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Chris

Idle Thumbs 97: The Dash Rendar Synergy

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I was definitely not recommending Pandemic as a starter for a complete boardgame novice, but rather as one of a couple of fairly lightweight games that would probably be decent ways to ease into specifically cooperative boardgaming. I'm not really a fan of it -or- Forbidden Island because they're too simple for me personally, but I understand that not everyone's willing to just jump into the deep end like I prefer to do. I don't even know what I'd recommend as an introduction to hobbyist boardgaming. Games that are most suitable for that tend to be stuff that doesn't work for me.

 

Incidentally, for people who like a meatier coop experience, besides Ghost Stories and Yggdrasil (both available on iOS, incidentally), I would also highly, highly recommend Sentinels of the Multiverse. It's a cooperative superhero card game, with 3-5 superheroes (each represented by their own unique deck of cards) facing off against a single powerful supervillain (w/ associated deck) in one of several different hazardous environments (also decks). The basic rules are very straightforward and easy to learn (I haven't even touched the rulebook since the second game except to check how difficult villains are considered to be), but the various decks are all unique and highly thematic, with a dizzying array of possible combinations and interactions. As of now there's a base set, three expansions, and a few addon decks that were stretch goals on Kickstarter projects for the expansions but can be purchased separately now, for a total of 18 heroes, 18 villains, and 10 environments. It's really quite brilliant.

 

If we're talking awesome co-op games, the best one I've played (and admittedly I haven't played that many) is Hanabi. It's the only co-op game I know of that solves the alpha player problem without resorting to a traitor mechanic or real-time. Basically, it's an abstract card game whre you and your partners have to play the cards down on the table in a specfic order. However, you can't see what cards are in your hand - you only see what cards are in everybody else's hands. The whole game is about giving clues (following a very specific rubric) to your partners so that they know what cards they have and hoping to god that they understnad what you're trying to convey.

 

It's easy to learn but balls hard to master. I only know of one team that's gotten a perfect score and I'm convinced they cheated. It's getting a North American release this year and I'm super pumped.

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Of course AC is hardly the only series where the visuals are a couple orders of magnitude more thoughtful and higher quality than the narrative.  That's pretty much an industry-wide issue.

 

Seems like most people have a pretty good idea whether they're any any good at creating artwork, but crap writers have no clue how bad their writing is.  Pretty much everyone thinks they can write a rad video game story with snappy dialogue.

Crap artists might not know they're crap either - the difference is that nobody will buy a game with crappy art in the screenshots but people will buy millions of copies of games with plots that could most charitably be described as "worthless" and "bad."

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about star wars, i am the same, i like the games (and the mythology) way more than the films (opposite for star trek)

 

Fun fact, the Star Wars martial art "Teras Kasi" (remember that horrid fighting game?). Is based on the real life martial art http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencak_Silat'>Pentjak Silat. The author of Shadows of the Empire (and creator of Dash Rendar!) is something of a martial arts nerd and trained under my teacher here in LA in the 80's I believe. The word Teras Kasi is actually just a phonetic expression of the Behasa word for "thank you" (terima kasih), something he probably used because it's traditionally said when leaving most training areas. 

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I came back to listen to this episode since I'm horrible and sorta missed it when it was fresh, but I really appreciated the implication that in LoZ: Wind Waker the second quest was Link just living an imagination of being the Hero.

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