Betrayal at House on the Hill

2007, 25

This board game is brilliant! It has so many tricksy, exciting elements. One is that you build the playing board as you go, drawing and laying down tiles to represent rooms of the house, so it can be different each time you play.

Another is how it is split into 2 phases...the haunting and pre-haunting, and how each time you find a new omen, the likelihood of the haunting becomes greater and greater. It makes each haunting roll more and more intense and exciting.

Lastly, the post-haunting game play can be vastly different each time, depending on a variety of circumstances (the omen that triggered the haunting, the room you found it in, which character found it, etc.) Plus, any game that has a traitor is fine by me.

To sum it up, it is extremely versatile and has great replay value!

Dynasty Warriors 4

2003, Age 21

This game is fun in how much power it gives you as a player. From the very start you can mow through ranks of Chinese infantry with the greatest of ease. For more advanced players, there are deeper and more involved goals to try and accomplish. Advancing the game unlocks new characters, with their own campaigns and storylines. There are horses to be won, new weapons to be discovered, and new sets of bodyguards to train. Plenty to do! I guess what I'm saying, is, it has great replay value.

This particular game has a very specific memory associated it, though.  I got during a summerstock theatre stint at the Berkshire Theatre Festival.  For some reason I was feeling very generous and set up my PS3 in the common area of our dorms.  Everyone in the company played this game.  Everyone had their characters that they loved and tried to level up and find all the weapons for and such.  Everyone wanted that horse.  During the day, when all the tech staff was working, the actors and stage managers would play it.  At night when the shows were running, the tech crew would play it.

It was my first (and possibly only?) experience crowd-source playing a game.