you know what the board looks like at the start of your turn, you can figure out pretty quick if it's possible to create the shape you want. Only the board totally changes every turn, so you can't start planning your turn until your turn actually starts, which means you'll spend two minutes looking at your cards and mentally moving stuff around while your opponents wonder if you've been assimilated by the Borg Collective and your brain has shut down. They can't bitch too much, though, because they do the same thing on their turns.

The fact that the board changes every turn means you can't plan ahead, and honestly, that's the biggest problem I have with the game. You build what you can, expand your spacial recognition skills, maybe put together some clever plays with some of the special cards, and then your turn is over and you can rest your throbbing brain while the other players mess up any chance you might have of building a long-term strategy. Wrong Chemistry poses a fun mental challenge, but my favorite games let me plan for the long game. There is no long game in Wrong Chemistry. You play your hand and you move on.

However, just because the game is essentially new every turn does not mean it isn't a hoot. We played it a bunch of times, and that should be significant if you understand that I only needed to play it once to review it. So we played it once because we had to, and then several more times because it was fun. Planning? No. Fun? You bet.

Of course, I liked those grade-school IQ tests. I also like playing with Legos. I like rearranging things to make other things, and this game directly appeals to the parts of my brain that like building robots when I should be putting together one-way arrows. Wrong Chemistry is one part game, two parts puzzle. If you're hoping for interaction, forget it. If you want to build strategies, you're looking at the wrong game. But if you like brain puzzles and competitive spatial arrangement, Wrong Chemistry is pretty fun.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Cute art
Easy rules
Mentally challenging
Essentially a puzzle competition

Cons:
No chance of long-term strategy
The parts won't let you build a dragon with a robot penis. But then, neither did those grade-school IQ tests.

 Want more info about Wrong Chemistry? You can get it right here:
http://www.magecompany.com/wc.html

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Cartoon Review - The Avengers

Obviously, I am still a child. Not only do I play with games and toys, but I'm a sucker for a good cartoon. However, being an adult child, I am a little picky. For instance, I don't have the patience to sit through Adventure Time, and although Clone Wars is a cool-looking cartoon, I can't watch it because I know what happens to everybody (and it is not good).

But even with my distaste for superhero comic books, I still find cartoons I can dig. And my current time-eating favorite is The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. It's got all kinds of stuff I don't like - dimensional travel, silly costumes, Kirby-inspired face-masks, and a horrible theme song - but it's also got lots to love.

For instance, this cartoon (unlike the movie) got its background history right. The founding members of the Avengers were Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Wasp and Ant Man. Captain America doesn't come on the scene until the originals find him frozen in ice. The cartoon got this part right.

Another thing that makes Avengers worth watching is the banter. Clearly, this team is built on both the original, Stan Lee creations and the newly minted movie versions. Tony Stark in particular is the cocky, brash genius made interesting in the movies, which we didn't see in the comics until he had been around a while. The dialog between Cap and Stark, between Hulk and Hawkeye, between Wasp and every villain she shoots in the eye, brings dimension to the heroes.

I also like that this team that saves the world on a monthly basis has its share of interpersonal dilemmas. Ant Man leaves, then comes back. Hulk leaves, then comes back. Hawkeye likes Black Widow, then he hates her, then he likes her again. There's a lot of tension between the heroes, which makes for interesting stories even for a comic book that is largely about punching things with magical fists.

But really, all those other things could be merely palatable as long as the story holds up. And while I am tired of time-traveling world conquerors, dimension-tramping frost giants and pseuo-Nazis with magical powers, the stories built on these characters are pretty darn good. The stories build from one episode to the next, culminating in a massive showdown that has been in the works since the first half-hour. If you're even remotely able to find a reason to sit through an invasion by aliens in space spandex who travel through time, The Avengers will have keep you entertained, at least for 18 minutes at a stretch.

Actually, make that 17 minutes. You'll want to fast-forward through the opening music. It is painfully obvious that Danny Elfman was not available to record the theme song, because they apparently had to go with a cheesy boy band that rhymes 'one' with 'won.' As in, 'forever fight as one, until the battle's won.' I could only hear this once, and then I had to fast-forward to guard my sanity.

There are still better cartoons than this one, but The Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes has one thing going for it that makes it attractive to me - it's all on Netflix. Both seasons are right there, so that you never have to wait a week to see if Hulk's super-soldier serum will give him shiny green gonads. Plus there are 26 episodes in each season, for more than 15 hours of campy cartoon fun.

So The Avengers has goofy armor. It has dorky villains pulled right out of 1968. It has the new, racially correct Nick Fury (who I would like a lot less if he were not Samuel L. Jackson). It has a theme song that is very similar to musical torture. But the stories are good, the characters are enjoyable, and the show is fun. If you have a whole bunch of time to kill, you can check it out on Netflix.

