Archive for the ‘AmeriTrash’ Category

Frag – First Person Boardgame?

One of the more popular games that I saw at Miscon this year is called Frag.  The game came out originally back in 2001 as a funny little gag to make fun of the first person shooters.  For some reason, Steve Jackson Games decided that it would be a good idea to make a new ‘Gold Edition’ with a big board, a big box, and a big price tag.

Steve Jackson's Frag BoardgameIn the game, you basically run around a board and blast people.  The goal is to blast people until you have three frags under your belt.  Then you get a statboost and a new round starts.  If you can win the first couple of rounds, you can basically become an unstoppable juggernaut.  Or at least the number one target of everybody.

Had this game been around in the late 90′s It would have been great.  The game has kind of a Quake 2 feeling to it… well as close as a board game can get I suppose.  Instead the jokes and cards make you feel like you’ve gone back in time to where computer games were sketchy and connections were unreliable.  This is 2009 baby! Wake up!

I do have a couple gripes about the gameplay itself.  All of the movement is on squares and feels ‘chunky.’  There are not a lot of freedoms.  I wonder if a hex board would be better?  I have no idea!

Secondly is the lag… the time spent waiting between your turns is just staggering.  Especially considering a fps game is supposed to be cooking along.  It would be cool to have 2 turn tokens that get passed around.  When you get one, you can move and blast people.  Then pass the token.  Of course this would need some playtesting to see if it would even be feasible in the first place.

From some of the SJ games I’ve played, I wonder if ‘playtest’ is in their vocabulary.

Filed under AmeriTrash, games, Miscon : Comments (0) : May 30th, 2009