The Long Haul

I hadn't planned on reading The Long Mars on launch day, given that I was relatively underwhelmed by its predecessor, The Long War, but I happened to finish the incredible Dune on that day, and knew The Long Mars would be a quick and diverting read.

The Long Mars doesn't really depart from what Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's co-written series has offered thus far. Some decades ago now, humanity experienced 'Step Day', giving them access to a technology that allowed them to simply and easily 'step' into an adjacent world, slightly divergent from our own 'Datum Earth' in some minor or major way, a rough exploration of a multiverse theory, in a kind of frontiersman way. This concept has so much potential for telling interesting stories, and that continues to be the huge strength of the series. There has been a steady progression of scope, as the title indicates, but the core concept remains the same.

The Long Mars still feels like a Sci-Fi 'travel novel' on a big scale. It remains very much a vehicle (more 'Twains', in this case) to explore these ideas, rather than being a great narrative in its own right, and, despite the genuine excitement I have for all that it's showing, this is where things rather come apart.

As a novel, it pretty much sucks. As with The Long Earth and The Long War, there never seem to be any notable stakes. Nothing is on the line, at least nothing over which the characters have any control. Where there is tension, it is short term, situational, and with generally little payoff. It wasn't until the last 20% of the book where any real threat or risk is truly felt, and then, it doesn't extend all that far.

In any one of these books, I would respect that, as a willing departure from narrative conventions. But across all three, it feels almost dull, which is precisely what this shouldn't be, given the promise carried by the setting. For the third time now, I've felt like we're perhaps building to some greater payoff in a later book, but so far, it's more like being strung along with not much to go on in the interim.

Aside from these general problems, I found some of the writing fairly clunky. Heavy exposition in the early pages seems to be the norm for books partway through a series, and here, I found it quite clumsy, almost distractedly so, with the characters seeming wooden, or excessively stating the obvious to bring the reader up to speed. I question how much 'real estate' of an already pretty short book should be devoted to this. Equally, I don't feel like anyone skipping the first two books would be hindered all that much from enjoying this one.

The gentlemen themselves

The characters themselves also fall short, feeling very distant from the reader. In some cases, I'm sure that's intentional but as much as many choose to push people away and not let them get too close, it's awkward when that extends to the reader. I still don't feel that much for most of the characters, even the ones that have stuck around since The Long Earth. Maybe it's a byproduct of my own frame of mind when reading this series, but so far it's three for three on this - combined with the general lack of stakes, it means I struggle to care about these people and what happens to them.

Ultimately, that's what The Long Mars is - another good offering on precisely the same lines as the rest of the series. If you enjoyed either of the first two books, like as not, you'll enjoy this. If you're not familiar with the series, but you love reading something that explores a fundamentally compelling idea, it's worth checking out the series, with the above caveats in mind. I know that Pratchett and Baxter are planning more books, and I still plan on reading them, despite all the issues I've acknowledge, because, at the end of the day, they continue to deliver something that is a quick and highly thought-provoking read, which is, for me, worth enduring the shortcomings.

What about you? Are you already familiar with the series? What have been your thoughts thus far? Should books like this be more focussed on delivering a solid narrative, or is the exploration of an idea sometimes enough to speak for itself? Share your thoughts in the comments. If you haven't already, you can also find me on Twitter, @mastergeorge

'A Game of Thrones' Board Game Review

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Players: 3-6 (best with 6)
Playing Time: 2-6 hours

Game of Thrones (still better known as ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ to the Sullied) has been gathering attention over the past four years, as the HBO show has climbed to stratospheric popularity. The game of A Game of Thrones (the board game) has been around much longer than the show, first released in 2003, but was given as second edition in 2011 (either unwittingly or presciently primed to profit from the show's rise).

A Game of Thrones places you at the head of one of six great houses from A Song of Ice and Fire in your own bid to conquer the Seven Kingdoms, capturing seven castles before any of your opponents do the same. The game has you mobilising troops, carefully managing resources, and making and breaking alliances in order to be crowned the victor. And as we know (and you can see what's coming here), when you play the game of Game of Thrones, you win, or you die.

Image featuring the old-style wooden pieces (Image: François Phillip, cc by 2.0)

Cardboard Crowns - The Product
I have bought a lot of stuff from Fantasy Flight Games. Their products are of a consistently high quality, and A Game of Thrones is no exception. It’s a standard ‘big box’ sized game, complete with board, plastic units, a plethora of cardboard counters and assorted cards, all with a great build quality.

Some of the beautiful House cards

What stands out immediately is just how good everything looks. The art is fantastic, particularly on the house cards, which depict several major characters from the books who function as your generals. The one thing that stands out above all others, though, is the board, a beautiful recreation of Westeros in all its bloody glory. As with many games of this size, there are a lot of components, making an alternative means of storage (a bit box or plastic baggies) if not essential, then an important addition.

