5. Super Meat Boy

I’m not sure any other game in my Top Ten of 2010 has as good controls as this game. None of them are as finely honed and perfected as Super Meat Boy; they will all have some minor failing somewhere between what your fingers do on the controller to what you see occur on screen. Not so with Super Meat Boy.

When you die (and you will die a lot), it was your fault. Your fingers failed you. I apologise for writing that; I really hate it when I read that stuff in reviews. I can make an exception in this case however, because it is actually true.

For some, this will be too much to take and they will give up. For others, it will spur you on to greater and greater feats of appendage dexterity. It is a remarkable piece of programming.

Everywhere you go you leave a trail of blood

The path through each level is (usually) obvious and even when it isn’t, each of your untimely demises will quickly start to reveal patterns as to what you should be doing. I think that’s part of the appeal for me, there’s a certain evolution that you go through on every new level that you play.

Initially you’re just feeling your way around, trying to work out what to do. Then you go through again and again until you can comfortably complete it (this doesn’t really happen on the later levels). Eventually as you continue to refine and streamline your path, new opportunities for time-saving become apparent (“Ooo, can I take out the need to land in front of saw blade after the wall-jump by just wall-sliding a little higher on the wall and jumping it in one go?”).

Too much salt is bad for you, m'kay?

I found myself doing this for every little chunk of a level, trying to critically analyse its make-up and navigate the most efficient path possible, trying to hone my muscle memory such that I could replicate it every time. After you’ve reached that level of depth, that’s when you try to string everything you’ve learnt together in a perfect run for a world-beating leaderboard time! Incidentally, if you like competing with your friends on leaderboards you will love this. I was ranked pretty highly around the time it came out (both amongst my friends and the wider XBL public) but I dread to think how far I’ve slipped down now.

It’s very addictive and there’s nothing more exhilarating than nailing a perfect run and rising up the leaderboards. On some of the levels, there’s nothing more exhilarating than actually finishing it!

It looks amazing. Who wants to play?

Also, props to Corey Konieczka, the game’s designer, for rocking the greatest neckbeard man has ever seen!

Apologies for my lack of updates. It would seem that even the simple task of recounting what I’ve been playing each week has fallen against my extreme laziness. I shall make amends.

Overlapping Overwatch

Overlapping - A Genestealer moves into LoS of two Overwatch Terminators

I’m hoping that this one will be a simple one to answer. In the rulebook, it states that if a Genestealer performs an action in the fire arc of more than one Terminator on Overwatch then:

…all of the Space Marines must take their shot at the Genestealer, and you must roll for them all, even if the Genestealer has been killed by an overwatch shot from another Space Marine!

That’s straightforward enough I suppose, but if you’re going to explicitly say that each Terminator must roll, why not just add a sentence to explain why?

As I understand it, you roll for everyone because there’s a chance that one of them could jam their gun and therefore have to spend an AP to unjam it, should another Genestealer happen to appear. Why not clarify this though? Is it possible for one Terminator to shoot a team mate by accident? If so, what are the engagement rules for that? If not, why not bloody say that then?!

Similarly, there is a question in the (frankly lacking) Space Hulk FAQ (PDF) about using the flamer on a map section that contains another Terminator:

Q. Can the Heavy Flamer target a section that contains a Space Marine?

A. As long as the target square is empty or contains a Genestealer, yes.

OK, so are there any repercussions for doing this? This issue did actually come up in the last game we played (or would have had I not lost so badly). Does the Terminator have to take some kind of defence roll? The Heavy Flamer is ridiculously powerful (Genestealers are killed by a +2 roll of a D6) so how can the Terminators be completely immune?

Why not just add one sentence to clarify the situation (e.g. “Terminators do not take damage from the Heavy Flamer, but cannot pass through map sections that are already on fire” or something similar)? The vagueness is so fucking FRUSTRATING!

Ahem. Sorry about that. So, what do you lot think?

Next time: The oft-discussed issue of miniature placement!

Last time I spent far too long deciding what victory condition I was aiming for. By the end I was doing reasonably well in economy and technology, but it was too late in the day to stop the Egyptian culture victory.

I took a different tact this time and rather than spend too much time exploring the map, I decided to try and increase my building/trade power as quickly as possible. I think that’s one of the key things to do early on in the game: get your second city built! Depending on the spot you find, you’ll either greatly increase your Production or Trade Points. As the Germans, my key skills were geared towards building units, figures and buildings using Production.

