Ubercon (less brief)

Every year I go to Ubercon, I find something awesome and worth bringing home with me. This year I played more new games than ever previously, many brand new to me. So now I'm going to review these games. If you don't like this, and want me to go back to my usual tone of writing, then piss off for now and come back tomorrow. My full roster of games played now follows, with previously unplayed games marked:

Martian Fluxx*
Uber-Fluxx
Monty Python Fluxx*
Are You a Werewolf?
Disney Apples to Apples*
Plants vs Zombies*
Smash Bros. Brawl
Wii Bowling
Revolution!*
The Tee-Shirt Game*
DJ Hero*
Rock Band: Beatles*
Three Dragon Ante*
We Didn't Playtest this Game at All*
We Didn't Playtest this Either*
Win Loose Banana*
Zuma's Revenge*

I'm fairly certain I'm forgetting others too, but this is most of what occupied my time at this convention. Besides the Fluxx's (which really shouldn't be explained without a deck of cards handy), most of these games were either new or revisions of games I've already played or own.

Therefore, I will not be discussing Tee-Shirt Game (Apples to Apples with pictures), Rock Band: Beatles, Zuma's Revenge, Brawl, Are You a Werewolf?, or Wii Bowling. If you're disappointed or don't know these games, I might write about them down the line. The Looney Labs games (Fluxx and Werewolf) will probably each receive commentary down the line eventually anyway. That said, this was Ubercon for me.

Apples to Apples is a fantastic word game that plays on senses of humor and reality, matching nouns with adjectives. That said, Disney Apples to Apples is an atrocious, steaming brown lump on the unspoiled lawn that was AtA's legacy. I know it's geared to a younger audience. The audience I had played it literally, which didn't seem in the spirit of the game. More importantly, the game itself seemed too much like a marketing gimmick, rather than a spin-off game that needed to be made (unlike RB:Beatles and Monty Python Fluxx, which are awesome for existing). Disney Apples to Apples sucked the humor out of the game and replaced it with Hannah Montana, who is the new Hitler card. I stayed for the whole game in hopes of improvement. I was disappointed.

Plants vs Zombies is a computer game made by one of Ubercon's sponsors, Popcap Games. They make lots of games that play like crack, and bring down GPA's and productivity in businesses. PvZ is no exception, loaded now on the main computer in the office I work through. It's a simple defense strategy game in which you protect your house from the zombie apocalypse with the help of your friend "Crazy Dave" using mutant plants. If you aren't immediately interested, you might be a Cylon. Since coming back from the convention, I've beaten this game 1.5 times, and am tearing through the two dozen minigames. I expect to be able to work again in a few weeks' time.

Revolution is a board game that plays like a gambling addiction. Rather than rolling dice to move pieces, you place bets and bids on various people around a city. If you win these people, you get more control over the city. When the revolution is over, the person with the most control wins. It took five minutes to learn, and it was worth the hour of game play. It probably isn't for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

DJ Hero is a game I should hate. I should loathe it with all my being, as it symbolizes a franchise that should have died when Rock Band came out and nailed it to a tree. DJ Hero is a game that shouldn't ever be considered playable or fun. I don't know why I love it so much. The controls are overly complicated, yet dramatically simplified from that of an actual turntable scratch setup. The mixes are pretty awesome, and I'd be a liar if I said there weren't a few I want on disk. The harder difficulties are actually VERY challenging, and work more senses than any other Hero simulation game so far. I shouldn't like it on principle, but I do. Fuck you, Activision.

Three Dragon Ante, like any other gambling card game, is reasonably simple and addictive in base. Since it's rooted in D&D, it's more complicated than it should be. It's enjoyable, and relatively cheap compared to most D&D paraphenalia, but it's really a matter of personal opinion as to if it's worth getting. Play it once for yourself. I don't think I'd buy it.

We Didn't Playtest [These Goddamn Games] are amazing for the stoner/internet/college demographic. They're nonsense, in the form of 100+ cards when meshed together. They make little to no sense, sometimes end within 20 seconds of dealing out the opening hand, and have a tendency to make people's heads hurt when they lose the ability to reference themselves, others, or the cards verbally. It's amazing for the amount of random [something] that's been packed into the game, but this makes it impossible to play competitively. There can be no strategy. There is only luck, Dragons, Ninjas, Secret Attack Kittens, and Voting. I don't know if I should love this game for how fun it is (probably) or despise it for how terribly designed it is (probably not).

It should be said that I did not spend the entire convention playing games, though that's obviously the focus of this particular event. Most of the other things were far less interesting, or already discussed earlier this week. That's not what anyone really cares about though when reading about a gaming convention. You don't care about the amazing, two foot high food. You don't care about the lovely hotel rooms with TV's nicer than mine. You don't care about the trip to Dairy Queen and Burger King (who get hitched and produce a sushi place somehow) on the last night of the event, though you'll probably read about that sometime this month. This weekend was about the games, and that's what I'm giving you.

So play them. Especially PvZ. That's fucking badass.