Project: Elite Review - A Game That Genuinely Surprised Us

i want you to tell me what do you think of when you look at this box i ask you because when i first looked at it my thoughts were not very kind set aside for a moment the fact that the cover art is so bland you could serve it as a meal to an english grandad and they wouldn't even complain about it but what i want to talk about first is this game's publisher simon or come on they keep changing the pronunciation and honestly phonetically this acronym is cursed no matter how you slice it the other thing is africa's seymond yeah sounds like semen which is produced by [Applause] lambs glands long time viewers will know that we've not been the biggest fans of games that come on has made in fact out of the long list of games developed and published by this publisher in the six years of this channel we have only recommended one of them in case you're not familiar with cool mini or not my team of assistants have prepared a detailed list of the sort of things that they are known for this has the word plastic on it let's get a bit more real if you enjoy the sort of big miniature experiences that come on makes them more power to you but we found them more than wanting for every cool mini there's a shallow mechanism or an underbaked idea that's the or not part and whilst they're by far not the only publisher exploiting predatory practices preying on fomo through kickstarter pre-orders they are the most prolific and egregious one and pretty much wrote the playbook look i'm not here to moralize if i did i would be as hypocritical as tony the tiger telling you that frosties are bad for your teeth instead and believe me this surprised me as much as anyone i am here to tell you that this game it's great before i tell you how this game gives every expectation good and bad a 180 flip first let me explain what project elite is in case the art didn't quite give it away in project elite you will be hunting aliens what's interesting here is not the what but how each game will take a maximum of eight rounds and based on the scenario you've chosen you'll have a different objective for example find the alien nest and shoot their eggs or find the alien nest and blow up their eggs or find the alien nest trap an alien and bring back their eggs you know what they say if you want to make an omelet you gotta break some eggs and in this analogy this game is an omelet each round more and more aliens appear sometimes way too many aliens appear sometimes way more than too many aliens appear and then also a boss appears and if but one ever reaches your base game over man game over here's the kicker each of the game's rounds is timed to exactly two minutes let's take an example of how this works in practice you'll take on the role of a cast so ridiculous i wouldn't fault you for mistaking them for dolph lundgren's extended family and trundled towards your objective unlike most board gamers however i like to imagine that i'm not this character but some sort of an invisible commander issuing orders from a comfortable armchair basically i'm not malcolm i'm malcolm's boss this isn't malcolm his name's garrett but that's what i imagine a malcolm looks like if your name is malcolm don't leave a comment on your turn you'll roll some dice and then if the results show something that you want to do you can do it if you're all the move you could move and you might say to me efka these are six beefcake patties with muscles for legs and legs for muscles surely moving is going to be easy for these people here malcolm has already exterminated the alien eggs and now all he needs to do is roll some moves to return to his space and complete the final part of his mission but oh no what's this malcolm you are suddenly surrounded by aliens damn it how could this have happened it's okay malcolm your commander is issuing you an order to move [Applause] dear viewers it seems that malcolm had an emergency call from his nephew whose dog ate his homework so malcolm had to stop and explain some high school trigonometry on his phone meanwhile we have to resolve some of these red symbols on our dice anytime you roll an alien's move symbol surprise the aliens move first you must stop everything you were doing and move an alien the arrows on the board which for some reason always point towards your base indicate the only possible movement directions when this timer is sticking down the last thing you want to see on a die is this red cross and here's the thing moving one alien out of 10 maybe 20 is not a big deal it's just one space but you're under pressure you don't have time to think you just want to move something anything and hope that it doesn't come back to hurt you but any move you make has the potential to be a lethal mistake first of all turns out aliens big fan of the conga anytime an alien moves into another alien they push that alien further down the line and then that alien pushes another alien in front of it and that alien pushes another alien in front of it guess what if that alien then pushes you that's one damage and that one damage could prove to be devastating which is where you say i don't see the big deal just don't move the alien that triggers the conga line right sure and if that's all it was this game would be stupid actually but the real problems begin in the alien activation phase this is where aliens move again and instead of one alien you will move all of the aliens and this time they don't just move one space they can move two in case of the biters and are whopping free spaces if they're the runners that's the equivalent of free trigonometry tutorials but that's not even it if any shooters are within three spaces of you they will activate and shoot you again even a single damage could have devastating repercussions because your health marker crosses thresholds that lock your action dice away if a biter is next to you they will bite you also bad now imagine that you let one biter move into you during your activation that's one damage then they'll bite you that's another damage then they'll move again that's another damage by that point you're pretty much dead and who's gonna help timmy with trigonometry now malcolm let's pretend that you didn't in fact die because the game would be immediately over let's pretend that you survived the alien activation phase and can breathe a sigh of relief no stop breathing you are still in a lot of danger after the alien activation phase you start another round and that's when even more aliens spawn it's entirely plausible that they will all spawn at the same location pushing the existing ones out and creating more conga lines making this battlefield an over 60 dance hall with blood eggs and goo and here's the thing it's easy to see this melange of beige plastic becoming big stress and i'm not gonna lie to you it is but so much of this has been smartly designed to be a smooth experience each of the game's free alien groups are distinct and you have to worry about different things when dealing with them if your objective is surrounded by shooters you want to peel them off the board first before you flitter away all your dice on nest burning and just sit there like a chump dying from lasers however when you're in the timed phase