Unfortunately my girlfriend (this time playing the Americans) got an early Culture Event card that caused a drought in my city outskirts, denying me 2 Production points every turn! Just like last time! Boo!

Knowing how good she is at board games and logical/tactical thinking in general, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to hamper her efforts to expand as rapidly as she did in the previous game. But expand she did! This session also highlighted just how powerful the Wonders of the World are. They cost a shitload of production points, but they bestow all sorts of awesome powers particularly as you move from the ancient ones, through the medieval era to the modern Wonders.

Ignoring culture and economy, I decided I was going to try and go for a tech victory. I was generating plenty of trade points by this time, especially because an early tech resource ability allowed me to generate 9 extra trade points for myself and give 6 to another player at the cost of 1 silk resource. Luckily, I came to an accord with the Russians who would provide the silk in return for the 6 trade points and they promised to do this every turn. I used all my trade points to “rush production” (this means you can increase your production by 1 for every 3 trade points you spend) in order to purchase the Colossus. This Wonder gives you an extra 3 trade every turn, which is very handy if you’re going for a tech victory.

Later in the game, I manage to scrape together just enough Production to build The Porcelain Tower. This is another amazing Wonder for tech victories because it reduces the cost of researching a technology by 5 trade points (so it becomes 1 Trade for a Level 1, 6 for a Level 2, 11 for a Level 3 tech etc.)!

Alas, America was attempting to build the Statue of Liberty which allows you to “learn” (I prefer to use the term “steal”) another player’s technology that you don’t yet know, every turn. Ridiculous! In theory, that doubles the amount of technologies you can research each turn, which would have slingshot America past me in the technology race. We (by which I mean everyone else) managed to hold them off for a while, blocking city actions and preventing construction from taking place. At one point, I nearly managed to generate enough Production in order to build it myself, thereby preventing America from getting hold of it. Looking back now, I feel kind of glad I couldn’t; having blocked its construction 3 or 4 turns in a row, there would have been real-life hell to pay if I had then stolen it! ;)

Of course it then transpired that America also had another little tactic running on the side: economy. Their coins had been building very slowly throughout the game but some late technologies and resource abilities allowed for much speedier coin generation! We suddenly realised that America was going to win… in only two turns!

The game appeared to be over. America had, by this point, stacked a number of figures around the nearest city to my troops and I had anticipated having to fight my way through in order to make an attack on the city itself – something that would have taken more than 2 turns (and a heck of a lot of luck) to do successfully. At my current movement speed (3 squares) there was simply no way I would be able to get to America’s cities to try and set them back a few turns, before they could generate 2 more coins and win the game*.

And that was when the turning point came…

In what I thought was going to be my last, ultimately pointless, research phase I drew a Level 4 Tech card… It was Flight…

Let’s just focus on that beautiful, amazing word for a second…

Flight.

The technology of Flight affords the player a movement speed of 6. It also allows you to fly over and ignore enemy figures, huts, villages and water squares. Flight unlocks the ability to build aircraft unit cards for battle (which are incredibly powerful incidentally) and one of the Germans’ special abilities means that you get a free unit card every time you unlock or upgrade a unit type – so I got a free aircraft card!

This changed everything. With my city actions I purchased 2 more aircraft units and put down another army figure on the board. Looking across the table, I noticed that America, despite having a lot of army figures on the board actually had very few unit cards available (the figures represent the army, but the unit cards are what you actually battle with – you need to keep a good supply of both in order to be strong in battle). I was going in for the kill!

In the movement phase I used my newly built figure to engage one of the peripheral enemy figures in the hope of taking out another card or two (I had a big supply that I’d been saving up gradually over the game). With so few cards left to play with, I descended upon her city, the first attack sacrificing a few of my lowly cards but taking out some of hers at the same time. I attacked again, and luckily this time I happened to draw all three of my very powerful aircraft units. It was all over. I had killed off her remaining unit cards and the city was destroyed.

When your city is destroyed, you lose all the buildings, Wonders and Great People associated with it. The two Great People she had attached to this city both provided gold coins, so immediately she had to deduct 2 from her economy score. I also destroyed a barracks, which further reduced her combat effectiveness.

At this point, everyone thought my turn was over and that I had done all the damage I could and I had kept the rest of us in the game for at least another turn or two. But oh no, I wasn’t quite finished. There was one lonely figure in what was once the outskirts of the now razed American city that still hadn’t moved. I mentioned earlier that generally it’s a good idea to build your second city as early as possible to reap the benefits of increased Production and Trade. In this case however, it meant this one army figure was within range of her capital!

