SU&SD - Shut Up & Sit Down

Review: Tease

[Introducing friend of SU&SD and games journalist Leigh Alexander.]

Quinns: So here’s what happened.

Leigh: OK.

Quinns: A while back some SU&SD readers joked that we should review Tease: The Liberating Game for Couples and Groups. I got in touch with the PR

Leigh: Oh, I’ll bet you did.

Quinns: I GOT IN TOUCH WITH THE PR, who said she wasn’t sure they
should send a game to a site that would probably just make fun of it. Which was a fair cop. I just wanted to do a video where four men play Tease and are forced to give one another massages.

Except then they sent me the game anyway! And… it’s… pretty good!

Paul: How’s your tux?

Quinns: A little tight. How’s yours?

Paul: I went with the dress. It was cheaper. HELLO, ladies and
gentlemen, boys and antiboys. It’s time for our top 5 games of 2012, which will almost certainly be as well-organised and halcyon as our top 10 Upcoming Games of 2012 feature, which ended up being 14 games, none of which we agreed on.

Quinns: Step this way, banishing all preconceptions from your mind, AND ALSO any thoughts that this feature is three months later. And let’s kick things off with…

Quinns: You know when you buy a game, and you know it’s going to be good… and it is?

Space Cadets is a game where 3-6 players fly a Star Trek-like space ship together in real time. That makes it a lot like SU&SD favourite Space Alert, but where that game compresses your flight (and the game’s jewel-like puzzle) into a brown-trousered 10 minutes, Space Cadets’ flight fills a whole evening.

It also has everyone manning different stations. We’ll be doing a full
review when we’re a more competent crew, but for now, let me just walk you through each station. I can’t think of a better way to persuade you why you need this box in your life.

Quinns: Think to get flickering lasers and evil Empires you’d have to play the X-Wing Miniatures Game? Think again, mister! Or miss. Sorry miss.

Paul: No, it’s me, I am a mist-

Quinns: Say hello to Fortress: America (and imagine it responding to your greeting with an excitable 21 gun salute).The ENTIRE WORLD (made up of three players) is invading near-future America (controlled by one player). I’m talking bombers over Boston. Hovertanks in Houston. APCs in… in, uh…

Paul: In Annapolis! This may well be the ultimate in what we call Ameritrash, big flashy board games with lots of components.

Paul: It’s Hallowe’en! Well, it was Hallowe’en last night. Do you go in for Hallowe’en? I don’t, really. I don’t know if that’s because I’m from Hampshire or not. It’s just, you know, a time associated with throwaway seasonal tat and twenty drunk people all dressed as the same Heath Ledger Joker being sick on public transport—

Quinns: PAUL. THE GAME.

Paul: Right! As is proper, we played a board game for Hallowe’en. Something a bit different. A game that’s both a trick and a treat.

Quinns: A shiny new game called City of Horror. This game made our Hallowe’en. And it’s going to make every Hallowe’en after that.

Quinns: TWO games based on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books have come out recently. Don’t worry, though. We’re here to guide you through this difficult time. There’s Guards! Guards! which we’ve heard is about as much fun as actually being arrested, but there’s also Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, which we heard is quite good! So we got it and played it. Isn’t that right, Paul?

Paul: That’s right Quinns, and-

Quinns: That’s right!

Paul: …so the best thing we can say about Discworld: Ankh-Morpork is that it’s equal parts family friendly and utter chaos, so it’s perfect for a Discworld game. Two to four players are trying to gain control of the 12 districts of the city of Ankh-Morpork, clutching at power with their clumsily, pudgy hands as if they’re all trying to model clay on the same pottery wheel.

Quinns: Fingers slipping over oily fingers, all of you swearing, someone’s got clay in their eye, until finally the thing comes to a stop and all you’ve made is a mess.

Quinns: London’s enduring an apocalyptic heatwave right now. I’m typing this with ice cubes taped to my neck, and Paul is lying face-down on the floor. We’re trying to stay hydrated, but liquid just comes flying out of us with the velocity of a water pistol.

Paul: I feel like a massive armpit. BUT it has been the perfect time to enjoy games in the sunshine. And then get bitten by everything, ever.

Quinns: Trust us when we say we’re in no state to review anything right now. Instead, enjoy a summery summary of what we’ve been playing this month. No less than THREE hot new board games, each hotter than the last.

Paul: What is Hive? That sounds like some horrid illness, some terrible disease. “I’ve got Hive Pocket!”
you shout down the telephone to your GP, sweaty hand gripping the receiver.

Quinns: Paul, telephones are all mobile nowadays, and your GP will just tell you that Hive is a two player board game without a board.

Paul: And then I would faint.

The We Are Back! Podcast, Because We Are Back

(Look, I tried to find pictures of us holding microphones, okay? OKAY?!)

Paul: Yep, that’s right, your eyes do not deceive you and nor do your ears. Shut Up & Sit Down is back and tightly, trimly encoded into a 64kbps podcast, streamlined for your pleasure and available for download right here. Just like your lunch break, it’s almost but not quite an hour long, far too fattening and ultimately nothing more than the briefest respite from the black and tentacled horrors of reality.

In this second podcast, between sips of tea, we talk about games we’ve played this summer, games we’re going to try and review in the coming months and even two particularly wicked games that we hold nothing but hatred for. That’s right, hatred! Can you guess which games those are?

Well, here’s the roll call. Step forward Dominant Species, El Grande, Dungeon Petz,Hive, Mag Blast, Munchkin, Labyrinth, Glen More, Citadels, Pictomania, 7 Wonders, Baron Munchausen, Virgin Queen, Warriors & Traders, The Resistance: Avalon (for which we don’t have a link yet!) and, for the briefest of mentions Flash Point: Fire Rescue, where we don’t talk enough about the excitement of driving the ambulance or taking control of the water cannon.

Also, anyone interested in finding out more about Henry, Lord Darnley should read this.

From here on, it’s full steam ahead, and we’ll be vigorously pumping out all sorts of exciting content in the weeks and months to come. Are you ready? Don’t kid yourself, you’re not remotely ready.

Paul: Cyclades! We turned SU&SD’s unblinking, cyclopic eye to look at it back in Episode 3 of this season. It’s a deadly, brilliant wargame where everybody plays different coloured Greeks trying to build two cities. Just two.

Quinns: We’ll recommend it to anyone. Spartan rules envelope a design where everything anyone does is tragic, comic or heroic. The self-contained islands you duel across means any attack will wrest control of a territory from someone else (exciting!), or see the aggressor getting kicked back into the water (EXCITING!). But doing anything means bidding for the affection one of the game’s four Gods, an auction that’s every bit as vicious as the main board.

Review: Tease

Our Belated Top 5 Games Of 2012

Your Guide to Space Cadets

Review: Fortress America

Review: City of Horror

Review: Discworld – Ankh Morpork

Impressions: August

Review: Hive

The We Are Back! Podcast, Because We Are Back

Review: Cyclades – Hades

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