BEANO the Board Game - Board Game Review

Have you heard of Dennis the Menace? No, not that Dennis. The other Dennis. Yeah, they're two, and if you're from the UK you most likely know what I am talking about. Through some freak coincidence, two Dennis the Menace were created and debuted on the same day back in 1951. You can't make that stuff up. They're also still both ongoing.

What else do they have in common you ask? Well, they're both about mischievous little boys (hence the name one would guess) with a pet dog. While US Dennis is well meaning but gets into trouble, the UK Dennis is definitely more of a cunning prankster. In fact, the UK Dennis has had to have a bit of a clean-up recently as he could have been considered something of a bully for most of his existence.

I had never heard of the UK Dennis before I met my SO from England, who introduced me to Dennis' magazine The Beano. The Beano sports a plethora of characters with similarly witty names and dubious personalities, like Minnie the Minx, Roger the Dodger, Bash Street Kids, Les Pretend and Ivy the Terrible. Some of the more cheeky characters have had to move over for kids with other skills, like Dangerous Dan, Ruby and Betty (with her Yeti), presumably because a magazine focused entirely on being naughty doesn't fly so well anymore.

As you can imagine The Beano characters are also available in various kinds of merchandise, of which my children already own most - thanks to an enthusiastic Beano-fan, their father. They have mugs, t-shirts, jumpers, bed sheets, back packs, lunch boxes and hats, to mention a few. Then we also have Beano themed "Who's There?", "Top Trumps" and "Clue" board games.

And we also own the board game I intend to talk a little about here, the BEANO Board Game, which is its own original idea giving the players the opportunity to try to be the one who does more pranks than the other players.

To do this the player needs to collect sets of two cards. One card represents the prank object, like a wiggly worm, a whoopee cushion or a stink bomb. The other card represents the idea of what kind of prank to do with the item, like throwing a water balloon at the Cinema or throwing a stink bomb at the Lighthouse. Once you have a set of cards (water balloon and Cinema) you need to get to the Cinema on the board to collect your point.

Sounds easy enough. Of course there are plenty of things that can go wrong along the way. Other players can "nab" your idea and certain areas on the board forces you to trade your prank items with each other. There is a lot of opportunity to ruin your co-players plans and you often have to act as quickly and as secretly as possible. Your ideas are open for anyone to see, but your prank items are hidden. Until you have to trade them off that is...

For better or worse, there is a good amount of luck required to be the winner in this game, since you both need to collect "the right" pranks and ideas, but also land on squares on the board that are beneficial to you. The tactical element lies in which path to take and which prank to try to achieve, since each roll with the die often gives you several different options. I think the board makes a decent job at trying to level out some of the luck - if you don't get the right cards, you might be able to steal them from other players instead. Rolling the die and ending up on a white square is probably the worst that can happen in this game, an entire round of not really achieving anything.

You can play the game two players, but I'd recommend being at least three. The more you are, the more happens each round, the less safe you feel and the more chaos will ensue. That is when this game is at its best. Be prepared to make some enemies because this game allows you to be very cruel. 

Overall  I think the game does a good job at being fun while also staying true to the BEANO soul - running around trying to do as many pranks as possible is entirely in the right vein of the BEANO comic. If you want something cerebral and deep, this is definitely not the game for you. But if you're a fan of the BEANO comic and want an evening of aggravating your co-players, you could definitely do worse.

Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014) - Review

 Remember gaming magazines? Remember when gaming magazines came with floppies with game demo's? Even though I received countless over the years I only remember one - the demo for Wolfenstein 3D. Though it was a bit too stressful for my young self, my brother loved it. It only contained the first three levels, but I remember him playing them over and over and over, poring over each stage trying to find secrets, while I watched.

