I’m curious about rallyman GT and Dirt. I’m seeing a lot of people saying Dirt looks too much like multiplayer solitaire with the staggered starts. Does playing GT feel like not having the scrum of cars overtaking would be missing a lot? Or does having multiple cars on the track just get in the way?
I don’t think I’d buy either game (well unless I tried it and loved it), but they look interesting comparisons anyhow.
@RogerBW will have your back here, but Rally is kind of the multiplayer solitaire of motorsport.
[EDIT] @KIR2 have you played Flamme Rouge?
Any new design on Kickstarter is just that and should be treated as such.
In my experience, if a Kickstarter game is any good, it’ll be back (either back on Kickstarter for an expansion or it’ll hit retail).
I only back new, unproven games on Kickstarter when I want to support the creator… the game is just gravy (and sometimes, disappointing gravy).
I actually think GT has some problems† and DIRT will certainly take the system back to its roots where it’ll truly shine (in my opinion).
†: turn order can really mess you up and without playing at least 2 laps, it’s not so much a contest of skill but of luck.
Well, I got into classic Rallyman via the 1 Player Guild, so I’m biased…
I think “GT rules” (gear-distance-lane for turn order) versus “Dirt rules” (distance-gear-lane) will produce quite a different-feeling game. The staggered start in Dirt means that each player has taken two turns by the time the racer behind them enters the track, and if everyone plays a perfect game there will never be any overtaking. (And I’ve played classic Rallyman games like that.) But of course nobody ever does play a perfect game; in particular the leader has to use two-hazard leader dice in place of one-hazard coast dice, so there may be some virtue in hanging back and then making a dash for it at the end of the race.
That’s fair. I guess it depends if it’s “normal” excited, or “crazy” excited. Crazy is when I take notice, and look more into a game (Merchants of the Dark Road being the most recent, though that was getting praise from everywhere).
I’m always cautious of his opinions, because he does seem to just like games (unless there is lots of take that or confrontation).
I often skim his playthroughs, but can’t watch them all the way through. Its too much and too long, plus 90% of my YouTube consumption is at work, lol.
I think the leader dice in the new DIRT are interesting… but likely are too punishing unless you’re playing a championship/series. So for casual “Hey, let’s play exactly 1 game of RM:DIRT” I probably won’t use the leader dice.
This is actually a problem with many racing video games as well. There’s a reason actual races last an afternoon, and yet no normal human would want to be forced into an entire afternoon of gaming every time they want to play. Selecting the correct number of laps for a given racing system is probably the hardest balance to achieve without making huge concessions elsewhere that would likely spoil the racing itself.
That’s a good way to handle it. Most of the new games I’ve backed are from designers I like, or from a company with a solid track record. Not always the best way to go, but I’ve not been let down…yet! Lol
I’m a total wildcard. I’ll back an unproven first project from an unproven designer just as willingly as a reprint or second edition, etc. Where I balk the most is when it’s bound for retail. I can’t tell you how many projects I’ve backed only to pull out once I learned a publisher was secured, etc. In cases like those I need to see value in any exclusives, or a price benefit for backing (far more rare).
I’m mainly on re-releases of interesting games or trust in the publisher/designer. I used to take a lot of punts on games I didn’t know that much about (but were still fairly safe bets), but I do this less now. I’ve backed 38 boardgame projects, 11 of those in the last year (more than I thought!).
Yeah, for games bound for retail, I really need to get “something extra” to bother backing it.
That can be exclusive characters/enemies for my more Amerithrash games, a deluxe edition with pretty components, or even just an all-in one storage option (Roll Player and Anachrony for example).
Anything less and I don’t see the point if the games success is all but guaranteed.
I think there are exceptions. Iki is a brilliant euro, I’m so glad I have a copy in my top 10. I highly doubt it’ll be back or hit retail. I’m sure there are others and from different genres too.
Well, I suppose every rule deserves an exception. Never heard of IKI, but now (thanks to you!) I may never find out what I’m missing.
And it’s true that for some games, even though they are good, they may never take off. Surely, then, the game will find a champion and be reborn, either through another print-run or a reimplementation.
As I said some time ago on SU&SD comments…boardgames are a weird space where things are not consistently reprinted, new editions may make changes that actually substantially alter the feel of the game and possibly remove key parts of the appeal (e.g. A Study in Emerald. or FFG is infamous for making new editions of games that play quite differently from the previous), themes might be entirely switched out to the game’s detriment (e.g. Last Bastion vs Ghost Stories), licenses expire and aren’t renewed. There is no actual guarantee that you will ever be able to get a game again, regardless of quality.
But also: there are too many boardgames to ever own or play all the good ones. If you miss out, that sucks, but there will be something else you want soon enough.
I’m always amused at people who are like “I always follow rahdos review my taste really matches his”.
Yeah I wonder about whether looking forward to a game or saving for a Kickstarter is smart in this day and age (says mr. Dead reckoning are on day one 
).
As soon as I look forward to a thing there’s always something different and cool out Right now.
I can see that to an extent. If you exclusively like Euro games that play well at 2, and have minimal negative player interaction, he’s one of the better ones.
Funny enough, as much as I love skirmishy fighty games (vs or co-op), when it comes to Euro games, I actually align with him pretty closely.
This is part of what drives me nuts about him. He’ll review a game, go on at length using every superlative he can muster, go on to say it’s an ingenious spectacle of the highest order that will literally change lives for the better… but he blocked Jen one time and it spoiled the whole thing for everyone, best game ever, threw it in the garbage.
This is one of the problems I have with Rahdo. He’s like a friend of mine; this friend has never been to a restaurant that wasn’t “truly amazing” and he’s never seen a movie, TV show or anime that wasn’t “awesome! You have to check it out!”.
At some point, you have to be critical- if every game is “amazing” then no game is actually worth a second look on that alone.
(The other thing that bothers me about Rahdo and why I stopped watching his run-throughs, which were the only value i could gain from his channel, was that he would distract himself 8-levels deep and I would be left wondering if what he just did was legal, or if it was a good idea, or if it actually accomplished what he had been talking about – the exact opposite of what I wanted to see in a play-through video)