Android
- A game of investigation in dystopian future
- Innovative mechanics with an involving story
- For Ages: 13+
- Number of Players: – 5
- Playing Time: – hrs
Every Man Has Two Sides. How Far Will You Go To Catch A Criminal?
Android is a board game of murder and conspiracy set in a dystopian future. Detectives travel between the city of New Angeles and moon colony Heinlein chasing down leads, calling in favors, and uncovering the sinister conspiracy beneath it all. The detectives must balance their pursuit of the murderer against their personal lives and their inner demons. Android’s innovative mechanics ensure that no two detectives play alike. Will
List Price: $ 65.99
Price: $ 27.00
Pyrus Electronics 4gb Mp3 / mp4 / mp5 Player with 2.8 Inch Touch Screen and All Stainless Steel Casing
- 2.8-inch QVGA touch panel – Beautiful Interface – One Built in Puzzle Game (cannot add more games)
- Support WMV, MP4 (avi coding), Xvid, RM/RMVB, AVI and FLV (Youtube) video formats – *Video files CANNOT be license protected
- Support MP3 /WMA/WAV/FLAC playback Support JPEG/GIF/BMP picture viewing
- You can go into Settings>>System Settings and set the screen to lock after certain amount of time.
- 4GB Built in memory, FM tuner, Build-in loudspeaker, Support micro SD card
This beauty comes with a crystal clear 2.8 inch LCD Touch Screen and All stainless steel casing. It is sleek and beautiful with less than half inches in thickness. Durable and light weight. You can play AVI, RM, RMVB, most Mpeg4, WMV, Xvid and FLV stream (YouTube) files directly on this device without the need for conversion. Most MP4 or MP5 players out there do not play MPEG4, WMV or Xvid files. This is a huge improvement over the older models. Please note: license protected files (like iTune v
List Price: $ 69.99
Price: $ 40.99
Fun But Flawed,
This game can be very entertaining, but it is slow and complex, meaning it won’t be for everyone. The biggest problem I have with Android is that it takes so long to play, especially if the people at the table are not experienced gamers; don’t be surprised when you convince friends and family who are not serious about gaming to try this and it takes the entire day. Despite enjoying the game, I must confess it sets a slow pace and isn’t particularly exciting enough to sustain that many hours of gameplay.
The designers definitely could’ve cut down the number of components the game ships with, there are just too many tiny cardboard pieces to keep track of. Some of these pieces weren’t necessary as there are more intuitive ways of tracking game information, but cardboard pieces were probably the cheapest, so it’s not difficult to see why they chose this path.
But frankly, Android has the most fragile game board I’ve ever played with, the number of small tokens, counters, and trackers that must be in exactly the right place mean the slightest table bump or unchecked arm movement can send pieces flying out of position, which is never a good thing.
Another complaint is that, at least in my experience, the complex interactions and variety of strategies and options are often times wasted as it seems more efficient to pursue the most basic action of collecting evidence instead of performing one of the game’s many advanced options (killing a suspect, piecing together the conspiracy, etc).
This could just be the steep learning curve the game has, making it a long time before players realize when and how to take advantage of these mechanics, but even among knowledgeable and experience gamers I found that none of us were taking these advanced actions because doing so meant sacrificing several opportunities to place evidence on a suspect and receiving very little gain in return. This is especially true since many of these actions require that you take other actions to make them useful, eating up a lot of time, and if the other players are only placing evidence you’ll fall behind since doing so provides the biggest opportunity for victory in the game.
What really surprised me about the slow pace and advanced strategies was the contrast to the twilight cards the game uses. These are basically two decks of cards, one called a Light Deck that is beneficial and can only be played on yourself, and a Dark Deck that is harmful and only used against the other players.
Many of these cards are startling powerful in comparison to the rest of the game, forcing players to discard all of their cards or favors, preventing them from acting on a turn, etc. Worse yet, there seems to be no way to counter a card (and they’re very easy to play), so once they’ve been used you can do nothing but suffer the consequences. Nothing is more disturbing than the sickening feeling you get when other players hit you with these cards during the last two rounds of the game and all the strategy and effort you put in were for naught because your opponents happened to draw one of the more powerful cards available, causing you to lose a game of slow, complex game strategy due to dumb luck and no skill on anyone’s part. These moments made me feel like I had stepped out of Android and into another game, they just don’t mesh well with the feel and pace the rest of the game offers.
For every one of these powerful cards you draw, there will be several that provide very little benefit and are mostly played to get them out of your hand. You cannot exceed the draw cap in this game and simply discard down to the legal amount later, or discard without spending time during your turn, so being able to get a card out of your hand is very valuable, and most of the game is spent playing these weaker cards in order to do just that, with the hope that the next card(s) you draw will be better.
Lastly, many of the negative effects have stipulations under which they can be played. Many of these stipulations involved the advanced mechanics of the game, giving players even fewer incentives to do anything other than follow evidence around the board, because to do otherwise would put them at risk of being targeted by a powerful card.
Despite these complaints, I do enjoy Android. I do, however, feel that the game could’ve been streamlined in a few areas, and this becomes readily apparent when you’ve been playing the game for several hours and realize everyone at the table has been just been placing evidence in the same routine manner while whittling down their decks to find those really powerful cards that will cripple other players by setting them back an entire round or more and require very little strategy to play.