Then it was quiet on the Wolfenstein front for a while and I largely missed the games released before 2010. But then in 2014 Wolfenstein was suddenly back into my conscious with a bang - with the release of Wolfenstein: New Order, developed by Swedish company MachineGames and published by none other than Bethesda. This looked like a fresh and fun take of the by then long running game franchise, that also fit my matured taste, and I was very curious to try it. But back-logs being what they are, I didn't actually get around to it until ten years later (!), when I finally booted it up this year. Fortunately, the game turned out to be well worth keeping around...

You play as William "BJ" Blazkowicz who was first introduced in the series in Wolfenstein 3D - coincidentally, I had no idea what the main character was called all those years ago watching my brother play, but it was very fun to see that it was lore wise supposed to be the same. BJ hasn't changed much from Wolfenstein 3D and presents such a chiseled look as to almost look parodically non-human. 

In the New Order the Nazis win the war. Consequently the Nazis, always being the most grateful villain since they have zero redeeming qualities, take over the world and BJ needs to fix it by killing the new leader Wilhelm Strasse also known as Deathshead. Apparently there are some characters and story elements that carry over from the games that I missed, like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Deathshead being one of them. 

To do this you get equipped with a ton of weapons and kill a ton of nazis. The game straddles a very well balanced point between a "spray and pray"-game like Serious Sam and "Only kill what you must"-game like Dishonored. There are elements of trying to stay out of sight and getting the surprise attack, but never to the point where you actually ever feel sneaky. The game knows this and isn't designed with any HUD that shows you whether you are visible to enemies or not. You find out because you suddenly hear screaming and get shot at. This never becomes a problem, instead you lean in to it. Even though I might start out trying to stab people one by one in silence, it almost always ends up with me running like a crazy session of paintball and shooting anything that moves. No enemy feels like an ungrateful bullet sponge and all combat feels satisfying.

I played the game on normal difficulty and most of it was fairly easy. The game is very generous with health and ammo at almost all points. It's still not advisable to run into the center of the room and shoot wildly at whatever you see, that will get you killed, and especially if you haven't taken care of sentries first. Most stages take at least some planning and tactics, and utilizing a variety of your arsenal. I had to replay certain segments a few times because I got stuck in the open and was quickly gunned down.

You might see where I am going with this, so let's just say it - the game does pretty much everything right. 

All the weapons are fun and they all pack the right punch. Using different weapons in different ways allows you to unlock perks that improves BJ in different ways, like allowing him to reload faster or carry more ammo. This encourages you to play a bit outside your comfort zone and try all the different weapons in different ways.

The atmosphere is great, they even made re-recordings of famous songs as Nazi-versions, this is something you have to go check out on Youtube. The music playing in the background will get you pumped at the right times. There is definitely an extra level of atmosphere if you can read German like me, the game is littered with world building tidbits - a lot of them are translated into English but not all. The attention to detail is astonishing, there is even a playable remake of Wolfenstein 3D in a corner of the game!

But the most important thing that New Order gets right is how it constantly manages to keep things fresh. BJ will travel all over, with varied stages and challenges - you even go to the moon for part of the game (!). New weapons and upgrades get introduced at a perfect speed. There is never a moment to get bored, you'll always want to check what there is around the corner and how you can take on the next stage.

You'll meet a well written set of characters that help you forward. The jargon is rough and tough, just like everything else in this game. BJ gets to do an absurdly heavy load of work for the resistance, but then he seems to be basically immortal. The stages let you sneak one moment to get some head shots in, to swiftly let you don double shotguns to run around the corner and fill some dudes face with bouncy bullets. You'll drive a mini-sub and like mentioned jump around on the surface of the moon. I don't want to spoil too much in case you like me have saved this game in your catalogue for a rainy day, let me just say that the 13-14 hours the game will take you will not be wasted.

Rarely do I play a game and constantly smile over all the great gameplay and design choices that the developers have made. I can barely even nitpick but I am going to do my best. At one point in the game you discover some sort of super armor, it looks rad as all hell. Two of the NPCs get to use it, but BJ never does and I was a bit disappointed at that missed opportunity. Also I had trouble swapping to the right weapon in the heat of battle some times, and that got me killed more than once. I can't really complain at the controls though, on PC there is both the option to use mapped keys and scroll to swap weapons so the problem was most definitely on me.

