I’ve been playing a lot of games during the past few weeks. Only 6.5 weeks until my comprehensive exams, that seems appropriate. Andy got Soul Calibur and Mario Kart for Christmas, both of which I’ve spent a good amount of time with. SC includes strange phrases like the above–Andy says they make sense if you know the back story, but I find it difficult to imagine what such a story would be like. Mario Kart is also quite fun. I don’t use the adjective “trippy” very often, but it’s really the only one suitable to describe the last map, which Andy unlocked recently.
We’ve also played Magic a few times lately. I’d played it in college a few times, but never really got into it. I find it more fun now, maybe I’m just better at losing games now. I used to get really competitive about games, especially Monopoly for some reason.
Andy and I played a game called “Settlers of Catan” with varoius people over the holidays. It was quite fun. I expected to be awful at it, since it requires strategic planning which I am bad at; but I actually won once. It’s kind of a board game, in which the board is made up of hexagonal pieces which you colonize in order to gain resources, build new settlements, and establish cities. It comes with little wooden pieces representing the towns, etc., which you can use to build small structures while waiting for your turn. I think you should get extra points for building the most interesting structure, but I haven’t been able to sell any of my co-players on that idea yet.
Little update on the cats: They went back to the vet yesterday. Still don’t know what’s the matter with them, but the answer seems to be spending more money. They now have pills that I give them with a scary-looking contraption called a cat-piller. I think the cats think it’s a cat-killer, from they way they react.
Jon and I got Settlers of Catan for Christmas from my sister Heidi and her boyfriend, but we didn’t get a chance to play it until we got together with them this weekend. We played it 4 times in 48 hours and I think we’re all in need of some kind of Settlers of Catan 10-step program to help us break our addiction to it. What I like so much about the game is the combination of strategy and randomness that makes it much more competitive and interesting than many other games. You can have the best strategy in the world and still be utterly unable to get the darn bricks you need to build a road!
I asked for and received Settlers from Valerie’s grandma last Christmas, and we finally played it last weekend. I really like it because there are enough different ways to win that it’s fun even if you are in a bad position on the board. I first ran across it in its original German incarnation several years ago, and it really was a pop culture phenomenon there – almost every relatively intelligent person between 20 and 35 had played it many times, it seemed.
I also like it because my friend Chad doesn’t; it’s the only strategy game he can’t reliably win, because you HAVE to trade – and that’s what’s great about it, it forces interaction in our passive-TV society. Basically what Kim said.
Notwithstanding that, we still caught the Golden Globes last night. Go ROTK!
I can see how Settlers could be habit-forming. We don’t have our own game yet, but I think we need to get one. I didn’t know it was originally German–wonder if any significant changes were made for the English/American version?