Cheesy Game Review - Defenders of the Realm

I'm not normally a fan of cheese in my games. I kind of like my games to be like the cheese shop in that Monty Python sketch - you know, completely uncontaminated by cheese. Tight design, efficient rules, and a damned good reason for every part in the box - these are marks of a good game. Using those criteria, Defenders of the Realm should be a failure.

Somehow, though - and I don't know that I could say how - it's not. In fact, it's an extremely fun game, complete with Stilton, Camembert and Limburger, and maybe a little Venezuelan Beaver cheese. It's a cooperative game designed using almost all the same ideas you see in Pandemic, but where Pandemic is efficient to the point of feeling sterile, Defenders of the Realm is campy, almost sloppy.