The game got two prequels, Old Blood and New Colossus, that I am definitely looking forward to playing as well. If they're half as well made as this game I know I am in for a good time.

Weeeooo Weeeooo - Board Game Review

 Let's face it, a lot of board games for young children are quite boring. I think this is because some game creators think "simple" means "purely based on luck". But a good board game for young children, at least if you ask me, should still require some level of skill or tactical thinking, designed in a way that it fits the age group. Even better if the design is such that it fun for any age group. Is this even possible?

Let's take a closer look at the lovely and aptly named board game Weeeooo Weeeooo - they could've just gone with something boring like "Here comes the Fire Engine", but this shows the level of dedication - and see how it holds up to my adult eye.

Weeeooo Weeeooo is a board game in which you play as a fire fighter who gets called on missions. The goal is to complete as many missions as possible, but if you're not careful you get called to lunch and lose your points. Each round the player flips cards to see whether they are a point (mission) or a point reset (lunch break). To get the point the player also need to have brought the right tools - two out of three possible, since every mission requires a certain tool to be completed. If someone fails to complete mission/s, the point goes over to the next player in turn. So the game is essentially a risk vs reward assessment game and its great fun to see how differently young players can approach the game mechanics. Some go the safe route and only take a few points per turn, some (most) go all in and just hope for the best.

I find this fairly simple premise easy to grasp for any age group above the "put everything in your mouth"-age and this means that as an adult you don't have to go out your way to avoid being the supreme winner nor smiling through boredom. While the tools add another layer of activity to the game, they're basically just luck based. To pick a card or not pick a card, that is the only question and it's a pretty fun and interesting one, at least for the 10-15 minutes that the game lasts. I played this with my kids from the age of 2 with no problem, though at that age the components are still more fun to play with than to win with.

I forgot to tell you about the best part - the game includes a little fire fighter figure and best of all the game box itself turns into an actual fire engine with which you can drive around and complete/pick up missions.

This is probably difficult to get hold of now, so I'll make a general recommendation. Risk assessment gameplay is usually fun for most ages and something that can be designed to level out some of the differences in skill. It's a good style of game to bet on when trying out games for the youngest kids that actually require some thinking, maybe something to kindle an interest into heavier things to come.

Weeeooo Weeeooo is a fun and well designed game in this category, one that I feel goes that little extra distance and I whole heartedly recommend it.

Diablo (1997)

 I don't want to call this a failure, but... there is just no other way to explain my experience with Diablo.

But let's back up a bit. Diablo is one of my earliest and fondest memories of computer gaming, sitting behind my mom as she was playing it on our old Mac. So much so I even have a quote from the game as the tagline of my blog! I never really tried it myself but had a lot of fun with Diablo 2 and 3. 

I recall my mom struggling with Diablo, she had to cheese Butcher by shooting him through a grate and eventually managed to save-kill herself my accidentally saving a second before she got swarmed by mobs. Then she moved on to calmer things like The Dig and Myst.

But in the back of my head lingered the feeling of a special relationship with Diablo, one that I would one day go full circle and play it like my mom did back in the day. I soon realized that would only come too true.

So I start it up and roll a warrior. The choices in Diablo are few and simple. That is a welcome sight for an amateur like me that I don't have to know whether I need a half-orc mage-paladin and what stats are best for those, but everything is pretty much ready and set for me. And maybe a bold move for Blizzard at the time when so many were still leaning heavy into the D&D rules. Here all you've got is someone who hits hard, someone who shoots a bow and someone who casts spells. Not much else to think about when getting started. With old games like this I always go for the melee, figuring they are somehow the easy mode with less to keep track off.