This doesn't capture the magnificence of the board, but it does show some of the component sprawl. Also, essential Hobgoblin accompaniment.

The Fantastic Taste - The Flavour
It's hard to conceive of someone not having encountered Game of Thrones by now, the show has just become so pervasive. The game does a good job of not really spoiling anything. At most, if you go through the rulebook and dig into the context of the initial setup, there are some implicit spoilers for the first book/season, which, in the grand scheme of things, don't amount to much. I'm a big fan of the series, but I honestly don't think you have to be to enjoy the game. That said, you will get more out of the setting if you are already invested in it, but it's not a make-or-break - I have played with plenty of people not previously familiar with the world.

The game does a very good job of matching style and substance. I’ll talk more about the mechanics below, but it really does make you feel like you’re acting a part in that world, with devious machinations and warmongering bombast alike carried by the gameplay. I don't know whether the game was designed for this intellectual property in the first instance, or whether the game was developed independently of the licence, but I suspect the former. It just captures the vibe too perfectly to believe otherwise.

The Meat & Crackers - The Mechanics
As I said before, A Game of Thrones marries mechanics and mood very well (and you know that, where Game of Thrones and marriage meet, only good things can happen). The biggest part of this is the role of hidden information. During each round, the bulk of the action is split between players secretly assigning orders to their units, and then revealing and executing them. You can bargain all you like with your neighbour, but when it comes down to it, do you trust them not to attack you so you can shore up your resources? Do you use a defence order to hold the line, potentially wasting that action if they don't attack? Or do you lull them into a sense of security and come storming over their borders, knife between your teeth, while they still have their proverbial pants round their ankles?

I’m a sucker for precisely this mechanic. It creates a Diplomacy-esque moment of tension in every round, as everyone flips their orders and assesses the consequences. For me, the blind assignment of orders strikes an interesting balance between pure, calculated strategy, interpersonal relations, and evaluation of the other players' true intentions.

There are various other factors which enhance this process. One player holds the Raven token, which can let them switch out one of their orders after everyone’s have been revealed, potentially a major advantage. The relative influence of your factions define who enacts their moves first. Raid orders are executed first, and a well-placed, well-timed Raid can throw your opponent quite severely, frustrating their plans or advancing your own.

Orders in place.

Another thing I love about this is the scarcity of orders. There are only a limited number of each type, and, if you’re badly positioned, you won’t have access to some of the better ones. This means you have to prioritise your plans, since you can’t ever move or attack from more than three places in a single turn. It’s reasonably subtle, but forces some hard decisions at critical junctures.

The other major mechanic revolves around the influence tracks. These are absolutely crucial to staying on top. These define who has initiative, which orders you have access to, or who wins in a close fight. Every few turns (it’s randomised), these are opened up for bidding, and each player has to blind-bid with their power tokens to secure their spots. Since these Power Tokens are expended and not retained, you have to carefully prioritise which influence tracks you want to go after, or hedge your bets and try to be middling for all of them at best. The problem is, these Power Tokens are also needed to fight off the occasional Wildling threat, which requires everyone to pool resources to avoid mutually bad outcomes. This tension, between urgent, selfish need and the risk of penalties for all is a fantastic dynamic.

The influence system is also one of the minor issues I have with the game. Not that it’s a design issue, I don’t quite think it is, but it is where games seem to be most often decided, and I haven’t quite figured out whether people are just consistently sneaky, or whether it’s just bias from variance.

Every time I have played, there has been at least one round of influence bidding where one player has totally cleaned up, taking the best position and more or less defining the position of all the other players as they choose, which, more often than not, has been enough to close out the game. I don’t think this is just because those players have intelligently hoarded Power tokens (though it is partly so!), as I have hoarded like the lovechild of Smaug and Scrooge McDuck, and still not been able to pull that off. It becomes a little self-enforcing, as if one player gets to that position, though, it can be very hard for someone else to claw advantage back.

One other slight shortfall of the game is the balance of the houses. It’s hard to evaluate holistically, since there are a large number of elements that add up to make the whole, with different generals, starting troops and geographies, but there is definitely some imbalance, necessitating some specific early-game tactics from a couple of the houses to stop themselves being locked out of the game later on. The claustrophobic map, forcing players into each others’ way, combined with different viable strategies for each house, is partly a strength of the game, preventing anyone from being too comfortable, but the Greyjoys, Lannisters and Starks definitely have it worst off, and playing as one of those houses brings its problems. If everyone is on the same page, all’s fair in love and board gaming, but for newer players in particular, it’s something to be wary of.