I moved my last figure onto her capital square.

Combat. America had no cards left, my previous attacks had seen to that. There were no units to defend with. If I had moved any of my army figures onto one of hers, that figure would have been defeated immediately. Unfortunately destroying a city is a little more difficult because it has a built in defence bonus. Capitals have a default bonus of +12. With her additional combat bonuses this brought her total to +16. I had two barracks, giving me a combat bonus of +4.

The entire battle (and the game) would come down to scoring more than 12 points from the three cards I would draw at random from my collection of unit card. And my total combat strength was…

…

11. My card strength totalled 11.

Gutted.

It seemed like all was lost.

Game over.

Hang on though; I’d just taken out one of America’s barracks in the previous attack! That would reduce their combat bonuses, down to +10… but that would mean…

I won! \o/

What an epic game; both in terms of how it was played and how long it took. Our first game took 6-something hours to complete and I assumed that the next game would be a lot faster and quicker.

It was definitely faster; we completed vastly more turns than we did in the first game, but it still took 6.5 hours! We put it down to taking too much time to perform actions during the City Management phase. I think we decided that the next time we play, we’re going to put a 3 minute time limit per player for that phase in the hopes that it won’t take so long. It will probably open the door to people making a few mistakes under pressure as well!

Still, it was a great session and it was nice to see a military win too – we almost completely avoided combat in the first game and we didn’t do much fighting in this one, until near the end. This game was a lot more evenly balanced, with two, maybe even three of the players being relatively close to victories by the time it finished. There was also a lot of canny trading taking place this time, adding an exciting extra dimension that was somewhat missing from the previous game.

Can’t wait til the next game!

*It actually transpired that America could have won the game a few turns earlier, had they taken a slightly different city action a few turns from the end. Luckily for the rest of us, they didn’t realise until the next turn.

In a bid to make it clearer for myself and anyone else that might stumble across these posts, I’m making a plea to anyone out there that might be able to explain this stuff!

I also wanted to take a few photos to show off just how beautiful this game is – such exquisite quality!

Let’s start with some basic stuff that will make me look stupid:

Close Assault

Close Assault - can the Terminator still shoot?

The rulebook states:

A model can take a close assault action to attack a target in the square directly in front of them. It costs 1 Action Point (AP) to take a close assault action once the model is in position.

The important word for me here is “can”. Given that there is no benefit to a Terminator engaging a Genestealer in Close Assault (perhaps unless he’s carrying the Heavy Flamer), can the Terminators shoot at the Genestealer as normal or are they forced to perform a Close Assault action (or expend 2 AP in order to move back and shoot) if they wish to attack?

In the same vein, if the Terminator is in Overwatch (where you get to shoot every time an enemy performs an action in your Line of Sight) and assuming he doesn’t die, does the Terminator get to shoot after every time the Genestealer attacks, given that the Genestealer performed an action in his Line of Sight?

The rules state that a Space Marine can shoot as long as he has Line of Sight to the target, so I assume that what I’ve written above is all correct and above board.

Close Range - Can the Terminator shoot the diagonally-adjacent Genestealer?

If I’ve understood that right, let’s take a look at similar scenario. With regards to movement, the rules state:

A model or blip cannot move through another model, blip or closed door. A model also cannot move diagonally if this means it would pass between two squares containing a wall or model.

Now that specifically talks about movement; there’s no mention of what options are available when it comes to attacking. Obviously the Space Marine can’t engage the diagonal Genestealer in Close Assault as you can only Close Assault models directly in front of you, but can the Space Marine shoot at him or is his Line of Sight blocked by the wall to his right and the Genestealer in front?

I’m inclined to think the answer is no. If the Space Marine can’t move to that diagonal forwards square, I assume he can’t shoot there either.

What do you guys think? Have I got this right? Thanks for reading and please leave a comment below if you can shed some light on this!

Next time: Overlapping Overwatch!

Nowadays it’s incredibly hard to get hold of but I managed to find it brand new and sealed, for an incredibly good price on eBay. When I say a “incredibly good price”, I mean it was still fairly expensive but it wasn’t even remotely like the £150-odd some scalpers are trying to get away with asking for!

It’s an amazing game with beautiful board tiles, great missions and some of the most exquisite gaming miniatures I’ve ever seen. They are truly remarkable.

