Donkey Kong Country was self-aware enough to poke fun at itself. In the level "Tree Top Town," the developers put a banana at the bottom of the screen. The inference was clear — you should barrel blast yourself into the bottomless death pit. As it turns out, doing so does not result in a dead ape — instead, you're…

Plus there is the gentleman's code that you basically finish whatever credits you have when someone is waiting, don't spam your monies unless it's quiet and so on.

Love Letter is alright. I still found myself getting a bit impatient when I was out though. I haven't played those other 2 though, but our group usually stays away from more aggressively competitive stuff. I can see your point though that the THREAT of death can add an interesting dynamic, one that possibly stops…

Oh, also, how many turns does it usually take before the final mission turns up? (I know it depends how well you finish the regular missions) Don't even know how far we are from victory at this point. Man, wish you could save game cheese it like the original. ;)

Wow, I'm getting utterly destroyed every time (on easy). You can get wiped out so easily. For example, had a bad first turn and lost quite a few men, so next turn we were conservative with money and bought 3 more men, only for 2 of them to die instantly without even entering a fight due to an evil "!" (forget the…

Yeah, gridless games like this are few and far between. Most board games are pretty set in stone. I feel like Luke hasn't played that many board games with the amount of emphasis he is putting on fluidity of rules. The first 1-3 times you play a game, you might mess up some rules, but once you know a game, you know…

I disagree. I've only played it 3 times so far, but I am far from done with it, and this is only on the easiest of 4 difficulties (ignoring "tutorial"), and there are 6 scenarios too, that change things quite significantly as far as I can tell. I wouldn't recommend playing it single player at all, your head will…

Have you actually won yet? I find it super hard so I am far from done with it.

"When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning." - Reiner Knizia

That's how I feel about it anyway. I try my hardest to win, count everything up, then forget about it and move onto the next game. By the end of a day of board gaming I couldn't tell you how many wins I had…

Yeah, you should make sure you have a good understanding of all the interconnected systems in a game before you start house ruleing. Then I would suggest you just change one at a time and see how it impacts all the systems before changing any more.

That said, the thing they house ruled seems fair, games where you can…

"7 Wonders is a great example of this. A new player will get their asses handed to them for the first few games"

Only if you are playing with a bad teacher who doesn't explain that science is OP if you don't keep an eye on it and let someone dominate it. I always tell noobs about this, and they come out doing about as…

From the Penny Arcade board (card really) game:

But the Wii U pad has a greater resolution than a DS so that logic doesn't really check out.

Irony!

There is over multiple titles. Same as with any individual outlet.

Sure but you still end up with an average, and the average across multiple games will still be calibrated about the same because it will still be using pretty much the same reviewers.

I see it the other way around, the fact that everyone is using different scales is exactly why it's useful. One guy might be rating how much fruit and veg factors into the game, another guy is rating how many homosexual relationships are in the game, overall you still get a base line of how well the game does whatever…

Sentence any?

From the news post that goes with the comic:

Exactly. It sounds good to me. It sounds like a silly cartoon. That's what I would expect.