What I Played Today: March 3

Mansions of Madness, You Don’t Know Jack, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

There were mansions full of madness today. This is the latest game by Fantasy Flight, set in the Arkham Horror universe, in which you take a group of adventurers into a spooky house, while one player controls all the baddies and the horror. The set-up sounds like Descent, but it’s a lot more story-driven, where the players are looking for clues and trying to avoid all the baddies around the house. Even the combat is story-driven, where each attack involves drawing a card and resolving the text on the card. The players occasionally also have to solve wiring puzzles, which is neat. It’s pretty clever, and I like the game. I almost instantly want more stuff, and I know it’s coming too, because if Fantasy Flight pimps anything, it’s the Arkham stuff.

Two games were played, where I sat on both sides, investigator and keeper. During the keeper game, I was tasked with getting samples from players and raising a shogoth. I thought I was doing alright, but the investigator knew what I was up to and often was able to shoot down the few enemies I could get on the board, and eventually time ran out and I lost. During the investigator game, I was too cautious and wasted time looking everywhere but where the clue was, and I eventually ran out of time, causing everyone to lose. That mission also led to far more enemies roaming the map, but my pretty good rolls kept me from getting killed. That is, until I broke my arm.

I lost a couple of games of You Don’t Know Jack, because I am not good at Jack Attacks. My opponent is just so much faster at getting the answer. There was a neat category in which you had to match the lyric in the song with the dance that went along with it. I enjoyed that, even though I keep losing. (Sad trombone.)

In the multiplayer of Assassin’s Creed, I had four awful games and then one really good one. I think I need to start changing my tactics up; there’s a lot of awesome things I could be doing that I’m just not because I’m depending on the same sets over and over again. I also lose out on a lot of bonus points. I was thinking to myself, “It has been forever since I got a kill streak of something,” and I actually managed tonight, scoring a clean 750 bonus points for getting five silent kills in a row, which catapulted me to a solid lead. I also used the decoy correctly at one point, which was also awesome. I see a possible walking towards me so I trigger the decoy, who bolts away from them. They start chasing after them when I wheel around and bonk them good, which scoring 300 points for an escape stun. But, I really want to use disguise or something again. I never seem to use them.