during that period the distinctions entirely melt away each alien will ever only move one space if triggered by your dice and will only ever hurt you if they conquer into you which makes things sweet and simple i don't want the game to interrupt my precious as all heck two minutes to worry about alien stats and that's clever but what's really clever is that by not making me think about the difference between aliens the game is making me not think about the difference between aliens ah i just rolled four alien movement okay it's fine i'm just going to move this this this and this oh malcolm i think i just moved four shooters with lasers in front of you and i guess jimmy won't be passing his math a levels this might be obvious if you've ever played a real-time dice chucking game but here's another trick you can roll your dice as many times as you like and you can use your dice as many times as you like unless you lock them into the objectives or a special item that you have once again there's some clever things going on here frequently results like gun or move or search are a welcome sight because they let you keep moving shooting or searching sometimes you'll roll a search result and you are nowhere near a search location do you then keep that result and set that die aside if you do you'll only be rolling free dice in the hopes of trundling towards better gear is that a waste of time would you be better off rolling four dice and then try and roll a search symbol again who knows with four dice you're more likely to get the aliens move result but you're also more likely to make your way there faster there's just about enough decision making here to not overwhelm you as you're frantically rolling does in search of the right symbol desperately hoping that once the two minutes are done you won't have to lift your head in shame and say to your friends i'm sorry my hubris lost us the game the real delight however is how this game manages to produce drama with every single beat my biggest criticism of games published by c'mon is how they understand theme depictions rely on referential winks or straighter parody but more than most of it just feels emotionless whereas in project elite every game something memorable popped out right from under the cardboard in one game on the very final round one of us made it back to the base having completed all of the objectives whereas the last player couldn't roll a single move result and was surrounded by aliens with only 40 seconds on the clock every roll became an excruciating moment in a nail-biting finale it's easy to see why i was so smitten with project elite but like i said it flipped all of our expectations when i think of a command game i think of jaw dropping plastic and fantastic artwork and when i look at project elite all i can think of is what the hell happened forget the alien with boobs on the cover for a second what about the minis i remember longingly looking at the miniatures in rising sun as i sold off my kickstarter pledge thinking gosh i never want to play that game again but i sure wish i had another reason just to keep those minis whereas this this just brings new depths to how boring beige can be project elite is obviously a trashy good time and it costs what you imagine a trashy good time would cost i don't necessarily need bling in my board games but imagine my disappointment finally finding one of these larger-than-life kickstarters that i actually enjoyed and then getting all of this and you know what not coloring the three different alien types in different colored plastic is a genuine disservice to this game at least if the figures were distinct enough it wouldn't be a problem but now half of the time i can't even tell what's what on the board but there's one expectation that kamon never fails to deliver on and that is that unless you take a punt and back the kickstarter as a retail buyer you get absolutely shafted for example the retail box includes six characters to play with but if you pre-ordered this game you get 15. how is that fair i get that as a company that's built its business model on mesmerizing people's wallets with the promise of cool or not come on has to offer some reward for early buyers but this is just obnoxious and sure i am a little bitter that if i want to get all the extra stuff for a game i actually enjoyed i now have to scour the cd underbelly of secondary markets and pay exorbitant amounts of money for what people got for free but what was i supposed to do back every single kickstarter that cool mini or not put out in the hopes that one of them's good no that's how they win not you and here's one final critique that actually relates to how this game plays while i enjoyed every single game i played out of this box i'm not sure that i've learned anything sure there's some tricks you can pick up for example deliberately moving a shooter alien further away from you towards your base it's scary but you're a lot more likely to take him out if you've not taken any damage and all your dice are still there but these streaks are few and far between if you forced me to the wall and made me tell you an actual skill i developed playing this game well i can roll four dice now really fast okay let's put all that aside now should you buy this box i really like it but there's some things you should consider first if real time stress is a big factor for you then you have exactly two minutes to run away from this box as fast as you can but strangely i found project elite almost therapeutic maybe it's just the pandemic syndrome talking but the longer i spend days and days inside the more i'm stressed out by gentle and calm euros whereas this this is kind of like cooking with friends there's a set amount of time to finish everything you're juggling a lot of different tasks and there's a very real chance something disgusting will start burning and setting off one alarm or the other and if you're cooking with a friend you're not even paying attention to what they're doing you're all busy making your thing and just relying on your companion to come through trust it's a nice feeling worth mentioning that in the past we've reviewed magic mace which is a real time game that's a lot cheaper and despite not letting you talk to your friends it feels much more cooperative also it would be a sin not to give a nod to now boarding our game of the year for 2018 that puts a very different spin on real-time cooperation i'm not going to compare project elite to them too much because ultimately it's just a different game with different goals so until someone invents a real-time cooperative game with a cooking theme project elite gets a gooey recommendation from us what about overcooked what what's overcooked thanks for watching this video all the way through if you enjoyed it then you might like to know that without patreon this genuinely wouldn't be possible if you decide to support us not only will you be one of the people responsible for our continued existence but you'll also get various perks like monthly newsletters audio logs or maybe even a personal shout out like richie loki richie i hope everything's still going great and i hope that you're enjoying brass lancashire i don't know how to end this so here's a surprise dog

