I played a little bit more LEGO Batman today. One thing that the LEGO games do that I’ve never understood is throw the end credits at you at the end of every chapter, so you’re subjected to them after about two and a half hours, and about 3 to 6 times per game. It gets to the point where you’re not paying any attention to them. Not that you pay any attention to credits anyway, but having to see them so often, seems like they’re shoving them down our throats. There was also some unintuitive nonsense involving a small car and a crusher to get one of the collectibles, cute, but how on earth would I have known to do that if I hadn’t checked the FAQ?
On a note, I’ve got no issue with checking GameFAQs. Intuition is an important part of the gameplaying process; you need to be able to figure out if and why a thing would work. If it doesn’t make any sense to me what I need to do next, and I’ve exhausted the options that make sense to me (running around the available area, hitting all the buttons, checking my inventory items), and if I’m still stumped after 15 minutes (10 minutes if I’m in a hurry), I’ll look it up online. I also have no sympathy of looking it up when it comes to collectibles, because I’ve yet to meet a designer who creates those properly. Assassin’s Creed II got close, but no cigar.
I also sat and played Dungeon Lords with a couple of friends after eating some awesome sushi. This is a complex Euro with a lot of flavor, in which you take a role as an evil entity in a fantasy world who opens a dungeon. You have to balance food, gold, and your workforce to be able to increase the strength of your dungeon and withstand the assault of the adventurers who inevitably show up. There’s a lot of crunchy bits, and it was tough going trying to slag through the rules. I forgot a few of them, in fact, which made things worse.The game features an action selection mechanic that is a little ingenious. You get to pick three actions a turn out of eight, but the order you select them matters. If you are the first player to select the action, you get the least benefit...but if you don’t select it soon enough and everyone else does, you don’t get any benefit at all. You also can’t select the same actions every turn, as previous actions get locked after you use them.
The adventurers invading adds a bit of fun (or frustration) at the end of each of the two “years,” having to balance your monsters and traps to take them out. If you’re too evil (i.e., take the best monsters and actions), the strongest adventurers decide to come after you, making it harder to keep your dungeon running as they stomp through your business.
I like it, but then again I’ve like everything the designer's done, so it was a good bet. I’ll need another play to learn how to play it properly, but the tone is appropriately funny and the system appropriately crunchy, so I’m looking forward to playing it when everyone knows all the rules. It seems like a subtle mix between Vlaada’s early brainburners, like Through the Ages, and his goofy later additions, like Galaxy Trucker. Looking forward to trying it again.
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