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Part 1: A Love Letter to Cardboard
As much as I love videogames, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I'm also a huge fan of gaming in the analog as well. From Tsuro to Settlers of Catan, Labyrinth to Scrabble — I love board gaming. Need further proof? I strangely own three variants of Risk.
I like adaptations of board games in the digital realm; there's something to be said for not having to keep score on paper or having to keep track of pieces or tokens. But they never quite do justice to sitting around the kitchen table with friends and family, nursing a cold beverage and bumping elbows as you move your pieces around.
It's rare to see a videogame take the core concepts found in board games and make it feel wholly original to the platform it's on. Luckily, I found something in that vein out in the wild, and it goes by the name of Guilty Party.
It makes me sad to see a lot of gaming media outlets labeling it as a mini-game collection. It's a bit lazy on the journalists part, a sort of way to report on it without doing any real work. While there certainly are mini-games to be found in Guilty Party, they make up only a miniscule portion of the experience. For once maybe the term "mini-game" is apt, because that's what they are.
A better way to describe Guilty Party is an amalgamation of Clue and Guess Who?. You move around a board searching for things that will help you track down a suspect of a crime, which in turn you use to build a profile using various metrics to sniff out "who did it." Sound simple? It should, and that's a good thing. I love me some Carcassone as much as the next guy; but sometimes a quick and dirty round of Sorry! is just as satisfying. The pick up and play aspect works great when you're playing this game natively — it means you can pull it out at gatherings and have to do minimal explaining. Which is especially helpful depending on what kind of beverage your group happens to be consuming.
The mini-games in question come up when you investigate a crime scene or interrogate a suspect. They're usually plays on motion contol conventions, which may or may not turn out as well as it should in theory. However, they only last perhaps twenty seconds or so, making them negligible in the long run. They're diversionary at best, more of a method to add some challenge to a game that is rather on the easy side.
What sets Guilty Party in the realm of awesomeness is it's predilection towards being a cooperative experience. The majority of our play time consisted of my family gathering clues together and brain storming to figure out "whodunit?" There is competitive multiplayer as well, but it's pretty stock standard in comparison to the wonderfully fleshed out co-op. It's this fact that makes Guilty Party unique: you don't need someone to DM your game when you have and AI to do it for you, giving you a chance to become that super sleuth family you've always wanted to.
Speaking of, I really hope that Disney takes advantage of the fact that their name was slapped on this puppy; a animated show with the Dickens Family Detective Agency would be pretty boss. What's interesting is that, like Phineas and Pherb before it, Guilty Party features a non-traditional family as the heroes. Being that my family is of that same vein, it's nice to see someone not villanize these stigmas. The characters are inventive, the writing is witty and the presentation on a whole is pretty high class. I was won over when Butch Johnson, in his ineffible Mike Tyson lisp says, "don't listen to him, it's the pudding talking."
But, as is the forte of the Dad vs. Kids articles, my story is only half the battle. Click over to the next page to find out what my rambunctious ten-year-old thinks of Guilty Party…
Part 2: No One Will Guess My Secret Identity
DAD: Owen, how would you describe Guilty Party to your friends?
KID: A funny like, Guess Who? game. With lots of arm pumping
DAD: Why do you like the game?
KID: That you move to different rooms and ask people questions and find clues.
DAD: What would you do to make a second game better?
KID: I would, to make it better: add more characters, more mysteries and more clues.
DAD: If they made this into a cartoon, would you watch it?
KID: yes.
DAD: Do you think it would be better than Phineas and Ferb?
KID: No (gives me a squinty look as if I insulted him)
DAD: Who was you favorite character and why?
KID: Kid Riddle, because he's a kid. No, wait your guy (Butch Johnson, whom is like Samuel L. Jackson with a Mike Tyson lisp), he's really funny.
DAD: Did you like the mini-games or do you think there's a better option?
KID: Yes. Kind of. By adding more mini-games? I don't know!
DAD: Last question: Did you kidnap the manatee?
KID: Ah…no. (smiles)
When he isn't sending his family on a wild goose chase to find out who ate his pudding, Matthew Mason writes a gaming column at Chronicles of an Incorrigible Games Enthusiast. He can also be found on Twitter @MHMason.