Barnes on Games- Argent: The Consortium in Review, Loopin' Chewie Star Wars Risk, Star Trek: Five Year Mission, Secrets of the Lost Tomb

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Interested to hear your thoughts on SotLT; looks like a grand old pulp serial dungeoner, with some classic adventure game mechanics and more of a guided narrative with the scenario based play.

I watched a preview done by Tom Vassel on Secrets of the Lost Tomb. It looks like Betrayal at House on the HIll and EldritchHorror had a baby. MY favorite part of Betrayal was always fliipping a new tile in from the stack and seeing what kind of room pops up. .this one has some very cool looking rooms.

His preview starts off with the disclaimer that it is paid advertisement for a kickstarter project. He goes over the components and gives an overview of the play with his usual verve..... But there is no recommendation that you should get it, or any endorsement that he enjoyed it. The last thing he says is here is a link to the kickstarter page if you are interested in this kind of game. But the way he says it, seemed like he was NOT endorsing it at all. Like he wanted to tell you to avoid it, but had to say here is the link..... IF you are interested. Felt very lukewarm to me.

ST:5YM is basically one step above Yachtzee or Roll For It. Roll For It is actually more fun and interactive.

I'm checking out Secrets of the Lost Tomb as well and have high hopes. Could be great.

JonJacob wrote: I will never get what all the fuss is about Loupin' Chewie... I liked the original just fine. That pilot looks cool and it's a fun theme. Adding Star Wars or Chewie in there seems really forced to me.

Dude don't worry about it, that fuss is all Barnes', as far as I can tell. He's been purposely piling it on and on in every post for the past month. More tongue in cheek than forced mania, but he seemed genuinely excited to show it to his kids and enjoy it with them.

I torn about what I'm hearing about Argent. Like Barnes, it seems to tick off several items on my Do Not Want list. And aside from the annoying manga artwork style, the game in play looks too busy and even spreadsheet-like. And yet the descriptions of the gameplay sound fun, with plenty of variety and replay value. However, the dealbreaker for me might be the wide range of factors to consider each turn. Games that require me to maintain 360 degrees of awareness throughout the game are exhausting and sometimes leave me with a headache. And for some of gaming friends, it looks like the kind of game that could induce severe analysis paralysis.

I'm a Star Trek fanatic and will usually buy anything that might look like a Starfleet symbol if I squint hard enough at it, but man do I have absolutely no interest in Five Year Mission.

Come on man, it's got hazy, low resolution screengrabs from all of your favorite episodes...and they are sometimes not the best or most representative image. Not only that, you can imagine that rolling a pair of fours is how you beat the Gorn- with Geordie LaForge! I am NOT digging this game at all. It feels like a 1992 licensed game in just about every regard. May be putting the Review Corner's "fair and honest" policy to the test on that one. It works and you can play it, so it may not be a one star game...but I think it is a stinker for sure.

On Loopin' Chewie...I love it that some folks are perturbed about my evangelization of this game.

Two player Argent is really good...it doesn't suffer in scaling like other WP games sometimes do. It can get pretty nasty with two. I like it better with two than with six.