Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Fucking iPads

[quote name="fabio"]So a lot of companies are releasing digital versions of their board games, complete with online play and clever AI so you can get satisfying games in...<i>on your fucking iPad.</i> There's been a goddamn explosion of games being released on the thing: Elder Sign, Small World, and Eclipse just to name a few. <b>Not even a mention of any possible PC release.</b> To date the only non-Hasbro game to be released on PC has been the godawful euro Ticket to Ride (or Race to the Galaxy if you count the open source version). Are bribes involved? Do they think iPad - not even the entire tablet market - is a bigger market than PC? It's killing me because a lot of these games are blah in person, but become interesting once you cut out human thinking downtime. Anyway, reviews of these: <b>Ticket to Ride-</b> Bullshit bullshit luck. You draw colors to beat other people to claiming train routes. Everyone gets a secret objective route at the beginning for big points if you complete it. The problem is the east-west cross country routes are by far more rewarding than shorter routes or the north-south routes. I have never, ever seen someone who started with a shorter route beat someone who started with a east-west route. I've heard that the expansion, available as DLC, fix this but nobody is playing the expansions online. Screw this game. <b>Elder Sign-</b> Arkham Horror boiled down to a version of Yhatzee. Very simple and fun, but a little tricky with player numbers. Technically you can have 1-8 players, but I'd say it only works with 3 or 4. The thing is there's a set number of turns and resources available that doesn't change with the number of players, so the game actually gets easier the fewer players there are. It's way too easy with 1 or 2, and nobody gets enough to do with 5-8. If you're in a large game and get wounded so you have to spend turns recovering, you're effectively out of the game. Otherwise with 3 or 4 people it's the perfect quick solution if you liked the idea of Arkham Horror but thought it was too unwieldy. <b>Small World-</b> A fantasy version of History of the World. Imagine Risk where instead of getting reinforcements every turn, you get a new race at a specific location with a set number of armies and unique power. The problem with this game is that by minimizing luck (it takes a set number of armies to knock out a defender with one die roll allowed per turn for a shot at a better exchange), it forces players to spend more time analyzing exact moves which slows everything down for what's supposed to be a light game. Furthermore, each race gets another random ability every game on top of their standard ability which forces you to spend more time analyzing combos. The end result is people who want to win taking for-fucking-ever to take their turn. There's nothing to do when it's not your turn, and half the time you have to skip your turn when it finally comes back to you. Tons of casual players swear by this game, but I'd avoid it unless you put a time limit on turns. This is one that would benefit a ton from playing against a computer. <b>Game of Thrones (2nd edition)-</b>A wargame with an asymmetrical free for all setup. Very similar to Diplomacy. The big differences is battles involve playing a leader card to add to your total strength along with a special effect. You can't use a leader again until you've exhausted your whole hand so there's a bluffing game in blowing your best leader or punting. Another aspect is hidden orders where each region receives a move order, support a neighboring region order, disrupt a neighboring support, or build/income. It's a sound enough game, but the problem is the usual problem with asymmetric games. Each house has a "role" where if you're unaware of it you'll get crushed (Stark plays the defensive long game, Greyjoy and Lannister have to quickly crush each other, etc). Compounding this problem is that victory tends not to go to the best player, but rather who lucked out in getting the weakest player for a neighbor. It can become a satisfying game AFTER everyone is familiar enough with what you have to do for strategies, but is it really worth the time investment when you could be playing something else? I'd say no unless you're huge Diplomacy and GoT fans. <b>Eclipse-</b> Another game I desperately want a digital version of but it's only on the (fucking) iPad. This is the closest you'll get to a functional boardgame version of Master of Orion. There's expanding and dealing with your neighbors, being the first to defeat the guardian in the center to claim the valuable planet, researching new tech, and ship design. A good chunk of techs are new ship parts. You can build small, medium, or heavy ships and the only difference is how many parts you can fit on each one. Do you go heavy on armor to absorb damage, shields to lessen the chance of being hit at all, computers to increase your chance of hitting, tons of guns, or engines to move halfway across the board in one move? You have to watch what your opponents are designing and try to come up with a counter (if he doesn't have any computers, then your shields are worthless, etc.). There's also enough ways to build up victory points without conquest so it just doesn't turn into a straight war game. Very recommended. Very streamlined and simple once you learn the rules. The only problem is in the base game, the luck factor is too high in drawing new systems while exploring and missiles are pretty overpowered. So overpowered that over half the new stuff in the expansion is new tech specifically for countering missiles. The iPad version doesn't have the expansion yet, and the physical game is pretty costly: $100 for the base game and around $40-50 for the expansion.[/quote]