The music in Diablo is the kind of music I think could even give people fake nostalgia at this point, but for someone who like me was there for real, with all the extra hipster points, it gives off goosebumps. I think there are few tunes as perfect at conveying the right message and atmosphere from the get-go as the Tristram theme, and it's fortunate it's such an epic tune because you will be hearing it a lot. Definitely up on my top 10 Tunes That Gives Me The Feels-list. Eerie and calm at the same time, few tunes can pull this off. The Save Room Theme from Resident Evil is another one.

The game presents you as a returning citizen of Tristram. The local populace tell you that much evil has happened since you left. The local church has been desecrated and is being used for devilish purposes. They ask you to check it out and maybe also get rid of the local bad boy, The Butcher. You quickly notice that the church is just the very tiny top of a very huge hell-hole iceberg. 

I felt pretty gung-ho about myself as I went down the first set of stairs and came out into a massive crypt. I immediately set out to bash and smash some skeletons and imps jumping around. The permeating soundscape made sure any visitors would know there was nothing good coming from strolling down here, but I was doing quite well. Eventually I leveled up and encountered my first surprise. 

As you level up you get a certain amount of points to set into your stats. Your stats will affect everything from health, mana and what kind of gear you can use. But what I didn't find anywhere was a skill tree. Did the game mean for me to have this one click slash attack for the entirety of the game? Surely not? Reading up on it I find that to learn new skills you have to find book drops throughout the game. So they aren't inherit to the class, but random drops from mobs in the game. I guess it technically means any class can eventually learn any skill, though they will use them with different proficiency, but it does mean that until you find the drops you want and need, you're stuck with what ends up being a pretty repetitive skill set. People might've had the time and patience for this back in the day, but I definitely didn't find it amusing.

The game is a dungeon crawler in every sense. You go further and further down, killing everything you see and hope you get the right drops. In this game I find it to be a huge drawback that the mobs don't respawn, meaning that there is a set amount of experience (and loot) to gain from each level. There is no saving yourself by grinding some extra levels here, and that is usually my go to.

As I ventured further down it didn't take me long to encounter The Butcher's lair. I remembered what it looked like from back in the day, so I didn't get shocked when "FRESH MEAT!" was screamed into my face. I remembered The Butcher being hard, but he absolutely smashed me. I realized I wouldn't stand a chance unless I leveled up quite a bit. In fact, I struggled a lot against some rare mob on the same level and had to kite it several laps before it succumbed. Only for me to receive some half-decent helmet.

See here is the issue I have with Diablo; You always feel like you are one step behind. I am constantly short on money, which means I am short on healing/mana potions and short on gear. Which means I struggle against enemies even in the early game and I never feel like I catch a break.

After hitting my head against skeletons and imps for a while (maybe that's not the way to do it?) I decide to see if I am playing the wrong class. After failing equally hard on the ranger and mage I decide to see if the Hellfire expansion changed some of the things I had trouble with. And it did, it made leveling a little bit easier. The levels seem to be larger, or maybe the enemies give more experience. Either way I was several levels higher than I had been on my "classic" run once I got to Butcher again. Didn't matter much though, I still didn't stand much chance against him.

And that's fine, The Butcher is supposed to be the first boss of the game and it makes sense you need to gear up and level up to beat him. But everything just takes a bit too long. Getting levels, getting skills, getting decent gear. It's too repetitive and not enough... fun.

I had to conclude that my try with Diablo was a bit of a fiasco.

I feel like they fixed a lot of these gripes I have with Diablo in Diablo 2, but maybe I am misremembering that one too? I haven't played it in ~15 years, so maybe it is time to try that one again, and hopefully have a better time.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (PC, 2014)

There can be defining moments of your teenage years, and the movie The Mummy was definitely one of those for me. It hit me like a slap across the face and I woke up to the glorious mystery that was Ancient Egypt. I became a little bit obsessed, when other teenagers had posters of Legolas and Anakin on their walls (that's what people had in the early 2000's right?) I begged my mom to take me to Egypt to visit the pyramids. I decided to learn how to read hieroglyphs and... well long story short, a game themed around ancient Egypt sounded like it would be right up my alley, because even though the obsession has mostly died down by now, I still think ancient Egypt is rad has hell.

