I admit, I’m a little spoiled. I really enjoy video games in general and so most of the games that I play get grades somewhere between a B- and an A-. I know the genres I don’t enjoy and so avoid them. This means that most of the games I review here are pretty good, by my lights, and if you like video games, you’ll probably like this one.
But Blue Prince? Holy cow. That game was *AWESOME*. Seriously, an A+. One of the best video game experiences of the year for me.
And so going back to a pretty good game, one that I like, feels like a disappointment. Which is silly.
But here we are. I picked up Death Roads: Tournament on sale and it’s a pretty good game. A solid B. See? Doesn’t that sound disappointing after playing a game that I gushed over for two weeks?
I digress.
Anyway, my gaming group has recently introduced Thunder Road: Vendetta to our rotation and that is a seriously fun and chaotic board game. So when I saw Death Roads: Tournament, my interest was immediately piqued.
It’s yet another card battler but the deck-building for this one is pretty interesting. Your deck is based on two things:
1. Your Driver
2. Your car’s components
So, like, your cards for changing lanes depends on the wheels that your car is using. Your ability to accelerate or decelerate depends on your engine.
The game has 10 different drivers to play (only one is unlocked at the beginning):
And 9 different cars (only one is unlocked at the beginning):
Your deck is going to start out the same each time, but as you explore the map and defeat different enemies as you play, you’ll get the option of changing out your parts. Some of the options are pretty specialized, so if your vision for your car is a “ram them off the road!” kinda car, you’ll want engines and tires and barbed wire for your car and if your vision for your car is one that can dance around the cars on the road and get them in position for your guns, you’ll want very different tires and engines.
And you know what? I think that was a really cool way to do it.
Your movement cards have different values on them that depend on which gear you’re in. Some cards are really basic in first or second gear but get interesting in 3rd or 4th and *REALLY* interesting in 5th (like move twice instead of just once, or change two lanes instead of just one). You also have a handling meter that tells you how many moves you have left. If you get down to zero, you’ll get into a skid based on which gear you’re in so BE CAREFUL. (It’s a lot worse to get in a skid in 4th gear than in 1st.) The skid cards might have you slow down, catch fire, or change lanes (potentially deadly if you’re swerving into a lane that’s about to end).
I find the whole dynamic of balancing how much handling you have left versus with how much risk you want to take to be really interesting and I like how there are multiple ways to play… a firestarter deck plays completely differently than a gorilla ramming people off of the road.
If you want a Mad Maxian card battler that is different from most of the other card battlers (like, this one doesn’t feel like Slay the Spire at all), you should check this one out. Even if it’s not as good as Blue Prince.
So… what are you playing?
The heck with the the game :), I want to watch Battletruck!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JuTlRc1xww
I’m back to playing Baldur’s Gate 3. We started talking about it at work yesterday so I decided to load up my most advanced save (7/5 human cleric/fighter, Karlach, Astarion, Gale), whom I left standing outside Gortash’s door after making meat pies out of his supporters on the floor below probably more than a year ago. It took me about a half hour to figure out where I was and what I was meant to be doing and I finally had to ask the google to tell me where to find Gortash. I killed Gortash last night and will now scamper off to find and eliminate Orin. My goal is to finish the game with this playthrough so I can go back and mess about with side quests and stuff with other playthroughs. I overloaded myself trying to do EVERYTHING and that’s a recipe for burnout in a game so full of stuff. Happy to be back in the Forgotten Realms.
Slowly working my way through Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the last installment of the TR reboot — I picked it up for five bucks a while back and finally had a bit of time to play it. It has its issues around story & lack of novelty and lack of action (at some point I stopped bothering with all the weapon upgrades, because there hasn’t been enough fighting to need more than the basics), but the scenery is pretty and the challenge tombs are good.