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Board Game Review - City of Horror

It's time for another zombie game review!

(I wonder if other reviewers get as many requests for zombie game reviews. Does Tom Vasel get hit up to write about zombie games every three weeks? Does that binswanger who does the flashy video reviews get zombie games thrown at him like confetti at a parade? Is it just me, or is everyone getting buried in games about the walking dead? And is there no other theme we can drive into the ground, hopelessly abused, until we're sick of seeing even the fun zombie games? If a zombie game falls in the forest, will it still be a boring, tired theme that desperately needs to be replaced with SOMETHING ELSE?)

The topic of this week's review is a game called City of Horror, in which you and a bunch of friends compete to stay alive while zombies eat almost all of you. It's not a zombie-killing game, or even a zombie-surviving game. It's really a game where you bribe your friends to kill your other friends, strike allegiances and then screw the people who saved you.

It's actually very fun. It didn't have to be a zombie game to be this fun - it could have been outer-space aliens, or parasitic fungus creatures, or fourth-graders on energy drinks (that's a seriously untapped market - if you've ever volunteered in a fourth-grade classroom after recess, when all the kids smell like stale sweat and dirty Twizzlers, and seen them get cranky because they need a nap, you know how terrifying they can be). But it is a zombie game, I think because Nazis as a group are now protected by the ACLU.

Every building has a certain number of spots, and every turn, you have to move one of your people and hope there's room so you don't get stuck in the street with the zombies. You have to scrounge for drugs and food and guns, and you have to share with your friends - but there's never enough to go around, so there will be some politics.

The core mechanic in City of Horror is voting. You vote to see who gets the best stuff, and you vote to see who gets eaten by zombies. The moving part is only there to make sure you don't get too comfy. The actual game play might sound a little like this:

RALPH: Oh, man, zombies are going to eat either my mom or Bob's bookie. Anyone want to team up with me to vote that they eat Bob's bookie?
GERTY: Why would we do that? I hope you both get eaten, because you made me stand outside last turn and my little boy got his arms torn off.
BOB: Ralph, I get two votes. There's no point in voting. You can't win.
RALPH: If I vote for my mom this time, and don't give you any heat, will you help me out when it comes time to eat Gerty's other child?
BOB: No, seriously Ralph, it's a non-issue. I have two votes. You have one. Your mom is dead.
RALPH: Gerty, help me out here. I'll give you this antidote.
GERTY: Ralph, are you high? I'm not in the church. I can't vote.
BOB: Ralph, dude, your mom is toast. Stop flailing.
RALPH: Hey! Debbie! Help me out and vote for Bob's bookie!
DEBBIE: Shut up, you idiot. I'm not even playing. I'm trying to watch Matlock.

The voting phase is all kinds of brutal. There's a ton of choosing who gets to die, and you'll see a lot of arguments that point out how much better someone else is doing, to try to throw your friends under the bus. It all comes down to pointing fingers at each other and hoping you didn't catch the short straw, and that means nice people tend to win this game, mostly because nobody wants to pick on the nice people. I doubt I will ever win this game.

After four turns, the National Guard shows up in helicopters and evacuates everyone who is still alive. Presumably they also shoot all the zombies, but that part is sort of vague. They might buy all the zombies Hostess pies so Spider-Man can web them and hang them up in front of the police station. It really doesn't matter. But it is fun to picture all the zombies getting distracted by apple pies.

(If you don't get the Hostess pie/Spider-Man reference, ask a nerd who read comic books in the 70s.)

City of Horror is an interesting social experiment, if nothing else. It's interesting to wonder if this is how actual live-or-die encounters would go in real life - would your best friend force you out the door to save a crippled old lady? Would he kick you out to save himself? You hope not, but let's face it, you'll never really know. I would sleep with one eye open, if I were you.

If you're a fan of games where social interaction is more important than making the smart play, and you're not tired of zombie games yet, you might really like City of Horror. I had a great time, though I don't see a scenario in which I can ever win the game. I enjoyed the backbiting and deal-making and underhanded politics that went into making sure the toddler on the tricycle died before my jaded businessman. The art is brilliant (it's from Asmodee, so that's a given), and the rules are straightforward and easy to grasp. Which is more than I can say for my aging comic-book references.

Summary

3-6 players

Pros:
Excellent social interaction
Massive body count
Get to know which of your friends are real bastards

Cons:
Cardboard standup zombies (not that I need any more plastic zombies)
Ye Gods! Not another zombie game!

If you're not tired of the zombie-game craze yet, you can get a copy of City of Horror at Noble Knight Games:

THE TIRED UNDEAD

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