I have also always had the intention to play some sort of Lara Croft game, and by now there are many to choose from. Well, there you have it - two good reasons for me to check this game out.

I liked the isometric design of it, being a big fan of games like Fallout 1 & 2. Somewhere I also thought that the rest of Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (LCTO) would be in that vein, but I was very wrong. Turns out LCTO is a multiplayer action-puzzler and I was immediately struck by two problems: 1. A game designed around multiplayer but no one to play it with and 2. An isometric game but only WASD to control it with.

Let's just establish that WASD is not the best way to control any game that is viewed at an angle (hilariously the control scheme is compared to a SpongeBob Squarepants game on Wikipedia). I couldn't get my usual trusty setup of PS2 controllers to work with this game though, so keyboard is what I've got. Just think about it, to move the direction the game considers straight, I have to press two buttons. During the platforming elements and heated moments of battle it was easy to get confused and this definitely got me killed more often than I liked.  On the flipside, I think aiming is probably a whole lot easier done with the mouse than a controller, though weirdly Lara can't shoot urns that are right next to her. It does mean however that I can't make any comment as to the qualities of the game as a multiplayer experience, I am sadly without friends... who play video games.

It is weird to play this game on your own though. The other people on your team - Horus, Isis and some schmoe named Carter Bell - constantly talk to you, yet are nowhere to be seen within the dungeons. It just emphasized that I was playing it alone, and even the game was confused about it like it was saying "wait, you really don't have friends?".

It's usually clear where you need to go and what you need to do, the game gives you plenty of hints. Enemies are thematically obvious being mostly mummies and scarabs of varying kinds but this is what I expect and want going into a game taking place in ruins from ancient Egypt. It is clear they've borrowed more than a few things from the aforementioned 1999 Mummy movie, I swear the music that plays occasionally is almost exactly the theme tune to the movie. The atmosphere is definitely ancient Egypt, albeit with cool and magical machinery around every corner.

The story is... well, barely worth mentioning. Osiris and Isis were tricked by their brother Set who kills Osiris (the game mentions that Osiris and Isis are married, but not that they're siblings) and now Set has machinations on the human world. To prevent this from happening you need to re-awaken Osiris by reassembling his body parts. Setting out from a hub world, you enter different crypts/dungeons and make your way through, solving puzzles and shooting up the place like any good grave robber would do.  Lara still does what she does best and I never got bored of hearing the noise of an urn breaking or bombing pillars. The reward at the end of each dungeon is a another part of Osiris. Just be careful how you decide to google that, "How to find body parts in the crypt" might put you on some register somewhere.

All over the dungeon you can pick up gems that allow you to open chests in the hub world. The chests contain gear of varying and random quality, the more gems you pay the better the gear piece. The balance between puzzling and shooting is overall good, but actually leans a lot heavier on the puzzling than I was expecting. There are collectables and upgrades to find on each stage and the puzzles are not difficult to figure out, even for me - a notoriously bad puzzler.

To execute them is a different matter though. If combat gets tricky with the WASD control system (though never hard), puzzling can get downright irritating. Especially when there are timed puzzles where you need to really get your button presses correctly and Lara. just. won't. do. what. I. tell. her. to. Of course she does exactly what I tell her to, there is nothing wrong with the controlling - just the counter intuitive nature of it. After a particularly frustrating puzzle segment about 3,5 hours into the game I decided it was time to quit. I really wonder how the games are designed to be solved in multi-player, if they're the same then they're just way easier to do with more people.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is ok. If you love action-puzzlers or you're looking for a game to play with some friends then this has potential. Just make sure you play it with controllers.