Playing the Power Game - Accessibility
With the world of A Song of Ice and Fire becoming ever more popular, I can see more players approaching this game. On the whole, it is pretty accessible; a slightly-less cut-throat Diplomacy in a more interesting wrapper. It comes with some general caveats that for ‘big box’ style games, notably their relative complexity and extended play time, but, in general, while the right tactics at the right time are rewarded, the necessities are such that new players are not automatically frozen out. That said, with the balance issues I noted above, a new player in one of those seats faces more of a challenge, although that partly depends on the playgroup.

The View from the Wall - Summary
A Game of Thrones is a lot of fun. It lets you do all the things you want to do while playing in the Game of Thrones sandbox on this scale, with a blend of politics and warfare every bit as devious as the show. It’s definitely best with the full six players, as this has the greatest scope for interaction and politicking, but is perfectly playable with three to five. Some minor balance issues aside, it’s a very solid game. If you’re a veteran of the game, firstly, thanks for reading this far! You should already have been sold on the concept… Secondly, there are a couple of small expansions with different scenarios and setups to shake things up: A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons (though be warned, potential spoilers for those books implied in the setup), which don't seem to have been widely picked up yet.

The Best
Feeling like Tywin Lannister, making the masterful, cut-throat move that puts you ahead of your rivals.

The Worst
Feeling like the Mad King as someone stabs you square in the back.

Rating 
Five heads on spikes

Pandemic Scenarios, Ruined Friendships, and The Cones of Dunshire

Not a full post today, just a couple of links that I thought it was worth sharing together.

Harking back to my review of the fantastic Pandemic, I stumbled across a couple of 'scenarios', one of which is put together by the game's designer, Matt Leacock.

'Isolation' plays out with the West having tried to cut itself off from the infected rest of the world, limiting the movement of the players (and increasing the area focus of the infections, to an extent). 'Government Shutdown' reduces the number of actions available to each player until certain conditions are met which push the government to unfreeze vital funding. The latter, in particular, seems like it would add an additional sense of panic and doom, and I can't wait to try it out.

You can access them both here: http://zmangames.com/product-details.php?id=1246

This is an old article, but I enjoyed finding it again: Top 5 Board Games That Really Will Ruin Friendships: http://kotaku.com/the-top-5-board-games-that-really-will-ruin-friendships-1443867215

And, finally, for any Parks and Rec fans, a way-too-in-depth analysis of The Cones of Dunshire (sorta): http://www.vulture.com/2013/12/cones-of-dunshire-parks-and-recreation-game-oral-history.html

Top 5 Board Games for 'Normal People' to Play

'Normal people' is definitely a bit of a hook here; something convenient to fit the title. There's no such thing as a 'normal person', or, at least, I've never met one. What I have here instead is a list, in no particular order, of the five games I consider to be the best to play with people who are not traditionally gamers, games which are much, much better than the boardgames people tend to have encountered during their childhood. A common thread here is that none of these games tend to result in newer players getting shafted due to lack of experience, for different reasons in each case.

Most of these have been featured on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop at some point, so I've included the links below if you want to learn more about the games.

Zombie Dice

This one is as simple as they come. A press-your-luck dice game that fits in a small pot, with rules that can be explained in about thirty seconds. The major part of it is luck, but there is just enough depth to allow for some strategic decision making. It's carries with it the right mixture of the casual and the competitive, and is good for travel, the pub, or just as a nice, low-intensity game that still has the potential to entertain. As a bonus, it's short.

Buy it on Amazon

King of Tokyo

THE KING IS SAD (couscous salad not included)

This one can go both ways - I've had people love and it and not really warm to it - but I guess that applies to everything on this list, really. You each play as a kaiju monster, competing to tear up Tokyo. It's very quick to pick up, and doesn't take too long to play. I love the vibe of this game; it makes you feel like a giant smashy monster, even down to the slightly oversized dice. A different style of press-your-luck dice game, there's plenty to do and plenty of drama that is at the same time impossible to take seriously, a winning combination.

Buy it on Amazon

Ticket To Ride

(Image: Chunky Rice, cc by-sa 3.0)

Slightly further out on a limb for me, since I've not played this one in its true cardboard form, but I've played it plenty on the iPad (Google Play link), and have read and seen enough about it to be happy including it on the list.

Ticket To Ride puts you in the place of a railroad tycoon (not that Railroad Tycoon) trying to build train routes across the continent. The mechanics are fun, and it's competitive enough without being grounds for any fights. One of the big things for me here is that the competition is not based around warfare, the driving metaphor behind many boardgames, and an element I know turns some people off.

Buy it on Amazon

Tsuro - The Game of the Path

In Tsuro, you play as a majestic dragon, swooping around the board, trying to be the last one standing. You are dealt a series of tiles with 'paths' on them, and take turns to place these down before your dragon. Each player with a new 'path' before them moves along it as far as they can. You're eliminated if you collide with another dragon, or are swept off the edge of the board.

It's simple, has great pacing (nice slow start, building to an unpredictable and dramatic conclusion), is quick to play, and is visually stunning.

