Lately I have been playing a lot of Arkham Horror, and it's not by choice. That frickin' game is popping up like the bird flu at every single gaming group I attend. I show up for someone's "Game Night" and somehow Arkham Horror hits the table! Now I'm not one of the jerks who sighs and rolls their eyes when someone proposes a game that I don't like very much. I try to get into it; I'm there to hang with the peeps mostly. I just wish we could play a game I wasn't so burned out on.
So this is why I was super-stoked when a friend of mine invited me by to play the new Star Trek: Expeditions game. I knew nothing about it, other than "it was co-op". So I showed up all happy, with a pep in my step, ready to get my co-op on. He started explaining the rules to me, showed me the board layout and turn sequence and all that stuff. I realized that the gaming consisted of you and your friends traveling around a board and making skill rolls while a turn counter clicks down. The game ends when the counter is out and you tally up your points for making rolls and see if you won.
Son of a bitch! This damn game was Arkham Horror with a facelift! I can't escape it!
But, I still had to play the game. And as part of my resolution to myself, I had to review it. And that's going to be tough - because this game is 100% mediocre. Therein lies the problem. I don't know about you but writing reviews about crap I don't really care about is hard. I mean, if I love something I can blast out paragraphs about the mechanics, why they work so well together, and also compliment the components and all that good stuff. You know, a real gusher of a review. 386
And if I hate a game it's a lot of fun to sit around and pick it to pieces, making jokes about broken rules and why it's so boring and maybe twist around the title of the game to make a subtle feces reference in there somewhere. (I don't like to directly say a game is shit -- I like to imply it, you know? Keep it classy.)
So when you get a complete pudding of a game like ST:E you get stuck. I don't want to write one of those reviews where I paraphrase the rulebook and summarize a turn and say, "Overall I thought it was pretty good. I award it 3/4 golden lampshades," or whatever. I like to put my own stamp on things and really give you a feel for my individual reaction. But there's nothing here to stamp down on. This game feels like a clone of Pandemic or Arkham Horror with a few very minor changes.
But the thing is, I used to love Arkham Horror and Pandemic. So now I'm second-guessing myself. Am I only down on Star Trek: Expeditions because it's a bland copy of two games I'm kinda sick of? Might you, the cool person of discriminating taste who is reading my review, enjoy ST:E if you haven't played Arkham Horror or Pandemic; will you get a few yucks out of mechanics that are (to you anyway) fresh and exciting?
I dunno. In a lot of ways Expedition feels like first season Riker, where it's got some stuff you've seen before and some other stuff you haven't seen, but overall it's just kind of bland and not really living up to it's potential. This game needs to grow a beard, get out there, and be it's own deal. Maybe play the trumpet or something.
Well I gotta review this thing so now that you've read my doubts for a couple of paragraphs I guess I should get into it. So, lemme remind you that all my reviews assume that you have passing familiarity with the game mechanics and components.
Theme
I went into Star Trek: Expeditions completely cold, knowing nothing about it. So I was super-surprised when I saw <PERSON> and the Crew of the Sexy New Enterprise (that's what I've come to call them, it's sort of like <PERSON> and the Funky Bunch) from the 2009 movie on the box. I figured that the game would be Star Trek Next Generation/DS9/Voyager. And frankly I thought that Trek 2009 is a terrible choice for the Star Trek theme, because there has only been one movie with these characters.
Now don't get me wrong here, I thought the new Star Trek movie was pretty darn good. And I'm not a Star Trek super-fan (called a Trekker or a Trekkie...I can never remember, one makes them mad and one they are ok with. 488