In truth, I’ve only played it a couple of times this week. What’s really been filling my out of office hours is painting. Yes, I’ve got back into miniature painting. I think I was still a teenager when I did that last. I thought it might be good to get a hobby other than gaming… y’know, for a little balance.

Space Hulk: Probably the most beautiful board game ever...

It doesn’t half make me feel geeky though. For me, painting was always the main draw when it came to table-top gaming but that was mostly because I would end up (literally) fighting with my brother every time we tried to play Warhammer 40K. I’m not sure we ever finished a game of that…

Anyway, I’ll be talking about Space Hulk at length in the future… I’m hoping to play through the campaign with Marie and report back to you about how badly she beats me. I also want to get some clarification on a few of the rules, so I will be turning to you, the wider public to help me out!

I might even show you some of my mad painting skillz0rs when I’ve got something to show!

It’s already been nominated for a number of Oscars, including Best Film and a Best Actor nod for James Franco. And rightly so, I say! I wouldn’t give it Best Film because Inception deserves that one, but James Franco’s performance as Ralston was absolutely stellar. Even if Colin Firth is definitely going to win, without a shadow of a doubt (I have yet to see The King’s Speech).

And whilst we’re on the subject, why the hell has Christopher Nolan not got a Best Director nomination for Inception? Grrr!

Sorry, I’m getting off track. I’m a big, big fan of Danny Boyle; no two films of his are ever alike, but they’re always excellent. The editing is brilliant and at around 90 minutes long, 127 Hours rollicks along at a nice, snappy pace. I can’t stress how good James Franco’s performance is though. It has to be though because he basically is the film. You may therefore conclude that this film is brilliant.

Oh and that scene? I nearly gnawed through my finger watching it.

If you didn’t know (shame on you!), this week (yesterday in fact) marked the 3 year anniversary of the EU release of Burnout Paradise; one of my most favouritest games in the whole world ever and one that helped cement some of the tremendous online (and now offline) friendships that I still enjoy today. If you fancy celebrating this glorious game, feel free to send me a message over Live.

Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game: The Box

Everyone knows Civilization, right? You build up your chosen empire from one spot on the map into a sprawling existence fuelled by the pillars of society; culture, technology and economy. Slowly you become a beacon of wonderment and awe and the other civilizations of the world stare on in disbelief as you look down upon them with disgust and contempt for their savage ways. And then, when it all goes to shit or someone starts giving you grief, you get militant on their asses. Or if you feel like it, you get militant from the very start. And herein lies the beauty of Civilization: The Board Game. Choice. You have lots and lots of choice.

There are four ways to win; a culture victory (devoting your cities to the arts and spending culture points to advance up the culture track), a technology victory (building your Tech Pyramid up until you acquire the technology of Space Flight), an economic victory (where you earn coins through completing a variety of tasks) or the aforementioned ass-kicking military victory (achieved by taking out another player’s capital city). Each method of victory requires different tactics and it’s in the balancing of these different tactics that the game excels.

You can play it any way you like but other players’ actions will obviously cause you to change and adapt your plans. You can tell that each of the four victory paths has been playtested and refined to death and each one will take a similar number of turns to achieve; it’s beautifully balanced.

Here's everything (other than the map) laid out and ready to go!

The world map is made up of 4×4 square tiles, and is randomly generated every time you play. Every civilization has a specific home tile, designed to help them get started and play to their own strengths and special abilities. The rest of the tiles are shuffled and placed face down (the shape and size of the map varies according to the number of players). As each player explores further from their home tile, they can use a move action to flip an adjacent tile and reveal the map in the classic videogame-style. That’s right kiddies… this game has a “Fog of War”! It’s a beautifully simple idea, but really provides a sense of exploration and the excitement of discovering new lands.

The other really cool thing I want to talk about is the Tech Pyramid. All these type of games (I’m talking about videogames here) tend to have a tech tree system, whereby researching a technology or building a particular structure unlocks the ability to create new specialist units or other structures that then in turn develop new units, buildings, technologies etc. Due to their sprawling, complex nature, the Tech Tree is a tough concept to transfer to a board game.

