Review: Lost Cities (XBLA)
I'm admittedly a huge fan of ultra-nerdy board and card games. We try to have a board game night at least once a month which really ends up just being an excuse to get together, drink a bunch and throw salted cashews at each other when things aren't going our way. This group play seems an awkward fit for the Xbox Live Arcade (mainly due to the lack of cashews, salted or otherwise), but in this reviewer's opinion the majority of XBLA games in this genre are gems. Uno, Catan and Carcassonne are some of the best games available, period, for the XBLA, while games like Word Puzzle and Sotrilo Solitaire flop. This week we see the newest in the board/card game genre, Lost Cities.
At first glance this game is super complicated, but like with any good game in this genre you spend the first couple rounds incredibly confused until all the pieces fall into place and it clicks. This process, at least for me, is pretty darn satisfying. It took only two rounds of demo play before I purchased Lost Cities, and I've spent all afternoon with it since. It is a fairly unique yet instantly familiar game, straight from the first menu which displays random semi-literary looking characters. I like the grey-haired bespectacled professor the best, who incredulously lifts his eyebrows and grimaces as you scroll through the different options. I heard him in my mind saying things like "huzzah! achievements!" or "what what leaderboards pish posh!"
So! Here's how the game works. It's a turn-based card game which feels like a mash-up between solitaire and Carcassonne. You have a table set with 5 different colored discard piles called cities. You also have five different colors of cards in the deck, numbered one to ten, with "investment" cards for each color. Each player has 8 cards at all times, which means that you can only play a card or discard a card for each turn, and then you have to either draw from the deck or from one of the 5 discard piles to bring your hand back up to 8. Confusing yet? Bear with me. Laying down cards is like solitaire. You don't have to play them in strict succession, but they have to be in sequential order. You lay down your first card which allows you to "excavate" the lost city, as it were. Excavation has its costs, however, and the number value on your card subtracts from your initial excavation debt. Still confused? Good! Investment cards can be laid down before you start your excavation, increasing the excavation price but multiplying the points your cards count for. Negative points carry over, so its entirely likely that a points deficit in your first round could mess up an otherwise excellent final round. It's all about climbing out of debt, which I am sure is something we can all relate to, yeah? Heh, heh. Hem. *coughs*
The game ends when all the cards are drawn from the deck, leaving the last player with the ability to draw a card they cannot possibly use. Which is odd. Like I said, the game is initially confusing, but after a good five rounds you're hooked.
The Xbox Live ranked and player matches also include shared hand multiplayer, 2v2. Mixing this in with the normal 1v1 matches is awkward. The game seems to double the amount of cards in the deck, but keeps the same number of rounds. This mode benefits greatly from coordinating moves via voice chat, but since I was paired with someone named "grandsmokemasta" I chose to avoid verbal communication altogether. I really don't like having to communicate with random people on ranked play for Live games, I wish they would have left the 2v2 games out of ranked match play. There's also the Xbox Vision camera option, which you should never use. I still fail to understand why game designers include the option to have random weirdos displaying their genitalia on my TV screen. It's not welcome and I shut it off.
We need more games like this on XBLA. They remind me of the bygone PC gaming era of relaxing, intelligent, mature games. Maybe I'm just old. If you're a fan of the previous XBLA board game offerings, definitely download the demo of Lost Cities. It's the full package: a nice soundtrack, pleasing enough graphics and enough strategy to keep any tabletop nut satisfied.
Score: 4/5 An addictive strategy card game with minor flaws. Recommended!
What say you?!