{"id":3610,"date":"2004-12-15T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-12-15T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2004\/12\/15\/westpark-review-king-arthur\/"},"modified":"2004-12-15T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-12-15T11:00:00","slug":"westpark-review-king-arthur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2004\/12\/15\/westpark-review-king-arthur\/","title":{"rendered":"Westpark Review – King Arthur"},"content":{"rendered":"

King
\nArthur<\/a><\/h3>\n

This game was eagerly expected, as we are big fans of games like “Legend of Zagor<\/a>“. There is something about a game that
\ntalks to you, although of course the novelty wears off quickly\u2026<\/p>\n

Knizia is a surprising author for a game like this – One can imagine that Ravensburger
\nfirst developed the idea, and then thought about which famous game designer to
\nask\u2026<\/p>\n

Opening the huge box first impressions are very good – the game material looks very
\nnice, there is even a big plastic sword which sticks in the plastic stone that hides the
\nCPU of the game. It was a huge disappointment when I learned that the sword fulfils no
\nfunction at all!<\/p>\n

\"King<\/p>\n

Playing the game has to be learned physically – the rules are very simple. Each player
\nstarts out with an Arthurian knight, travelling the land in search for fame and a better
\nhorse. The beautiful game board shows several locations the knights can travel too.
\nAlthough most of the pictures are pretty obvious, it is a shame that the spaces are not
\ntitled – to learn where the “monastery” is for example has to be looked up in
\nthe rulebook, as there are several buildings that could be a monastery!<\/p>\n

First the knights are presented to the CPU by placing them on the starting space with
\none hand and pressing (rather touching) a button at the same time with the other hand.
\nThis causes a small current to run through your body, and the rules actually warn people
\nwith a pacemaker to play the game – they might be killed by playing it! Thus the danger
\nand thrill of Arthurian times is reflected in the game design\u2026<\/p>\n

The game recognizes the colours and greets each player. Now we set off in search of a
\nlance, a horse and armour in the magical lands of mythical Britain. Basically this means
\nvisiting the three castles and fight some monsters on the way to find fame. Your actual
\nfame score is not represented physically, but as a number shown on the stone when you ask
\nit. Which means that very often the game is interrupted when a player wants to check
\nhis\/her score\u2026.We found that working the electronic aspect of the game was not
\nalways easy – sometimes the game doesn’t recognize your commands although you did
\neverything by the book (i.e. putting your figure on a space, holding it between the index
\nfinger and thumb of one hand and touching an action button with the other hand – which
\nshould result in actions like “talk”, “flee” fight” etc.). Our
\nfellow player Hans was mostly not recognized by the game, so other players had to do his
\nmoves which became a bit annoying after a while. Perhaps his body didn’t conduct as
\nwell? The rules advise to not use hand cream or anything similar, but this didn’t
\nseem to be the reason\u2026The game communicates with different voices – if you meet a
\nmaiden it will be a maiden that talks to you (and there is a very annoying one which
\nalways wants to be saved by you). The sound quality is not very convincing (technology
\ndoesn’t seem to have advanced since “Legend of Zagor” or “Dark
\nTower”), but there is some attempt at acting and humour. We actually had to laugh
\nvery hard when a castle inhabitant with an extremely gay voice is eagerly presenting us a
\n“wonderfully big lance” and tells us so repeatedly (well, you have to visit
\nthese damn castles all the time, as the money you want to give them is never enough – and
\nboy, this guy just LOVES his “big lance”).<\/p>\n

\"King<\/p>\n

But this is not, where the game fails, actually the sounds have been done with a
\ncertain attention to detail and are mostly quite amusing – it is the gameplay that
\ndisappoints. Basically every player tries to accumulate goods to pay for the “big
\nlance” etc.. For this you either visit the villages (the villagers seem eager to
\ngive you all they have) or have little adventures. The game also constantly declares a
\nrandom space as the goal of a little race – whoever reaches them first gets a little
\nbonus, and a new space is declared. Sometimes there is a little variation when you have
\nadventures, but the outcomes seem random and don’t hold your breath for the fight
\nscenes (the squeaking of the big dragon is especially pitysome – you would imagine the
\nsound designers could have come up with something more menacing. Perhaps he is afraid of
\nour big lance?). Even worse – very often you don’t really learn what actually
\nhappened after a combat, and have to look it up by checking your fame score – if it is
\nlower, you have lost! The rules leave some things open deliberately (you are encouraged
\nto learn the game by doing), so there is some excitement in learning what happens behind
\nthe scenes. But the longer you play, the more you get the feeling that the same game
\npresented as a normal board game without the voice gimmick would be incredibly boring and
\nrepetitive (a la: “roll the dice: 1-3 the villagers like you and give you
\nprovisions, 4-6 the villagers ignore you”). Even worse – It is quickly clear where
\nyou have to go and what you have to do after playing for about 20 minutes, and therefore
\neach game after the first would become old quickly\u2026The influence of master
\ndesigner Knizia is mostly evident in the very abstract logic behind the game, which
\nbasically goes like “find resources – bring resources to certain key spaces – the
\nplayer who does this most efficiently wins the game”. The game does certainly
\n“work” in this respect, there is no fault to be found in the rules themselves,
\nbut one gets the feeling that even smaller kids will be bored by this quickly, especially
\nwhen compared to the snazzy computer games of our time.<\/p>\n

Apart of a certain novelty value this is a collector’s, not a game player’s
\nitem – although I doubt it will acquire cult status in later years\u2026 but still,
\nthere is the awfully big lance\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

King Arthur This game was eagerly expected, as we are big fans of games like “Legend of Zagor“. There is something about a game that talks to you, although of course the novelty wears off quickly\u2026 Knizia is a surprising author for a game like this – One can imagine that Ravensburger first developed the … Westpark Review – King Arthur<\/span> weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spieleabende"],"views":1,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}