We've started having a weekly games "night" (lunch hour) at work as there are a few of us in my department who are into boardgames. We haven't played Carcassonne yet but it's been fun trying out lots of different styles of game, even some of the ones I wouldn't normally take a second look at. One such title was "Aliens!" which is a 1980s sci fi/ horror game based on the film of the same name. 6 of us played it earlier this week and I enjoyed it enough to write this "short" overview of our game afterwards which I'd like to share here.
Aliens! felt a bit like a co-operative game, but for a bunch of people who didn't really like each other. It wasn't that we actually wanted each other to get eaten by aliens, it was more just that it always seemed too much like hard work going back to save anyone...
I got off to a promising start by killing 2 aliens in 2 turns. Before I could begin my 3rd turn though, yet another alien was attracted by my cologne ("Odour de Bladder Failure") and had engulfed me in some way before I'd had a chance to shoot it. Fortunately Lex was on hand to "mess him up big time" but unfortunately this resulted in an apparent tidal wave of acid which landed us both in a strange kind of boardgame limbo where we weren't actually dead, but couldn't play an active role in the continuation of the game either, unless we took over some of the spare characters who were half-heartedly limping along under the control of others. It was a sad end for two of the games most handsome players at that time anyway.
Another key moment in our "team's" fortunes was when David made a heroic charge, backwards, and directly towards another alien which subsequently grabbed him and carried him off whilst another stood next to him watching. This provided a perfect opportunity for the rest of us to turn our backs on him and run, in an equally heroic fashion, towards the exit, dispensing advice and criticism in equal measure as we did so. This was something that Richard was especially good at, but I can't pick on him for it too much as he was carrying my still living corpse as he did so.
On the other side of the board, try as they might, stampeding over each other in a desperate attempt to get to the exit wasn't strictly within the rules that we were attempting to adhere to, which resulted in an outbreak of sensible and orderly queuing to get round some of the more densely-packed obstacles. This wasn't a problem for Matt however, who bravely avoided shooting any aliens in his quest to be the first to reach the exit, purely so as to clear a path for the rest of us and keep himself out the way. Courageous is not the word!
John was definitely the cool, calm and collected member of the group but this was purely because he'd rigged the dice to prevent any aliens from appearing anywhere near him. He also seemed to have a much better gun than anyone else, but he certainly put it to good use and pulled off some astonishing long-distance shots which served mostly to make the rest of us look even more incompetent (another impressive feat in itself).
So by the time everything came crashing down, David and I were preparing to clobber one final alien with our handbags before John shot it from the other side of the staircase, Richard was on the ceiling with his new "best friend" and Lex and John were in hot pursuit of Matt who was just about to ring the musical doorbell on the final exit. I like to think we might have won if we'd played it to the end, but only if the aliens had had a sudden attack of conscience and helped us along the way. Still, it was fun trying.
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