Tabletop_Gaming__April_2019

78 April 2019

PLAYED

Ninja Squad

stage, which seems like a sensible

option, although it still suers from

moments that strip away players’

sense of agency.

OWEN DUFFY

T

he intriguing thing about

Ninja Squad is that it oers

two games for the price of

one. A family-weight release set

in feudal Japan, it puts players in

the shoes of a squad of – wait for

it – ninjas. e rst half of the game

sees you work together to evade

guards and sneak into the palace

of a wicked shogun to assassinate

the despotic ruler. e second

ditches the co-operative approach,

with you and your friends ghting

it out to escape before you can be

brought to justice for his murder.

e co-op portion of the game

introduces its mechanical core. On

your turn you’ll choose one of a pair of

randomly-shued movement cards

to manoeuvre an anime-style plastic

assassin across a square-grid board,

aiming to stick to shadowy areas and

avoid running into guards patrolling

the city streets. Along the way you’ll

accumulate power-ups letting you make

additional moves or hurl razor-sharp

shurikens at unfortunate enemies.

It’s a premise plucked from big-

screen martial arts epics, but it comes

with some real rough edges. While

you’ll try to evade guards, there are

times when both of your available

cards leave you with no option but to

plough headlong into them. When

that happens, you’ll lose your next

turn and, while Ninja Squad plays

so quickly that it’s not the end of the

world, it’s the kind of thing that’s been

practically eliminated from modern

game design – for good reason.

ere’s also not much you can do in

the way of meaningful co-operation,

and the competitive mode on the

board’s reverse side feels considerably

better by comparison. A note in the

rulebook suggests skipping the co-op^ PLAY IT? NO

F

our rows from the back, middle

of the row. Everyone has a

favourite place to sit in the cinema;

Showtime has you trying to please as

many picky cinephiles as possible by

placing them in the sticky seats of their

local multiplex.

e theme’s a winner, and helps lift

up gameplay that’s otherwise as light

as a piece of popcorn. e jigsaw-like

board slots together the inside rows of

a screen (more rows for more players)

with the outside of a cinema, a movie

poster displaying the scoring genre of

movie for that round and a red carpet

tracking players’ points. It’s clever, and

cleverly presented.

en it falls apart. Placing cards to

put your patrons in the right seats isn’t

all that interesting or dicult, and

rarely are there enough viable options

to make it particularly strategic. An

unclear use of symbols to signify special

abilities – there are a few opportunities

for take-that rearrangement of your

opponents' audience members – and

denote who scores what where makes

placement and scoring more drawn-out

and clumsy than it needs to be.

e gameplay is a bit basic and at,

but it’s serviceable. What condemns

Showtime to a permanent place in

the bargain bins is how it takes such a

promising theme and ruins it.

Each character has a favoured movie

genre and specic seating requirement

needed to score points. It’s a good

idea for a lighthearted game, but the

delivery leaves a seriously sour taste

in the mouth. e characters and their

requirements range from the dull and

clichéd to the downright creepy and

oensive. A small-waisted, large-

chested blonde gives bonus points

for being seated near male patrons,

and loses points for being near other

women. Meanwhile, a chiselled

George Clooney-ish hunk whose shirt

is almost as white as the entire roster

of characters gains points for being

surrounded by fawning women. A

physically larger movie-goer stung

their face with food shouldn’t be sat

next to anyone because L-O-L everyone

hates greedy fat people, right?

Rampant with such lazy stereotypes

and tiresome attempts at humour,

Showtime is the kind of unpleasant

aisle neighbour you’d never want to

nd yourself sat next to for the 20 to 40

minutes of its runtime, let alone the

length of a feature lm.

MATT JARVIS

Showtime

20-40m 2-4 8+ £29

(^) PLAY IT? NO
20-40m 2-4 8+ £27
promising theme and ruins it.