Buy it on Amazon

Forbidden Island

Forbidden Island is one of my favourite games. You are put in the role of a daring explorer, landing on an island to loot it for its ancient treasures. The island, though, has other ideas, and is gradually sinking into the sea, taking with it its treasures, and, if they are unlucky, any daring adventurers who happen to remain.

It's a cooperative game, which is a plus for some people who don't like competitive play as much. It's simple to learn, though optimal planning and tactics take a little longer to pick up - offset by the teamwork angle. It has a nice set of visually appealing components, second only to Tsuro on this list. Above all else, it's fun, with plenty of depth and replay value, without relying on confrontation or individual tactical mastery.

Buy it on Amazon

Honourable Mention: Pandemic

It feels wrong not to include Pandemic on here. The only reason I didn't is because it is so very similar to Forbidden Island, and I didn't want to have both on here side-by-side. The mechanics are very similar, the play style is broadly analogous, and it is almost equally as fun.

Forbidden Island edged it out for me because a) it's slightly cheaper, b) it's a lot smaller to transport and easier to set up (fitting into a handy tin), and c) I find it slightly easier to sell people on the metaphor ('you are an intrepid adventurer' sounds better than 'you work for the Center for Disease Control'). Not that Pandemic isn't fantastic in every way.

Buy it on Amazon

A Screen of Empty Chairs

I have to admit something. This is something that people either react to with near hostility, or with hushed confessions that they feel the same way. Here goes: I hate the cinema.

Not film, no! I love film, along with most of its media brethren. I just hate going to the cinema. People are generally quick to jump to its defence, pointing to its fantastic immersion and escapism. I don't disagree. In fact, escapism is one of my favourite things. Glossing over whatever that may say about me psychologically, I just don't have to go to the cinema to do it; if escape into myth is my goal, there are many more available and enjoyable ways to do it.

This also conflicts with the other common line of defence, "it's a great social activity". No. NO. No it isn't. Watching a film with friends is a great social activity. Spending endless hours gushing over or dissecting (n.b. I hope never to use the words 'gush' and 'dissect' in the same sentence again) what you've just seen is simply fantastic. It's another one of my favourite things. But the cinema is not the place to do that. If I wanted to sit in silence and darkness with a group of people I like, I'd... well, I don't have any analogy for that that isn't creepy. Anyway, you'd have far more fun doing so in someone's home, somewhere with an actual atmosphere. And if you're discussing the film you're watching in the cinema, well, you're too far gone to be saved anyway.

Representation of the cinema social experience

When you go to the cinema, you get the genuine experience of having your spleen gouged out with a spoon. You pay a small fortune for tickets, and then more again for some of the worst food known to mankind - ersatz sustenance which is either entirely devoid of any kind of nutritional contents whatsoever (like popcorn), or which you wish was devoid of any (like dog spleen in a bun covered with choleric paste). Now, I'm no stranger to trash food, and, honestly, the expense of tickets and reconstituted proteins does not inherently bother me all that much. But I at least want to feel that I'm getting something close to what I'm paying for.

Instead, what I see in a lot of cinemas is this horrible class system for their customers. You get in and try to find a seat with something resembling a decent view, somewhere where you can sit for 2 or more hours without developing neck-strain. 'Ooh,' you say, 'those two rows there are perfect, just the right distance from the screen. And yet no-one's sitting in them already! What a lucky chap I am!'. Then you get closer and see that, no, these are 'special' seats for 'VIP guests'. 'Wow,' you think, 'I didn't know the Croydon TelePlex had so many visiting high-profile actors that they needed permanent VIP seats.' But, no, they are, of course, for those that are willing to pay their way. Sorry, pay more of their way.

Again, I have no actual problem with a business charging more for a thing. The problem is, in every cinema I've ever been in with these, those rows are always empty, or near enough. Which means that they're blocking out the best seating in each screen for very little benefit to anyone, with the added bonus that you make the more curmudgeonly and reluctant cinema-goer (i.e. me) feel even less happy about spending £10 on a ticket and still not being able to sit where they like, when I can buy a film for less than that and enjoy a vastly better experience in my own home.

Isn't it galling when the screen is full apart from the VIP rows, and they still run that ad about piracy destroying the cinema? (Image: Dennis Gerbeckx, cc-nc-2.0)

As I said, despite my deep dislike of 'movie theatres', I very much value the film industry, for all the flaws that it too has, and those two are as inextricably intertwined as a pair of ouroboristic sex snakes. The mainstream film industry is reportedly struggling. This page has a concise summary of some of the key reasons, which should serve as a reminder to you next time you groan at the announcement of the latest sequel or reboot.

