Last night was games night. The games available consisted of a little Modern Warfare 2, a terribly painful DVD game of which I will speak no more, and the more noble pursuit of Uno Extreme. I wasn’t really aware that you could apply the same label to a variation of Uno and sky diving, but apparently so. Every time I play any kind of board game I suddenly remember that board games are actually really enjoyable, although I pretty much instantly forget this once the game is complete.
Sadly less successful than actual board games are those video game implementations of board games that license holders try and palm off every now and again. For a starter they’re simply not as fun as their real world counterparts. There’s something very simple and familiar about sitting around a table with family, friends and other people you want to beat, and board games work well in this situation.
It’s the way that they’re designed to be played so of course they work well. Sadly when the games are transitioned to a virtual format no real effort seems to be made in actually changing any of the game’s mechanics to suit the new way of playing the game, which pretty much means they fail pretty quickly for me.
It just seems a little silly to turn board games into video games. It doesn’t work the other way does it? There’s no version of Call of Duty that you can sit around a table and play, it just wouldn’t work very well. There’s no way to move Mario and Luigi around a board by rolling dice is there? Even if there already is, I feel fairly confident in saying that they aren’t very good versions of those titles.
So as I’m still tired from a very lengthy game of Uno Extreme I’ll keep this brief. What are your thoughts on board games in general? Do they poorly transition into a video game format? Would you rather they just stayed as physical games?
Next time on Lunchtime Discussions: We journey into the future for a whole week! That’s right it’s theme week. Are you excited? I’m excited. Anyway it’s tough if you’re not, I’m still writing them.