How important is winning?

This is a hugely important question to me. Whenever I look at buying a new board game, card game or dice game, I also think to myself, will I (or the other players) enjoy this when I (they) lose?

The satisfaction I feel when I win is nearly always just the feeling that I was better than someone or, on this occasion, I out smarted them. I have always been a deeply competitive person, I hate being second best if I feel I should be the best; I'm happy to feeling second best if I know the other person is better, but then I also feel like I need to improve.

When I play sports I'm happy with my natural inclinations to be competitive because it drives me to become better, but when I play a game I loath it! I essentially quit our old Blood Bowl league because I found it much too stressful! I felt like I was one of the best coaches in the league and therefore went into every game with the pressure of feeling that I must win, mixed with the feeling that it's just a game, reeelaaax. But I could never really relax and it just wasn't worth it. It really saddens me that I left the league as it was a great way to stay close to friends, which I don't see as much because I left.

I think it was at this time when the title of this post really began to become important to me. So what IS most important to me?

Solid, interactive game mechanics

When I play a game I want to feel free to unleash on the other players without feeling like I'm picking on anyone or that I'm somehow exploiting a game mechanic. Zombies!!! is a great example of this, it's a game where everyone goes out of their way to ruin everyone else's life, but you know it'll come straight back at you, so you just have to persist and get stuck in.

Story

I love games which create epic stories, which stick in your memory! Where it's almost worth holding off victory just to make another players life miserable, or to have a go at fighting that crazy powerful dragon, because you might just win and the reward would be great! Talisman is my prime example of this. It's a game built around writing stories. No-one should ever play that game competitively; it should be played to see how the story un-ravels and to make the other players lives as interestingly painful as possible. The number of times I feel I've been ultra powerful and then been systematically stripped of everything by my vengeful co-players goes to show that a healthy, unspoken agreement on mutual destruction, leads to great games.

Strategy/pushing your luck

This sort of goes against some of my previous points and starts to get back into the competitiveness, but when games become too luck orientated they lose the satisfying feeling of destroying an opponent or appreciating how you have been beaten. Also, allowing players to try something crazy is a great way to build tension or create moments of great excitement, like playing the Do or die card in Escape from Colditz or making a well planned but very daring dash for a last turn goal in Dreadball!

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I'm always interested to hear other people's perspectives. One of the game types that I feel really hasn't ever excited me, because they don't really fulfil the above catergories, is "euro" style games. I often find them a little dry and too mathematical, with a severe lack of meaningful interaction. I know I'd get an enormous amount of criticism for saying this and people who disagree, but thankfully hardly anyone reads this blog, it's more for my brain to unload.

 

That said I have played Agricola and it is rightfully regarded as a great game and I enjoyed it, but I never felt compelled to own it. Euro games are amazingly well designed! They are just generally a little too serious for me. I haven't played many deck building games, but I've found them to be similar, they just don't excite me that much. I'd love to be proved wrong!

 

Oh, and I think table top games are starting to creep back into fashion with my bros and people around me, so maybe I'll have some thoughts about that and maybe bring up memories of my days of playing Warhammer!

I actually enjoyed Fable III!

My girlfriend and I just finished playing through the main story for Fable III and honestly, we enjoyed it. At first I was just going to have another go at the game just because I wanted to see what is was like to be evil, then my girlfriend got drawn in and we played together, sharing the quests between us as we went.

By the end of the game we were properly enjoying choosing the fortunes of Albion, as the king, and running around completing the various quests leading up to the end of the game. When it ended I considered that it had been a fun and interesting story and it felt worthwhile.

Nearly everyone who played Fable III hated on it, including me, but I felt I should put a record up on the net of someone who found enjoyment in it. So there you have it.

Might spend some more time to have a gander for the keys, chests and various other collectibles and quests. We'll see.

Fable III - it does have a charm and maybe not quite as bad as I remember

This is a fairly old topic as Fable III was destroyed by online communities all over because it just failed to live up to anyone's expectations. The only reason I'm bringing it up now is because I've been playing it again and am sort of liking it...

Lets get back to where I started with Fable. The first fable game I played for Fable II and I've mentioned on my blog before as it's one of my all time favourite games. I love the beauty and charm of the world, the graphics are so nice to look at and the feeling of adventure as you quest through the story is something I have played through and loved many times. In addition to the story, just working and doing side quests is joyous too! I can't say how many hours I've spent just chopping wood in Oakfield?!

Fable III... I really wanted to put something on here because I have deeply conflicting feelings about it. On the one hand, they stripped out all the emotional interaction, actually fun jobs (which don't suffer horribly from fps issues also). Fable III essentially turned into a game where you hold A then release to active objects, enter a building, talk to someone, pick, choose, everything! The second "half" of the game was a shambolic attempt to make players be a ruler of a kingdom, choosing which promises to keep and such. This completely fell down because if you sat on your arse long enough you'd easily have enough money to do whatever you needed/wanted.

Finally, I'll mention why I'm playing again and enjoying it. The main reason I started playing again was because I really wanted to see the evil side of ruling the kingdom. Also, the fighting is actually quite fun! I've banned myself from using ranged weapons, which were a bit broken in the game, but using magic and a sword is quite fun and some of the fights are pretty epic! And then there's just the charm of the world, it's still there, what the minions of albion say to you and each other, the gorgeous graphics and the variety of environments. That's pretty much all there is in the game, it's a bit shallow, but I'll play it through with my GF and just take it as it is, then go back to Fable II and realise why I originally traded Fable III; I downloaded Fable III for free when Microsoft were giving it away on xbox live.