Ready or Not

A woman gets married into an extremely rich family who made their money off board games and all is good until at midnight when she has to play a game of the hide and seek murder variety. It's a really fun premise, a really fun execution (har har), and you get to see a bunch of rich people stumble around and get hurt and/or die. I do feel bad for the butlers and maids though. Well, not all of them.

RATING: 81%

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - "Move Along Home"

The senior staff of DS9 get turned into pieces of a board game.

RATING: 78%

Chuck E. Cheese's

When I was a kid, I’d see people win trips to Chuck E. Cheese’s on American game shows and I never got that it was a gross pizza place—I figured they served some exotic food product (huge blocks of cheese?) covered in the same orange powder they put on cheesies. I also didn't expect to see so many dead cockroaches lying around, although in hindsight the rat mascot should've given it away. However, my 3-year-old son had the time of his life playing all the crusty games, so I'm sure we'll be back.

RATING: A generous 35%

(Image from some blog.)

Game Theory of R3

Most instances of human social interaction, e.g. language, the market economy, Friday night at the local meat market, the R3 comments section, etc., can be thought of as games, wherein "players" compete or cooperate to earn "payoffs" such as money, romantic attention, status, "street cred," or unbridled hilarity, endless bons mots and witty good cheer. Two basic types of move a player can make in a social game are a "pass," which creates the opportunity for one or more other players to make their own moves, or a "block," which limits other players' moves, or may even end the game. Using the R3 comments section as a familiar example, open-ended comments that encourage further comments are passes. Comments that discourage other posters from commenting or attack the game itself, e.g "whatever," "meh," "stupid," or "TLDR," are blocks. "Referee" comments, like ":|" or "uh..." fall somewhere in between, and usually indicate that two or more players aren't "on the same page," i.e. playing with a mutually comprehensible or satisfactory set of rules. In a zero-sum game like hockey, blocking is part of what makes the game challenging and fun. In the non-zero-sum game of blogging, passes are good, referee comments are sometimes necessary, and full-out blocks are usually bad, except in intentionally different sub-games (like "Can you fight?"), because they tend to hurt the game itself. To conclude this post (which by now is breaking one of R3's most sacred rules, the Rule of Economy), game theory suggests that R3 is (usually) a pretty good game.

RATING: 93%

(Image of the "Serpinski Penis Game" from xkcd.com.)

Soccer

Soccer is a game played by millions of feet all over the world. You can't use your hands, unless you want to give the other team lots of free kicks. You don't have to have lots of money to play it, like those other sports, because all you need is a ball and some dirt, and cleats and shin pads if you want to get all professional. Soccer looks boring when you watch it on TV because camera(wo)men follow the ball like the paparazzi follow Jon and Kate. Next time you have ten of your friends over for a gathering only to realize you've grown out of crank calling, and who else is gonna move those yoga people in the park, suggest a good game of soccer instead and you won't be sorry.

Rating- 88%, 87% if you get kicked in the nads.

Game Theory

Before you play a game it can either be a good game in theory or a bad game in theory. Then when you play it, game theory ends and you know for a fact if it is good or bad. Many magazines exist that try to employ game theory to determine if games are good or bad, like Game Informer and Electronic Gaming Monthly, but in the end each of you must figure out the theory of the game by yourself.

RATING: 49%

Space Games

Space games are probably the best games. There's Metroid, R-Type, Commander Keen, X-Wing, Asteroids, Star Trek: Voyager - The Arcade Game, Megaman 5 (Star Man's level), Starfox. Space games have a lot in common with each other, but one thing they also have in common is they take place in space or on a planet somewhere in space that isn't Earth. I like in a space game when you meet up with a wisecracking robot or gruff alien type who turns out to be your friend, and also having lasers. The other kind of a game besides a space game is a planet Earth game, and those are pretty good too I must admit.

RATING: 85%

1990s Taboo

Theoretically, I like the game Taboo. But when you have a nearly ten-year-old version, like I do, the game either gets a lot easier or a lot harder. For “Rosie O’Donnell” and “Ellen Degeneres,” one of the words you can’t say isn’t “lesbian,” so you can make someone guess those in like 6 seconds. But then there are cards that ask you to describe things like a “Cyber Café,” and “El Nino.” There’s even a card for Linda Tripp – really took me a few to remember who she is. I am ready for the next generation of Taboo, with cards about Lindsay Lohan (“coke,” “SamRo”), Sarah Palin (“Alaska,” “gun,” “moose”) and Bernie Madoff, who I won't remember in ten years either.

RATING: 75%