Games
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EARTH REBORN came out at the end of 2010, and it turned out to be the dream game that I didn't know I was looking for. It's got my favorite type of gameplay (SPACE HULK command point stuff), a theme I really dig (post-apocalyptic), sweet components, limitless playability, so on and so forth. I can stop looking for that perfect game that takes what made SPACE HULK so great and truly takes it to the next level, which I don't believe any game of its ilk had done up to this point.
But there's still that dream game, the one that I know that I want. It seems so simple, yet its so elusive: A truly great superhero game.
I'm not asking for much, am I?
As I explained in my Top 10 Best Batman Graphic Novels article, I fell in love with board gaming when I was 5, back when my dad brought home a copy of THE BATMAN GAME by University Games. It was pretty standard family board game stuff, spin and move, pick up cards, etc. The use of the Batman theme was really loose, and it could have been a game about damn near anything. There was something about it though that kickstarted my board gaming obsession and I ended up owning more than a few comic book games growing up, all of them of pretty poor quality and all of them mass market games directed towards kids. Seriously, I had a ton. BATMAN RETURNS, SPAWN: THE GAME, MARVEL SUPER HEROES GAME, even X-MEN ALERT designed by Richard Borg. After discovering hobby gaming years later and finding that there were better games out there than what graced the shelves of the local Toys R Us, I figured there had to be some better superhero games out there. Well, I was right...sort of.
Right as I was getting into hobby gaming, Fantasy Flight was about to put out MARVEL HEROES. This game was my must-have Christmas gift of 2006. At this point, I owned quite a few FFG games, amongst them WAR OF THE RING, which was done by the same team designing MARVEL HEROES. I got the game, I played it and for the most part, I liked it. It certainly has some interesting things going on it. Is it a good fit for the Marvel license? Not even close. It doesn't convey superhero action in the least, and why are the Marvel heroes competing? I can think of several themes that would better fit the mechanics, with a Ghostbusters-esque ghost elimination sort of thing amongst the top contenders. MARVEL HEROES is a good game, it just isn't a good superhero game.
I've also tried HEROES INCORPORATED, another decent game, but it didn't do any better of a job of capturing that comic book thrill. Again, the heroes are competing, plus the crimes are pretty unexciting ("I'm fighting Crime A...What is Crime A Maybe 'A' stands for 'Assclowns,' so I'm fighting Assclown crime"). A fun, goofy game for sure, but not quite what I'm looking for. I haven't played CAPES AND COWLS, and since I don't have any spare limbs I'm willing to part with, I don't anticipate being able to play it anytime soon. I never much cared for HEROCLIX, and I'm even less cool with blind booster buys. My best superhero game fix seems to be MARVEL HEROSCAPE, which is cool, there just isn't enough to it.
I am fully aware of the licensing nightmare decent designers outside of the world of the mass market would have to get their hands on the big guns of the comic book world. But even if they were to get their hands on one, I think it would be easy for the game to make the same mistakes that MARVEL HEROES made, and that is trying to do too much. MARVEL HEROES is almost as if somebody said, "Okay, we've got the Marvel universe at our disposal, let's make the most of it."
Back when I was playing BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM, I quickly realized why the game was by far better than any other superhero video game out there: It picks its place in what the Batman character has to offer and it doesn't stray from it. It doesn't cover everything the Batman mythos has to offer, and by doing so, designers were free to make sure that what was in there was top-notch. Compare that to the Spider-Man open world games, where the web-slinging is fun, but everything else is bland. I think the same approach to super hero board gaming could be applied. By scaling down the scope and not trying to fit the entire licence in one game, designers could produce better, more focused superhero games.
Just look at CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD. Armed with Warhammer Fantasy license, Fantasy Flight could have pursued a game more encompassing of the Warhammer universe, but they didn't. Instead we got a great game in which the mechanics enable players to behave the way their characters should and are rewarded for it. Not only do I think the potential to pull that off in a superhero game is there, but I think it's entirely possible to evoke a more comic book feel to it while doing so. This isn't like trying to translate BLADE RUNNER into a board game.
This might sound somewhat similar to CHAOS IN THE OLD WORLD, but bear with me here, it's an example. So there's this cool 80-issue Batman story called NO MAN'S LAND, in which Gotham is devastated by an earthquake and the US government shuts down all access in and out of the city. Most of the inmates in Arkham escape when the quake hits. Gangs, some of them headed by escaped Arkahm inmates, claim parts of Gotham for their own. Batman, Gordon, Robin and Spoiler (remember her?) have to take the city back piece by piece. This is a great starting place for a board game. It could be done any number of ways, Dudes on a Map with everyone playing inmates like Joker, Two Face, Penguin, etc, or even have one player play as Batman and the other good guys, or a co-op game with everyone as good guys. Might even work solitaire. I'm sure there's dozens of other stories from comics that could translate well into great board games, and given the diversity of the medium, I'm sure they'd all play quite differently from each other.
Like I said, I know about the licensing nightmare. It's for the same reason that great STAR WARS games are so scarce. It's tough for publishers to get a hold of the Marvel and DC stuff, and just as tough to hold on to them to continue to publishing games based on them. I don't really care about the license, let's just get that great superhero game made!
Until then, I'll be playing EARTH REBORN.
