I’m going to start this week by talking about a game I’d
forgotten to mention in the previous one: Museum Rush. My brother bought this
for my birthday, so Kirsty and I thought we’d give it a go. This is a
delightful little game in which you play as thieves trying to steal exhibits
from a museum by sneaking around, cracking codes, avoiding the guards and
making as little noise as possible. The player who’s stolen the most valuable
goods at the end of the game is the winner. The board is created by cards, so
you get a different one each time, and it’s surprising how claustrophobic it
can feel when you know one of your actions will trigger the guards! There are
some advanced rules about the different characters you can play, stashing goods
and buyers who will pay better than the standard rate for a certain piece of
artwork, but we didn’t use these; they appear to be designed to add to the game
mechanics and Kirsty and I thought it would be better to learn them first! I
would raise some questions about the build quality of some of the components –
the cards began to scuff almost straight away (and we were playing on a bed!)
and the miniatures representing some of the thieves look like they’ll snap off
their bases if somebody breathes on them too hard. But we had a good time with
it! 
I spent a surprising amount of time playing Sid Meier’s
Colonization. I’d this played before back in March; stopped playing for some
reason and thought I’d give it another go. I’ve got quite a long way into the
game now – roughly 10 hours – and I’m… well, I have no idea how I’m doing, to
be honest, because there’s little means of measuring such things. I’m playing
as the English this time (lead by Hugh Bonneville – see my previous coverage)
and I’ve managed to establish seven or eight colonies around the middle of the
map. Most of these I have taken from the French or the Dutch, and while the
Dutch haven’t given me much trouble, the French have not taken the losses of
their colonies lightly and they fight me tooth and nail to get them back. I
seem to have remained friends with the Spanish so far – largely because they
occupy the bottom third of the map that I don’t have a lot of interest in at
this point. My colonies are up to a standard, which is just as well because I
will be on the front line when the time comes to declare independence and
hopefully defeat the European forces. I’m not able to do that yet though! I
have no ships apart from your starting ship, and I doubt I have the numbers to
repel a sustained attack. I wonder whether, in hindsight, I would have been
better addressing some of the issues from the beginning – producing liberty
bells, for example – but I haven’t come this far to start again. This time, win
or lose, I hope to see it through until the end!
Finally, I played Army of Two on the Xbox 360. I bought this
game in 2015 (I keep track of these things, what of it?) and played it for a
while before getting in to something else. I didn’t touch it for a long time
after that; it wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it at all, but a modern military
shooter just wasn’t what I was in to at that point. I’m enjoying it now,
though. It’s a 3rd person action game about a couple of private
security mercenaries who get caught up in a conspiracy. It sounds quite generic
and to a certain extent it is, but the game’s gimmick is the dynamic between
you and your partner. You can use him to distract the enemy or attack them while
you do the same, and unlike many AIs this one’s reasonably competent. He will take
out enemies efficiently, not wait for you to do it. It’s been a fun game so
far, and I’m not too far from the end now so we’ll see how it works out.
Until next week!