But are cinemas struggling in the same way? It sounds like a lot of the smaller, independent cinemas or franchises are, partly as a top-down result of how the studios themselves are struggling. But the big chains don't seem to be doing too badly. Cinemark Holdings and Regal Entertainment, two of the biggest US chainholders, have seen a steady upward trend in their stock prices over the last five years, as has Cineworld Group in the UK (they appear to have made about £20m after tax last year). I'm not going to claim that stock price is a total benchmark of success, but it does represent something pretty substantive about the companies.

With that in mind, I feel much less bad about not supporting them, and feel less guilty for inciting others to do so. Vote with your pocket book. Demand a better class of service; if at all possible, support your local, smaller cinemas (even Picturehouse, now opened by Cineworld anyway - show them how much better this model is within their empire. Beer in your (comfy) seat, fewer disease-ridden Pick N Mix sweets). Demand Better.

Approximate depiction of the small cinema experience (source: elitehts.com)

Nor do I quite buy that not going to the cinema is the thing hurting the film studios. I haven't been able to find a specific citation for what percentage of a film's takings tends to come from the box office. The most specific source (and I don't think it's a great one) indicated that, at least until recently, DVD sales were expected to account for about 50 percent of a film's revenue (search on page for 'fifty percent'). The same source indicated there was a pretty big decline in this, though, driven by the change in the way film is consumed (and not uninfluenced by piracy, I'm sure, though the tendency is always to vastly over-estimate the impact this has).

So, at that time, the box office would account for up to (but presumably less than) 50 percent of the takings. Now, it's possible that, in the wake of the decline in DVD sales, the portion of the takings the box office accounts for has decreased, but that seems unlikely, as significant new streams of revenue have not emerged (the video on demand services that have edged out the DVDs don't seem to be as good a source of revenue for the studios). So, I expect that the box office is now more critical to the studios than it has been for decades. If I were in the studios' position, I'd be doing all I could to encourage cinemas to keep retention high and grow their audience (rather than squeezing every possible penny out of them on the cheap). Personally, I'm not seeing that, and I think the rise in 'movie franchise recycling' (between sequels, reboots and adaptations), while designed to pander to an established audience, is actually having the opposite effect, and is introducing a wider movie malaise into the general public, which is bad for everyone.

I couldn't find a CC licence image that conveyed 'video on demand', so here is a picture of a bear (image: hectoriz, cc by-nc-sa 2.0)

Not strictly relevant, but I thought I'd throw it in here: I was pretty appalled to read about some of the tricksy accounting practices the film industry has adopted towards paying its contributors. I honestly don't know if this sort of thing still happens or how widespread it is, but it doesn't exactly cover the movie industry in glory (and, admittedly, I keep talking about the 'movie industry' as if it's some cohesive whole; like it's just one guy with a camera).

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeonly idealist, but there you go. Bottom line: demand more bang for your cinemagoing buck to tempt you out of your dwelling and into the open. Alternatively, if you disagree with me, disregard what I have said and go about your cinemagoing business.

What do you think? Is this just me, or do other people feel the same way? Do cinemas just have it locked up, and people are always going to keep on coming back to see the big hitters there first, no matter what? Are they reacting the right way to a changing media landscape? Am I just straight-up wrong? What do you love/hate about the cinema? Let's hear it in the comments.

Top 5 Worst Board Games

Games are, at least in principle, a true joy, something which I have argued before is fundamental to human nature. It's generally a healthy and enriching pastime. But that's not universally true, and there is nothing quite as frustrating as being stuck playing a bad game. So here are my top 5 worst games. It should go without saying that, as with any list like this, this is all ill-informed and fully-biased opinion, and while I've tried to justify my selection in each case, your mileage may vary.

Trivial Pursuit

Okay, I'll admit, this one is a bit of a stretch. I've not got that much against Trivial Pursuit per se, and I do enjoy playing it. The problem is, I feel that quiz-based tabletop games are flawed, and this happens to be the most prominent example. Two of the most obvious flaws are limited replay value, as people get to know the questions over time, and the way in which the questions become dated (though that is a great way to release and sell new versions of your game every year! It's as if Hasbro know what they're about). 

Above all, though, my problem is that this type of game depends entirely on what you bring to the table. While all games to an extent reward learning and repeat play, I think quiz games are not learned activity in and of themselves, nor, really, is there much strategy. It's based on what you have in your head combined with the luck of the questions; there's no room for development within the game itself.

Scrabble

This one definitely comes from personal bias. I've never liked Scrabble, as much as I love messing around with words. However clear the guidelines, I find this is a game that does little more than spark endless small disputes, which take up a disproportionate amount of game time to resolve. A 'casual' game should not require a 674-page book to play effectively! Again though, a good way to sell more stuff (Hasbro again...).

The draft of the next Scrabble Dictionary.
Photo credit: Jacob Bøtter, Licensed under Creative Commons

Cluedo

Ah, now we get to the juicy stuff, where I get to start stomping on people's beloved childhood games. I know this is a game for kids, really, and that it's supposed to teach deductive reasoning, but it's just so dull. It has relatively little interactivity, player elimination (which in games that can run for longer than an hour is generally a bad thing), and builds to a usually unsatisfying conclusion.

