Interesting Links for 22-01-2014

[andrewducker]

• Older people don't lose cognitive power they just know too much
  (tags: memory age )
• Women ‘should be banned’ says UKIP Chief
  (tags: ukip satire women society funny uk )
• Cosmic 'web' of dark matter is seen for first time
  (tags: space universe science physics )
• Joanna Lumley+Brian Blessed+Anna Chancellor+Jack Davenport+Motion Capture+WorldOfWarcraft

Comments

[gonzo21]

Geezus, Twitter is a cesspool.

And the glacier thing doesn't terribly surprise. I can remember when I was a kid being up in the hills and the snowfall from February would quite often still be up in the nooks and crannies around corries and things even into July and beyond.

Also... I like that Arkham Horror hates you, it evokes the atmosphere of true Cthulhoid horror. You're not ~supposed~ to win. :)

[andrewducker]

I don't mind games that hate you - I love Pandemic and I don't think I've ever won it. But I found Arkham Horror dull - once you knew the tactics there wasn't much choice in it, the correct option was generally obvious, which took a lot of the fun out of it.

And Twitter's just a reflection of society - TBH it only takes 1% of people being arseholes to make a place look terrible.

[gonzo21]

I think Arkham's biggest problem is sometimes if you draw useless starting equipment, you can just forget about it. You'll need to spend the first few turns looking for gear, by which point the game is probably out of control.

I suspect 3 players might be the sweet spot too. Any more than that and the amount of down-time between when you actually get to do something might be too great.

I do love it though. Had some spectacularly tense and dramatic games. It always seems to deliver a cliffhanger ending.

[cairmen]

Yes, agreed. I love Arkham Horror for just how mean and difficult it can be - much like a board game equivalent of Dark Souls.

Sadly after playing it a few times it gets a lot easier, but the initial playthroughs were still great.

[gonzo21]

We found that too, it was getting a bit routine. But then we added the Dunwich Horror and King In Yellow, and it promptly kicked our asses 5 times in a row before we finally managed to scrape a precious victory.

(Actually when the Old One woke up, but we were all very tooled up, and able to kill him.)

[doubtingmichael]

I've played Arkham Horror twice, once with six players and once solo (but running four characters), and I enjoyed it both times, but more for the story than the tactics. I think of it as more of a GM-less RPG than a boardgame in that sense.

[doubtingmichael]

On Twitter: it might actually be possible to do some analysis and find out what fraction of users are active arseholes on it. It might be 1%, but it might be even lower. I really don't have a feel for the figure, and I'm curious. (I would love reasons to think better of humanity as a whole.)

[theweaselking]

"This game sucks" is not Cthulhoid horror. It's just bad game design.

[gonzo21]

Well everybodies mileage varies, but my gaming group think it's a great game. Weighted just right that when you beat it, you really feel like you've achieved something great.

[theweaselking]

I found it baroque, long, and terribly boring. It was the wrong kind of difficult: Not "hard to win", but rather "hard to play" and "harder to want to play"

Mileages do vary. It's a great favourite of some friends of mine - but when they do Board Game Days, I ask if Arkham Horror is on the list, and if it is, I don't go, because it will eat the entire day and not be fun.

Some days, they really feel like playing Arkham Horror, so I join them afterwards for dinner and drinks. Other days, they play other things and I join in.

I think the only extremely-popular game that I hate as much as Arkham Horror is Settlers Of Catan.

[gonzo21]

How many people play it with you?

Because my group is 3, and we can play a game in 2-3 hours. Sometimes less.

(One memorable occasion the Great Old One awoke and destroyed the world inside about 45 minutes.)

[danieldwilliam]

What don't you like about Settlers of Catan?

[theweaselking]

Again, I find it very slow and not very much fun when it's moving. More particularly, it's easy for the game to become a forgone conclusion early on and yet still not *end* for a really long time, and I find its particular mix of competition-without-being-able-to-directly-affect-one-another unsatisfying. And there's only so long my inner 12 year old can find "I've got wood for sheep!" amusing.

It's a boring game to play, that takes way too long to end. And for some weird reason my opinion on this is not universal and for a long time *nobody wanted to play anything else*.

[andrewducker]

Yeah. I enjoyed it for a bit, but once I got the hang of it it started annoying me a lot. Easy to end up very frustrated from 1/3 of the way through, and I've seen a frequent pattern of people ganging up on the winner, allowing the second-best player to win.