Android is best played with veteran gamers who won’t mind the lack of polish, will explore the game’s depth out of curiosity, and really get into the…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|Noir Science Fiction,
We’ve played this game through twice now, and I think I can now say that I enjoy it. The rules are complex, and the first time we tried to play, it took us 3 hours to get HALF WAY through the game before we ran out of time. Once you have a player or two who know the rules, the game will move quite smoothly, the “2nd Week” in the game goes buy very quick, as the options become more limited towards the end. The final outcome is decided by point totals. The 2nd time we played, we finished the entire game in 4 hours, and we’re confident that next time it’ll be finished in 3 (since we know what we’re doing now).
This game is all about Characters. The game is filled with flavor text, stories, NPCs, and character specific events. Do yourself a favor, read them all aloud for everyone to hear. Its obvious the creators put a lot of work into them, and they really solidify the style of the gameplay as your going along. We made it a table rule to always read your cards and character stories for everyone, and we enjoyed the game much more when we did that, and a lot of the characters’ strategies and goals became more apparent that way as well.
Note: this game is NOT a game of “Clue, in the future”. The game is a noir-character based strategy game, you aren’t finding “who done it”, its a strategy game about finding more evidence than the other players, and its suggested, though not definitely stated, that you’re actually just pinning the crime on someone, not actually solving it… and that makes perfect sense if you allow yourself to be immersed in the game story.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Great little player!,
This item only had one review so i thought i would share info on this great player. I only paid [...] for this,so how much can you really expect,right? First of all i got free shipping(which i wouldn’t do again)and they held the product for five days before shipping.Once they shipped it,it came by usps so it was not bad.Anyhow,this ipod copy(as they call them)does everything it’s supposed to and more.I am not by any means a computer geek or software specialist but i had a full length movie loaded in it the first night. Shocked Me!!But i did do one important thing,i read the instructions on the website and followed them. first try,loaded a current movie(1.35 gb).played perfectly. this was so easy because you just open the player up on usb and find the file (movie,song,pics)and just drag it over to the player.It took about 4 minutes do download the whole 1.35 gb movie.Remember you have to follow instructions including downloading the converting software but that was very easy too.The fm radio works well with no problems.I was very surprised at how good the touchscreen works. Very easy to move around with soft touches. You do have to click twice but that soon becomes second nature.Easy to get through the video for fast forward. If you leave the movie and come back you can return to the same spot.Tried the micro mini sd slot (2gb is the only one i have) and the player reads it well.It charges very easily. Only concern i have is battery life,seems to go quickly,but is getting better the more i use it. But i did play music for about 5 hours and the battery was a little less than half,so it might be fine.Touchscreen is not chintzy like a lot of people say about some of these players.Comes with a built in stylus for pointing,but i haven’t even got it out of the player yet because my fingernail works fine. The voice recorder works good. The speakers work but are very low decibel.You won’t use them much,but you can hook up a pair of off market speakers with no problem.i bought a square trade warranty for 5 bucks which will cover this for three years.So to wrap it up i have to say(you probably think i work for pyrus or something)but i am just an average jerk like anyone else and wanted to let people in on what a great player this is!
Was this review helpful to you?
|Absolutely met my expectations!!,
I was searching for an MP3 without the complexities as the apple ipod. The only issue I have is that I don’t like the earphones provided and I would like to get a case for it, if anyone has any suggestions please advise. Otherwise, I’m very happy with my buy. I’ve dowloaded music very easy and overall everything is what I expected in an MP3 easy to use, sound system is great and pictures on videos are better than Apple’s ipod, i can actually see them. Is just what I wanted for the price I can’t go wrong!! I highly recommend it.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Amazing Little Gadget!,
I bought this Mp3 player for my 9 year old daughter and she absolutely loves it. The pictures doesn’t do this Mp3 any justice! I was a little apprehensive about purchasing it because it’s not very expensive but I’m so glad that I did. The player is very durable and the hot pink stainless steel is absolutely gorgeous. The instruction manual that came with it wasn’t that good, but we managed to figure it out. it seemed a little dated. Right out of the box the Mp3′s touch screen was very responsive but you may have to plug in the charger because it may be dead. The battery was really low. We didn’t inquire any issues while setting it up and the sound quality is excellent. I was a little surprised by the video quality because I didn’t expect it to be that good but it was. The Mp3 player is loaded with some sample pictures, music and video. It also comes with a CD to use on the computer but we didn’t need it because when we plugged it up to the computer with the provided USB cable, it recognized the Mp3 player right away and began to install the driver for it. We were able to transfer music to the player in a matter of minutes. The Mp3 player comes with a stylus but it is soooooooooooo tiny!!! We had a difficult time locating it on the player. The stylus is attached to the Mp3 player like the The Nintendo DS’s stylus is but at least with the DS, you can locate it fairly easily! If you’re not looking carefully, you will miss it. It’s that tiny. There is also a little nifty carrier case that it comes with. I also like the fact that you can also install a SD card if you chose to do so. Overall I’m 100% happy with this purchase and so is my daughter! Now she will stop bugging me about using my phone to listen to music!
Was this review helpful to you?
|