Ultimately, it's a game where you could guess randomly on your first turn and still stand a chance of winning. If you don't do that, it essentially becomes a giant game of Guess Who, with no real lines of play or satisfying strategy. It's a game that I think you could play on your own with almost no loss in quality and tension, treating it as a logic puzzle, which begs the question, why spend your valuable time with friends and loved ones playing this when there are many finer choices?

Also, can we talk about the terrible theme/mechanics matchup is here? You're walking round a house filled with potential murder weapons with an actual murderer, essentially walking round pointing at people, asking 'was it you?', rather than worrying about the fact that there is a murderer in this spooky house with you. What's more, if your character is the murderer, you still win the game by accusing and outing yourself as the killer. In what world does that make sense?

Risk
This will be a divisive one, I'm sure, much like the game itself. I personally dislike Risk, but accept that there are those that enjoy it. The main reason I'm including it on this list is because the length of play is disproportionate to the depth of the game. Even if you enjoy Risk, there are other games out there which can give you an similar-but-better experience and play in about the same time. Game of Thrones springs to mind, whether you're into the setting or not. Heck, even Twilight Imperium would be better if you have 10 hours to spare (and if you were thinking of playing Risk, you had better!). 

Pictured: Actual Risk players.
Photo credit: Tambako The Jaguar, Licensed under Creative Commons

Those who know me well know that I have no problem with long games (hell, they're usually the ones that I enjoy the most), but I just think if you're going to invest that much time in a game, you want to have enough depth to match, and Risk is a little too one-dimensional and swingy for me, but maybe that's just down to personal preference. Also, for that length of game, I prefer I different approach to player elimination. While in games like Game of Thrones and Twilight Imperium, it is perfectly possible to eliminate other players, doing so is not necessary for the game to end, and doesn't seem to happen all that often. This means that there is more sustained interactivity for everyone who is putting the time in.

This is weirdly apt for the time, but should also 

be the fate of all Risk players everywhere.

Monopoly

This is it. The big one. 

I know I'm not alone in my hatred of Monopoly. It's another one that people often seem to love as a holdover from their childhood. But no, it's a horrible game in just about every way. If I weren't making this list, I could still write a whole post on everything that's wrong with Monopoly and feel like it was time well spent. If you are a parent, or close relative of young kids, please please please don't play Monopoly with them. There is a vast number of more worthy, rewarding, and educational games out there.

Where to start? First, the simple one; as with Risk, the playtime is waaaaay out of whack with the depth of the game. Speaking of depth, here we have Monopoly's big flaw - playing it is absolutely no fun. If you play it 'optimally', it is stagnant - almost entirely non-interactive. You buy every property you land on, do not, under any circumstances, sell them, and only trade them if it's significantly beneficial for you. If everyone's playing that way, it's quite hard to get anywhere. Outside of your turn, there is little or nothing for you to do, leaving you with lots of downtime.

What about strategy? Well, if I told you that the orange properties were the ones which were landed on most often (thanks to their placement in relation to the Jail area), what would you do with that information? Well, nothing really, since you can't control where you land, and you should be buying every property you can anyway. The game is totally lacking in meaningful decision points, which makes it, if you'll pardon the pun, 'strategically bankrupt'.

So say we all...

Then there's the little things. So many variant house rules for this game seem to exist, putting fine money under Free Parking being the most prevalent. Though here's the thing - while that seems like a cool thing to do, making a generally dead space on the board more meaningful, it just makes the game run longer by increasing the amount of money in circulation among the players, and can either bring someone back from a losing position (prolonging the game even further) or further polarise the game by increasing someone's leading position. Way to make a bad game even worse.

I think I've got most of my bile for this game out of my system, for now, so I'll leave you with this gem. According to Hasbro, the longest game of Monopoly every played lasted 1,680 hours. That is two and a third months, or approximately 210 games of Twilight Imperium. Just remember that next time someone invites you to play.

What would you put on this list? Which of these games do you still love? Why do you hate Monopoly? Sound off in the comments.

What I'm excited about from E3 2014

Edit: I blatantly missed one of the big ones
Evolve

How this one slipped me by yesterday, I don't know, especially since I had been following all the news. The newest title from the team behind Left 4 Dead, Evolve looks pretty interesting. It's a 4 v 1 multiplayer game with a team of hunters versus some giant, hulking monster, with the added bonus that the planet's flora and fauna also seem to be trying to kill you. This looks genuinely exciting, but I feel it will have the caveat that most of these games have - the ceiling for fun will be strictly reserved for when you can fire this up with 4 friends, and I don't think that that will be quite often enough. It might also get repetitive, but Left 4 Dead generally managed to overcome that.