Channel: No Pun Included

Views: 41,062

Rating: 4.9006896 out of 5

Keywords: no pun included, board game, review, npi, boardgames, boardgamegeeks, brettspiel, brettspiele, jeuxdesociete, tabletop, games, juego de mesa, gamenight, 2020, cmon, cool mini or not, project: elite, artipia

Id: OjO5SIICwbU

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/LoquaciousMonk]

I really enjoy playing my copy of this game for the same reasons Efka outlined. I will note that the rulebook is poorly written which left a few things ambiguous (which have now been cleared up via an FAQ). I do have the Kickstarter version of the game; which I think is super important for the variety you get.

Additionally, the more players you play with, the easier the scenario. This makes the solo game super difficult as you only have 5 dice (instead of the normal 4) with two characters. Which means if you take enough damage you could just automatically lose as you can no longer complete the mission objectives as you have run out of the necessary dice. On the flip side, if you play with 4 players you have waaaay more dice (therefore actions) available to you which makes it too easy (unless you play on the hardest difficulty).

Even though I really enjoy the game, I don't think I can recommend this game via retail. It currently retails at $110 CAD where I live which provides half the variability in bosses, characters, and maps (although no new missions). There just isn't enough content in the retail version to keep things interesting for very long.

[u/velcrozipr]

I've played this a few times and enjoyed it.

I wish that it had a campaign mode/story that tied the scenarios together and ramped up the difficulty.

[u/Dice_and_Dragons]

My wife and I love this game but yeah the scaling is way off on this one. It’s fun with two player and would love to control multiple characters but it’s just to hard with the timer.

[u/GrittyWillis]

My buddy has the original version. The one everyone complained about the quality of the minis. It's one of the best, most fun ever made.

In all seriousness it's pure adrenaline which has just not be duplicated before in a boardgame. Other real time games have heightened stress and whatnot but this goes beyond using time to induce stress...sometimes you feel cornered and like the alien horde is truly against you (it is). Anf you come out on top and feel like an absolute badass!

I dont care about the quality of the minis...like.tom vasel said you just chuck them in the box anyways.

I wish this was more accessible buy now its hiding behind the massive price point form CMON and most of the content in the KS will.never version readily accessible again.....shame

[u/lancebanson]

I like how this one plays, but my husband really can't stand it at 2 players; too much swing on the dice for him. Really blows because the virus is keeping our usual crew from getting together, so it's just going to be a shelf toad for another year. :/

[u/KamahlFoK]

Not sure how to feel about his admission that he hasn't actually developed any heuristics or skills after playing it several times. Either that means the game is incredibly deep, or that it's just an RNG clown-fiesta.

[u/noogarock]

Wish the retail wasn't so pricey