2012.02.21
Posted in Board Games at 8:53 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel
This past weekend I played both Liberté and Power Grid: The First Sparks for the first time.
Liberté
Liberté is an election / area control game themed during the French Revolution. The players are supporting three factions (the revolutionaries, the moderates, and the royalists) in the French elections. Some provinces are higher stakes than others, and these tend to get quite interesting as the players try to advance their factions. One of the interesting twists is that you’re free to back different factions in different provinces, and in fact, there are many good reasons you might want to do this. The game can end in 3 possible ways, which I also found interesting, because the three possible end conditions are scored differently. If you invest a lot of energy in gaining victory points, it’s definitely in your interest to prevent the royalist counter-revolution from happening (in which case your victory points don’t count for anything). Likewise, if you’re behind in victory points, one of the other game-ending conditions may still be a viable path to victory.
A few criticisms: First, the theme is somewhat evident throughout the game, but there are definitely parts where it feels a little thinly-pasted-on. I don’t mind this since I play plenty of eurogames and abstract strategy games, but some people might not like this aspect of the game. When you compare to an election-style game like Twilight Struggle, the theme definitely doesn’t seem as rich. Second, and more importantly, the rules are difficult to read and understand. Some parts of the rules would have benefitted greatly from the inclusion of an example or two, but sadly, there weren’t any. We stumbled through the first game, not 100% positive we played the rules properly, although I think we did pretty well.
All that aside, I did enjoy the game and I do want to try it again now that I see how the rules are set up. I’m also very curious to see how interesting it gets with 5 or 6 players, where I think it will really shine, assuming the rules are easier to teach to someone else than they are to learn from reading the rule book…
Power Grid: The First Sparks
If you’ve played the original Power Grid, The First Sparks will feel very familliar, all the way from start to finish. Each player controls a prehistoric tribe of humans, and your goal is to gain tools and knowledge, which allow you to hunt and gather food more effectively, which allow you to spread your tribe across the board. In each turn, there’s an auction for technology (tools and knowledge), followed by hunting / gathering / feeding your tribe, following by spreading out your tribe.
Unlike Power Grid, food is a resource that you spend like money for all things, including the auctions. Another big difference is that the “income” phase in The First Sparks happens in the middle of the turn, rather than immediately before the auction phase, so some different strategies are needed.
In many ways, The First Sparks feels like a better spiritual successor to Power Grid than Power Grid: Factory Manager was. It’s a more direct implementation of the original mechanics, and retains the same feel as the original, although many things are simplified and streamlined. This isn’t to say the game is a gateway game. It’s definitely more accessible than Power Grid, but still not nearly as easy to get into as a game like Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne. It sits somewhere in the middle, and I could see it being a good game to get players into before exposing them to a heavy euro like Power Grid, Caylus, or Puerto Rico. I give it a big thumbs up, and would like to see how it scales to more players.
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2012.02.14
Posted in Music, Music Spotlight at 11:03 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel
I had heard bits and pieces of Gabriel & Dresden’s work over the years, mostly in the form of remixes, and generally enjoyed their stuff. When they released Gabriel & Dresden in 2006, I picked up a copy pretty quickly, hoping to see the depth they had to offer.
The album has its moments, but lacks the quintessential San Francisco sound (the electronic music version, not the rock version from the 60s and 70s) I was hoping for despite the fact that that’s where they hail from. But my biggest complaint of the album is that it lacks structure, which is unfortunately common for electronic music albums. If you’re willing to take it as a collection of singles, though, there are a few enjoyable tracks, such as:
- Dust in the Wind
- Mass Repeat
- Tracking Treasure Down
Aside from these, most of the album could be skipped and your time / money better spent on their remixes (like their excellent remix of Way Out West’s Mindcircus).
I really wanted to like this album, and it has stood up OK over the years, but I can’t really recommend it unless you’re a true fan.
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2012.02.05
Posted in Music at 9:10 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel
This past week, I did something I have never done before. I saw a concert movie, at a movie theatre.
I’ve been a fan of the Chemical Brothers for a very long time, and when I heard they were producing a concert movie that was going to be screened in 500 or so theatres around the world, I put it on my to-do list. A very few theatres held premiere screenings on January 26, and other theatres were doing screenings Feb 1, 2, and 3. It was promoted as a “one night only” showing, similar to how theatres do screenings of opera performances and events like UFC fights.
In January, I checked cineplex.com and noticed that Don’t Think was listed. I started looking for show times, but while it appeared that Toronto was the site of one of the premiere screenings, no other theatres showed up no matter how I searched. I was disappointed, but hope was not lost.
A week or so later, I learned that it was being shown at Chinook on Feb 1 at 7:00pm. This single screening was to be my only chance at seeing the film in a theatre.
I’m very glad I went.
It isn’t like any other concert movie I’ve seen before, and I’m not sure my description will come close to doing it justice. The show blends concert footage with other imagery in a very immersive fashion. The audio is well done, but given the style of music it seemed unusual to me that the bass wasn’t cranked up to 11 and I didn’t need earplugs to enjoy the show. As a bit of a bonus, some of the crowd reaction shots are highly amusing.
I completely lost myself in the show, and it was very hard to sit still. There are a few sections I found very strange, though. They put you in one of the concert-goer’s shoes while said concert-goer was apparently high on drugs. The mood in these sequences changed dramatically from the rest of the show, and the flow in and out was a little jarring. I really wasn’t sure what I was watching at times, and was always felt somewhat relieved when the concert portions of the show resumed.
Overall, the music and visuals are better than I expected they could be, and I was grinning almost the entire time I was watching it. The film does an incredible job of capturing the live Chemical Brothers experience, and if any fans out there missed seeing it at the theatre, be sure to track it down when it’s released on disc.
Everyone I went with agreed it was the best $13 we had spent recently.
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2012.02.05
Posted in Board Games at 8:48 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel
I picked up the anniversary edition of Puerto Rico this weekend, since I didn’t already own the game and since it was the easiest way to get the game and both of its expansions. The publisher has stated this edition will not be re-printed, so I thought it best to act quickly.
In addition to including the expansions, the components are of higher quality – all of the cardboard is thicker stock, the doubloons are actually metal coins, and the wooden bits are a little nicer and easier to handle. The artwork has also been redesigned and illustrations added to the building tiles, which are all very nice touches.
I’m pretty impressed with the component quality, although the price was somewhat steep. I know I’ll enjoy playing this edition though, as I always found the cardboard bits and the wooden colonist markers a little fiddly to handle in the original edition. Plus, it’s Puerto Rico, which is still an absolute classic after 10 years.
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