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015)

Scant few details on this yet, but I'm pretty stoked. I found Tomb Raider (2013) to be unexpectedly brilliant, and it held up magnificently when I replayed it a few weeks ago. Plenty of room for screw ups, I guess, but I have high hopes, bolstered by the fact that, as I infer from Twitter, at any rate, Rhianna Pratchett will be returning to write it.

Alien: Isolation

I haven't been following this one too closely, but we're about due for another decent Alien game. Seriously, it's such a great IP, it's difficult to imagine how any competent studio couldn't produce at least a passable game from it if given half a chance (*cough* cheap shot *cough*). It looks innovative enough it it's approach it will at least be interesting to watch as it develops.

Batman Arkham Knight

No colons here. This is an easy win for me. I've loved every instalment in the series so far, including Arkham Origins, produced by a different studio. At worst, if they just clone the gameplay from any of the previous ones, I'll still be happy, so don't necessarily trust my opinion here. The gameplay teaser trailer was interesting, though the (admittedly extremely narrow) snapshot of the writing and voice acting sounded a little off to me. Still, can't go too far wrong. Let's just hope it doesn't live up to my recent pedigree regarding delayed games.

Mass Effect 4

Again, the details are basically non-existent, but I have almost total faith in Bioware, assuming EA don't get their grubby paws too far into the honey-filled genie bottle.

Grand Theft Auto V

...on PC. Most of the news outlets have been focussing on the 'on PS4' angle, but I'm a PC purist when it comes to GTA. One of my greatest regrets about Rockstar is that they may never publish the unparalleled Red Dead Redemption on PC.

Grim Fandango Remastered

I never got to play the original, but any case where old LucasArts games are being remade is an automatic win, as far as I'm concerned.

What's Wrong with Watch Dogs

Okay, so I made a mistake. I let myself get excited by a game. I told myself I wouldn't, not again, the pain just wasn't worth it. But nothing quite compares with that siren-song lure of flashy marketing blandishments designed specifically to appeal to my geek brain. What better time to be reminded of this than during E3?

So, a couple of weeks ago, my mental train became the rhythmic judder of 'WatchDogsWatchDogsWatchDogs'. I pre-ordered it, I took a day off work so I could play it at launch, and went to some lengths to pre-load it so it was set to go on release.

Launch Day Expectation

There were two things that should have set off alarm bells from the start. Firstly, the review embargo - the date before which journalists are barred from publishing their reviews - wasn't until launch day. That bothered me. The obvious deduction from this is that the game publishers have concerns about how it is going to be received and are running damage limitation on their day-one sales and pre-orders. But this isn't a universal warning sign - there are plenty of great games which have held their reviews until launch day. So, hope against hope, I wasn't too put off.

Launch Day Reality

Much has already been written about the second alarm bell (which, in retrospect, was more of a biohazard containment failure warning klaxon), which was that the game would be delivered digitally, on PC at least, through UPlay, Ubisoft's carbuncle of a games platform. Needless to say, to the surprise of literally no-one, there were many, many problems extending from launch day into the rest of that week (some of which are still issues for me - read on). You can read plenty about this elsewhere, but needless to say, f&#! DRM and its criminalisation of legitimate users.

For anyone not familiar with what Watch Dogs is, you play as Aiden Pearce, hacker extraordinaire, blasting his way around a hyper-connected Chicago with pretty predictable, revenge-based motivations, unsurprisingly rooted in the death of one or more close friends or loved ones.

Snark aside, I had high hopes for the story. It struck me that a game about a morally-grey hacker going toe-to-toe with the seedy immoral underside of a hyper-connected, near-future Chicago, backed by a major studio ploughing AAA-level dollars into a game for which they've been driving the hype train for months sounded like it would be anything but boring.

Yeah, about that...

Early on, I was lulled into a false sense of security by a pretty engaging if slow-paced start. I was hoping this would be a nice slow build into something increasingly pacey and far-reaching, much like the 'classic' generation of 3D GTA games (461 words before the inevitable GTA comparison). What I got was something that slowly devolved into an increasingly formless mush.

For reasons that I shall explain below, I can't actually comment on the story in its entirety, but the 60% or so that I made it through was punctuated with weird tangents that didn't really go anywhere or mean anything on their own. There was a sort of meandering feel to the missions where none of them were that interesting in isolation, and I found myself waiting for a payoff that never really came.

The worst example that I played was at the climax of the first act. For reasons that don't entirely merit going into, Aiden decides that he needs to sneak into a prison to intimidate a potential witness into keeping his identity a secret, citing fears of risk to his family.

Partway through the mission, the situation changes when another group drag off the witness in question, ostensibly to kill him. Aiden reacts roughly along the lines of 'oh no, I have to get to him before they kill him'. I may just be a heartless bastard, but this made absolutely no sense to me.

