|
The Top 9 in no particular order
I like 4th edition Talisman, but I haven't tried the expansion yet. The 2nd edition was my first experience in gaming and I loved it, the rules were simple enough for a 10 year old yet it was interesting enough to make me seek out other sword and sorcery games. It belonged to my step dad and was catalyst in us spending time together. I recently bought the 4th edition mostly for sentimental value, but surprisingly after all these years I still love it as a game.
I bought Zombies!!! and only played it once, I didn't like that is was competitive rather than co-op. The zombies are nasty enough but with other players throwing bad stuff at you it seems like everyone would just die and start over a lot with no one actually winning.
Shadows Over Camelot is a great co-op game with (and I've yet to see this in another game) a self adjusting difficulty, meaning that the more players you have to battle the game the more difficult the game gets. So it's about the same difficulty with 2 players as it is with 8.
Arkham Horror is okay but it takes sooo long to get through a game, especially if any of the players are unfamiliar with it. With 6 players it takes about 5 hours to play, and in that there's about 2 or 3 hours of enjoyment. I wouldn't play this one again without either streamlined house rules or seasoned veteran players (which I myself am not).
Munchkin, for all it's humorousness can get pretty nasty and competitive, I'm at my most vulgar playing this game. It's built on such simple rules yet if you mix in enough expansions and editions it can layer into this beastly game where you have literally dozens of items, powers, and features to keep track of. This leads to pretty heated discussions over what overrides what. Ironically I started playing this D&D parody before getting into D&D, so it was interesting seeing all these inside jokes in reverse.
Mag Blast is a rare treasure, no dice, no character sheets, and no little plastic figures. It's just a small stack of cards and it's priced as such, yet it's made with such innovation and balance that it has the same re playability as a game 3-times the cost. It was recently redone with new artwork by John Kovalic but is otherwise the exact same game as before. No expansions or new editions exist the last time I checked, but if there were I would spend rent money on it in a heartbeat.
Hex-Hex is an interesting, nerdified version of hot potato. Even though there are some cards that put you at a disadvantage if you're not familiar this is still the first game I show to non-gamers because of how easy it is to pick up. The cards are occasionally confusing or contradictory, but nothing some house rules can't fix.
Ninja Burger is funny and has some cute artwork but there's not much strategy to it. You make some decisions which may or may not work out later, but for the most part it's just dice rolling; roll for the first part of the mission, if you win roll for the second part, if you win roll for the third part and if you win you just completed the mission, that's about it. But this one is easy to pick up as well so it tends to be the second game I show to non-gamers after Hex-Hex.
I don't remember much about Settlers of Catan since I haven't played it in a while but I do remember it being fun despite losing by an epic margin. You draw your resources and luck determines what you get, whenever I drew I kind of felt like Charlie Brown at Halloween ("I got a rock.") That's about all I can say about it.
|