Fortunately Kevin Wilson (the game’s designer) came up with an amazing piece of game design: Tech Pyramid. Throughout the game you have the option to spend your Trade Points (one of the forms of “currency” you use to complete a variety of tasks) on researching new technologies. The 30+ technologies are divided up into five levels. There is only one Level 5 card (that card being Space Flight, which as I mentioned, wins you the game). In order to research a Level 2 tech, you need to have at least two Level 1 techs below it as a foundation. In order to research a Level 3 tech you need at least two Level 2 cards and 3 Level 1 cards and so on; a pyramid! It’s lovely. Each technology tends to unlock a new building type and will provide you with special abilities, either at the cost of a resource or when you complete certain tasks, such as winning a battle.

It's not a Tech Tree, it's a Tech PYRAMID! Got it?

In our game, I was playing as the Germans. There were also the Egyptians, Romans and Chinese on the board. I foolishly decided that I wanted to avoid combat and explore the other victory conditions a little more. Unfortunately, military is what the Germans do quite well and I spent far too long dabbling in various activities without focussing on how I was going to try and win, by which point the Egyptians were already a towering monolith of culture and art. By the time the rest of us realised we were soon going to lose, we didn’t have enough turns left to get across the board and attack, despite a valiant last-ditched attempt that left the Egyptian forces weak and exposed.

There are very few things that I would consider to be negative about this game. With the maximum four players you can expect game time to take maybe 4 or 5 hours. In our first game, this is what we were using as our estimate. A 4-5 hour game time is not a bad thing per se but for our first game, this (unsurprisingly) turned out to be wildly optimistic. I spent probably an hour explaining most of the rules/ideas the game has to offer and then the first few turns really took a very long time. The estimated 4 hour game time was more like 6 or 7 hours in total.

Of course, by the end turns went by much faster and I can see next time we play, it’ll be closer to the estimate. My one big piece of advice would be to email the rulebook (PDF) round to everyone that’s going to play so they can get up to speed (or at least have a rough idea of the format) before you start! It will save you many hours! Also, read the FAQ (PDF) that addresses a few print errors and omissions.

One of the great things about the structure of the game is that you’re always playing; you’re always involved in what’s going on. Even though it’s someone’s “turn”, that turn is broken up into phases and everyone is playing during those phases. If it’s your turn, that just means you go first in each of the phases. You’re almost always active, making it very difficult to step away from the table. It’s a tribute to the compelling nature of the game that at one point, when it was getting very late and we were considering stopping in order to pick it up again later in the week that we actually just ended up carrying on until the end – we couldn’t stop playing!

The only other issue with the game is the box design. I don’t mean the artwork or the quality of the components; they’re all spectacularly detailed and robust – the quality of all the game pieces, tiles and tokens is absolutely exceptional, but the box has NO compartments! For a game with HUNDREDS of tokens, cards, coins etc. it is beyond my comprehension that so little thought has gone into the box design. There is no way to divide things up properly. There are a few ziplock bags, but you end up putting loads of different things all in one bag. Given that you need to sort through everything and lay it out on the table before play, this can really add to the set up time (I’d guess at least 20-30 minutes if you’re doing it on your own). I’m considering buying or making a little tray that everything can fit nicely into. That or I’ll get some small sandwich bags.

Obligatory mid-game action shot!

Of course when the internal box design is one of your main complaints, you know you’ve got a great game on your hands. I’ve used the word simple to talk about it quite a few times now. It is simple, amazingly so. Once you’ve got the rules down it’s very straightforward, but I don’t want to sell it short or make it sound trivial. The complexity comes from the options available to you at any given point. It’s a very deeply tactical game that demands critical analysis of the current situation, clear, decisive thinking and a good idea of what everyone else is up to.

You should buy it. I simply can’t stress enough just how brilliant this game is. In all seriousness, I think it’s probably the best, most balanced board game I’ve ever played. It is freakin’ awesome. You should buy it. Like, right now. And then play it. And then bask in its infinite glory.

The cheapest place I’ve managed to find it so far is (perhaps surprisingly) from GAME.co.uk but if my review hasn’t convinced you, you should definitely read this and watch this:

And if THAT didn’t convince you… well, you’re a lost cause. Sorry.

Well, apparently my subconscious has decided that a spot of retail therapy is in order because I’ve been a bit online shopping crazy!

In the past week I’ve ordered not one, not two, but three t-shirts (as well as a hoody), four awesome DVDs (Usual Suspects, LA Confidential, Kick-Ass and The Godfather Trilogy), a powerball (I’m trying to increase my drumming strength and masturbating just doesn’t cut it any more!), Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition on 360, some optical cables and an optical splitter.

I also picked up Civilization: The Board Game. Which is amazing.

I feel better now. Screw you austerity/holiday blues!