And oh how we laughed... Not at first admittedly, but by the end of the evening, with the fixed rictus grimace of Kieron inspiring as much mirth as sympathy, the guffaws were coming thick and fast. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I remember playing Zombies once before with the Rivals, probably 4 or 5 years ago now. The game itself is pretty simple, with very heavy elements of luck. But happily for those Crowning Moments, with large amounts of interaction too. What we hadn't remembered though is just quite how punishing and relentless the game is. The layout was unforgiving too, with a very long route to the heliport infested by the living dead. All of us were wiped out and bounced back to the start at least once. But entertainment really started when Kieron, 3 spaces from victory, was slotted by a corpse. As Confucius once notionally said: "There is nothing funnier than watching an old friend fall off a roof". And after that fall from glory we all pretty much lost it, and gave up any pretence of this game being anything other than a childish dice-fest. By no means a satisfying Rivals game - but probably more laugh out loud laughs than most Wednesday nights. With the possible exception of seeing James in an Evil Balaclava. And the scores? It hardly matters, but Stu won.
:-)
I think we concluded that we won't be playing this one again in a hurry. No matter how late Andy turns up...
;-)
The averages now stand at: James6.14; Stu 5.87; Deej 4.6; Adrian 4.2; Kieron 3.36; Andy 2.4.
3 comments:
There are five expansion sets for this game, so some people must like it. But lots of people don't either - see reviews at Board Game Geek.
Fortunately, they've also thought about how to improve the game.
For example:
- Movement has to be increased. Use an 8-sided, 10-sided or 2D6
- Don't limit Hearts to 5. Players get killed way too often and have to start over, many Heart "power-ups" are left because of being limited to 5.
- Each player gets to hold only ONE card. You can play it, save it or discard it but you can only ever have one in your hand. This is also an easy way to tell if a players played his 1 card per turn rotation.
- Kills are on 3-6.
There are some other suggestions here.
So with some suitable tweaks, I'd be happy to play this again in another few years ;-)
But would the game ever be good enough to justify painting all those zombies...? Clearly yes for someone.
Some time ago I regularly played a game called snaked and ladders. I remember this was lots of fun because the highs were balanced with the lows. It was a simple game with an element of skill (dice rolling, ability to cheat without anyone else noticing etc.). Some game designers were clearly not happy with this simple format and decided to tinker with the time honoured classic and come up with "ZOMBIES". However, they have unfortunately reduced the skill levels when compared to snakes and ladders and the balance of highs and lows has moved decidedly towards the lows. I cannot think of a single positive thing to say about this game. To avoid slitting my throat between the tedious periods of inactivity between my goes (which consisted of rolling a few dice) I managed to grab a 40 winks or so. The game dragged on from one frustrating event to another. 2, 3, 3.5 3.52 hours and counting. Was time stretching out before me and was I destined never to see the end of this torture? At last, 11:00 struck and I was able to claim last place even though I was 3 spaces away from victory. Put this game on ebay please now so that we don't waste another 3.56 hours of our lives on it
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