Review: Capture

Another interesting summer reality competition that debuted this year is the show, Capture.  Dressed up to be Hunger Games the TV show, but ending up more like the Syfy show, Cha$e, Capture is all about one team hunting down other teams in a large woodland area and tagging them with fancy devices called Talons.  Each episode, a team will be randomly selected to be the Hunt team and the rest will be the Prey.  The Hunt team has two 4 hour hunts in which they can capture a maximum of two teams.  If the Hunt doesn't catch any teams, they are automatically eliminated.  If they catch two teams, the remaining teams vote to eliminate one of the captured teams.  If the Hunt team only captures one team, then the captured team and the Hunt team are up for elimination.

During the hunt, there may be Sabotage events, Supply Stations opened, or Looking Glasses that are usable.  Sabotages task players with getting to a certain point to make another team have alarms blasting out of their vests or the Hunt team gets a compass pointer to them or some other bad targeted event.  Supply Stations contain some dinner of some sort, supplies received when they go back to camp after a hunt, and are also a large safe zone where the Hunt team cannot enter (at least while the station is open).  Looking Glasses let a Prey team see where all other teams are (including the Hunt team), but also let the Hunt team know that a Looking Glass was used.  After a Hunt is over, captured teams spend the night in cell, the Hunt team spends the night in a very fancy area with a luxury dinner, and the rest of the teams sleep on metal cots with rice and beans for dinner.

As the game goes on, all teams get more and more tired and alliances are made between Hunt and Prey teams.  There is a little bit of strategy to the game between the voting, who the Hunt team tries to capture (although, mostly they just wander around and capture whoever they can), and who gets sabotaged.  It should also be noted that within the first or second episode, someone already had said, "We didn't come here to make friends."  Is that a requirement of reality competition shows now?  Is it in a contract somewhere that someone has to say that?  Anyway, it's a pretty entertaining show and it hasn't ended yet.  The sabotages have gotten more interesting game design-wise, so it does seem like there was some thought behind the show.  If it makes it to a second season (usually not likely for summer reality competition shows), I'll watch it again.

Review: Whodunnit?

The summer is a strange period where there are more people with free time, but significantly lacking quality new media.  Movies seem to know how to take advantage of this, but for some reason, there's an incredible lull in new games and new television and generally what is released is pretty terrible (with a few notable exceptions).  The summer seems to be a good time for TV producers to test out their unique reality TV show ideas like The Mole, Pirate Master, and this season's show, Whodunnit.

The premise of the show is one of those murder mystery parties/dinner theaters with a reality competition laid on top of it.  Each episode, there is a murder.  The contestants must try to piece together the murder.  Each one can choose to investigate the crime scene, the morgue, or the last known location the person was before the murder.  Since no contestant can be in all three places, some information must be shared, but the murderer is among them, so it's hard to tell who to trust.  Not to mention that they are all competing to be the final contestant "left alive".  After the investigation, everyone is given a riddle (a la Treasure Hunters), whose solution will lead to one more clue to how the murder occurred.  Then in a confessional, the contestants lay out their theory of how the crime took place and who the murderer is.  The two contestants whose theories were furthest from what happened become marked, with one of them becoming the murder victim for the next episode.

It's a really interesting premise for a show, but it definitely is pretty darn awkward.  The deaths are so blatantly fake that the contestants even remotely acting like any of it is real is really just insulting to their (and our) intelligence.  One contestant convulses on some wet ground as a cut, sparking wire lays on the ground kind of near her, but clearly not touching the water; one contestant on fire runs outside and jumps in a pool and somehow instantly drowns?; one contestant "conveniently" needs to go to the kitchen because their meal wasn't cooked like everyone else's and gets "attacked" by a mountain lion?  I'm pretty sure everyone knows how murder mysteries are supposed to be, so acting like it's real when there's no real effort made to make it appear real is just strange.  The confessionals where the contestants lay out their theory about the murder are just terribly acted (I'm sure the people had fun doing them, but over the top doesn't begin to describe it).

The other annoying part is that it's a lot like the Sherlock Holmes books, in that, as the viewer, there is no way for us to really play along or figure out anything ahead of time.  The riddles are more like scavenger hunts and all the contestants seem pretty stupid, so it honestly could be any of them, but despite that, there is some part of me that wants to keep watching.  Maybe part of me is hoping it'll turn out like the murder mystery episode of Saved by the Bell where there will be a twist of epic proportions part way through, but most likely this will just be a show that was much better in concept than in production.  Really, it's just making me more upset that Treasure Hunters never got another season...

Review: The Perfect Heist

Yet another of the games I've backed on Kickstarter has arrived, this time it's The Perfect Heist.  On the surface, this is a heist movie flavored Munchkin, but after playing it, you'll realize that it's much more than just that.  Players cooperate or compete in various heists to earn Notoriety points.  The game ends when any player has been involved in a certain number of successful heists and at that point, the player with the most Notoriety points wins.  Each heist has a difficulty rating (that also determines how many Notoriety points it's worth).  Players build an Ability deck with a series of traits (Quick Thinking, Pyromaniac, Brute, etc.), weapons (brass knuckles, guns, flamethrowers, etc.), kit items (rope, ladders, high tech cameras, etc.), and a specialty (Driver, Gunman, Technician, etc.) to improve their ability to tackle the more difficult heists.  If a heist is too difficult for a player, they can recruit other players to join them on the heist by offering them a cut of the loot or Notoriety points the heist gives them or cards they already have.  Other players (even ones on the heist) can try to sabotage the heist to make them fail.  If a heist fails, the leader of the crew (the player who started the heist) has a chance to escape (by rolling a die) and if that fails, the player(s) with the least amount of Notoriety get to take some of their cards.

The part that makes The Perfect Heist so much more fun than Munchkin are the History cards.  History cards give you a special advantage targeted at one other player (e.g. your Sabotage cards are more effective against the targeted player), but the fun part is that you start to build a story between you and that other player.  Maybe that other player left you for dead.  Further twist, maybe that player was also your ex!  Further twist, you were family members with another player who was cuckolded by your ex who left you for dead!  As the game goes on and you play more and more of these History card, the story developed by them just gets more and more entertaining.  The game is for 3-6 players and technically you are supposed to only play History cards with the players sitting to your right and left, but if you can manage to keep track of how the various game rules affect you, there's no reason why you can't build an intricate web of ridiculous backstories with all the other players.

This game is easily worth the $35 it costs on their website, even if you don't care about your games building their own story, but for people like me who love it when a ridiculous story develops while you're out-negotiating and out-thinking your friends, this game is fantastic!

Games I Grew Up On: Anticipation

The very first four player game I played on a console system was the game, Anticipation.  The game itself is just Pictionary where the computer is drawing the picture for you.  Since the NES only had two controllers, they had to be creative for four players.  A player is assigned either the Control Pad or A/B buttons on a controller to buzz in with.  So with two controllers, up to four players can play.  That's assuming, of course, that once you buzz in, the other player assigned to your controller will let you have the controller to enter in your answer.

The game has multiple levels where players must answer each of four categories correctly to progress to the next level.  The higher the level, the less hints there are to suggest what the drawing is (less dots, no category, no dashes to indicate how many letters).  Higher levels also have gaps in the board so it's possible to fall back down to a previous level.  The first player to complete all four categories on the highest level wins the game.

This game was definitely a lot of fun to play as a kid, but even back then I realized that my brothers (and eventually I) knew all the answers already since we had played it so much.  Just like any game with a fixed set of questions/words/whatever, the game stops being fun at that point.  I wonder how different things would be if there was DLC for games back then...