You can play Aiden as a freedom-fighter style hacktivist, or a self-interested criminal - that's an intentional-if-meaningless choice the developers have given you. Here, his reaction didn't quite jibe right with either. While Aiden might feel a genuine sense of horror that this street thug is about to get killed (notwithstanding the scores of people Aiden himself kills throughout the game with far less provocation), he didn't exactly sneak into a prison to save him. What's more, if the thug does die, it solves Aiden's problem anyway.

I say 'solves the problem', but it actually doesn't. Nor does Aiden's 'Tryhard of the Year' intimidation attempt. Because by this point, there is already a clear threat to Aiden's family, and throughout the game Aiden's real identity as the vigilante hacker is repeatedly advertised on the radio with a repetitiveness seemingly designed to make me intentionally slam my car into a wall. What you are left with is a mission which does not advance the main plot, does not make an interesting climax for the first act, and which is ultimately pointless. This is one example, and a particularly egregious one, but it's not alone.

The story is best summed up as 'filler', something on which to hang the gameplay, which left me waiting for the real beat to drop and the pace and tension to ratchet up. I'm still waiting.

While, for me, the story is what usually makes or breaks a game, I accept that this is far from the only thing that matters, and games are many things to many people. I can forgive a weak story where there is excellent gameplay that carries the experience, particularly in an open-world environment which lets you to inject your own narratives.

My overwhelming reaction to Watch Dogs' gameplay was - it's fun. It was consistently enjoyable for the 23 hours I've somehow rack up so far. That said, it's nothing groundbreaking, which in itself, is fine - not everything can be truly new and exciting, except that, in the case of Watch Dogs, that's precisely what was being hyped as.

Hacking is the obvious 'innovation' here, and it makes you feel empowered in exercising control over the environment. For the most part, though, it is just hitting buttons at the right time, and when driving, it often doesn't work quite as responsively as it needs to. There's also a pretty limited range of things you can hack. In close-quarter encounters, it generally didn't feel all that impactful compared with using your guns.

I actually found the gunplay more satisfying than the hacking. It's very well implemented, and one of the stronger sides of the gameplay. The obvious problem with that is that the game is meant to be all about hacking. Shootouts are all too often unavoidable, and there generally isn't enough incentive to use your phone over your guns.

Beyond the main storyline, the map is packed with other things to do. And I mean packed, like a rush-hour tube full of sardine tins, to the extent that the icons on the map seem to be trying to crowd each other out.

Many of these side-quests and activities were very diverting, and I sunk a lot of time into them, with the attitude of 'just one more' again and again (and again). But given the choice between a better-developed story, one that grips me at my very core and leaves me trembling at the knees and coming back again and again (I'm looking at you, Bioshock Infinite), versus crawling around a map from location to location completing yet another flavour of 'find the thing', I think it's pretty clear which I'd choose. One of these I will happily experience over and over, repetitiveness be damned, while the other, well, I'd be unlikely to do it even once. Watch Dogs, sadly, falls firmly into the latter camp.

So, a good way into the plot, I found myself a pretty deflated. Not wholly disappointed, but disillusioned about so many 'almost good' things in the game that hadn't quite come to fruition. So now, we come to the big roadblock, rising from the ground in front of us as if guided by some unseen hacker; the giant red rubber stamp over my whole experience with the game.

My Watch Dogs experience. Sadly, I'm the car in this scenario.

While playing the online mode where you invade another player's game (where the game comes closest to brilliance), I died, and came back to my own game world, finding myself with...nothing. None of my unlocked weapons, skills, nothing. This was distressing, to say the least. Apparently, I was not alone. While everything remained tangibly unlocked in the games menu, it effectively blocked me from doing very much, and certainly from continuing with the main story. Astoundingly, this still appears not to be fixed, more than two weeks on. This from a game that was delayed for more than six months to get it right.

This was the defining test of the game for me. With no easy fix in sight, I was faced with starting over if I wanted to continue the story in the near future, and, confronted by that prospect, I discovered that I just wasn't excited enough to do so. Up to that point, I had been enjoying an admittedly flawed game, but this brush with a near-enough game-breaking bug was jarring enough to remove the last of the gloss, and I've barely been back to it. Disappointingly, I haven't even found myself craving to fire it back up, instead burying myself in tried-and-true alternatives, and that realisation was pretty disappointing.

The bottom line? Watch Dogs is a fun game, but it could, and should, have been so much more. The prospect of a fun game alone would not have been a good enough to draw to get me to content with UPlay and launch-day disasters, but that's just a testament to the power and success of the game's marketing engine (if you want an idea of how hyped this game was, when the delay was originally announced, Ubisoft shares dropped 26%). Would I still recommend it? Just. But only if you find it at a significant discount and, ideally, if you can somehow avoid using UPlay at all. Just wait for the bugs to get fixed first.

The Real Watch Dog