Adrenaline - An Introduction

 

Adrenaline - An Introduction

Game Specs

• Advertised Player Count: 3-5
• *Actual* Player Count: 4-5 is best, but it's definitely playable with 3
• Playing Time: 30-60 minutes (this is pretty close to accurate once everyone has a decent handle on the rules and knows where to find information about their various weapons)
• Age: 12+
• Premise: This is a first person shooter sim board game, and y'all are just picking up the weapons and ammo you can find and blasting away at one another!

This game isn't for everyone, but if the people playing are casually messing around with it and are willing to play it a couple of times, then I think it's a freakin' blast. The premise is real straight forward, and the game play is decently smooth with one major hiccup that I'll get around to in the next paragraph. Setup is easy, as you basically just distribute the weapons and ammo around whatever room setup you have, then spawn a player who takes their turn. Each player spawns after that, and then the mayhem begins. On your turn, you take two actions from the three options everyone's got: you can run around, grab stuff, or shoot people. Literally, that's it. One of the things I love about this game is that the more you get shot, the more desperate and powerful you become. If you've got 3+ points of damage, your "grab stuff" action improves (you can move and then grab stuff as one action instead of it being separate actions). If you've got at least 6 damage, your "shoot" action improves (you can move and then shoot, again, instead of that being two separate actions). It's a fun way of balancing the game, and ensures nobody is getting shot up CONSTANTLY because they're limping and make for an easy target. In fact, the more often someone is killed, the less profitable it is for you to kill that person! Those diminishing returns encourage you to pick a different target.

You can see here that there are ammo tiles all over the board, it's a pretty small board so there's A LOT of shooting happening, because there really isn't anywhere to hide, and the minis look pretty cool.

So, what's the hiccup? Well, the weapons are all individualized. Seriously. They've got ridiculously different effects, and so it's super cool when you find a weapon that's just killer, and nobody else has it! But then you've got to look up what it does. Symbols are used all over the game, and once you have a handle on what they mean, it all comes together nicely. But until all the players have at least 2-3 games under their respective belts, it'll be a bit more of a slog than the game implies. To be clear, I really enjoy this game! I think it's a lot of fun and has the feel of a first person shooter like Golden Eye on N64, but with way fewer places to hide from those who would kill you dead. But the amount of time spent looking at the weapons manual so people can optimize their ammo and weapon selections really slows the game down for the first couple of times. That's why I say you really need to be willing to play this at least 2-3 times in either one sitting, or in two sittings that are close together. If you play it once, and then wait 6 months before you play it again, you'll run into the same problem.

I generally don't like games where people are *constantly* looking things up. It usually feels to me like either sloppy game design or rules that are counter-intuitive. In the case of Adrenaline, I get why the game functions this way, and I support it. But this game really only works if you've got a regular gaming group who is willing to invest 2-3 plays to become familiar enough with it to then ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME. When teaching anyone a game for the first time, my friend Roger will often say (when it's applicable), "We're gonna start playing. After we get through it and you ask a question or two, it'll all make sense and you'll say, 'okay. Now I'm ready to play.'" This is sort of one of those games. Until you've played it several times and had the patience to slog through it, you won't be ready to "actually" play the game and discover whether or not you like it.

This game is not for everyone, but man, I really find it to be a lot of fun.