So Very Wrong About Games

Honest reviews, good timestamps, eclectic tastes. This isn’t focused only on heavy or light ganes, they give airspace to everything from crunchy euros to breezy dexterity games. If advocating for cultural respect and representation in gaming is too “woke” for you, take a nap. Yes, it’s a little pretentious at times but so am I, so I give it 4 instead of 5 stars.

At first, the podcast appears relatively novel. There are few programs within the board gaming hobby which offer substantive analysis. Mike and Mark display thoughtful critiques throughout multiple episodes. The problem isn’t that they — mostly Mark — get reflexively sidetracked by political commentary. The problem is: their commentary is politically juvenile. They — mostly Mark — possess the kind of boiler plate, deconstructionist talking points you would expect from a first-year political science major. It’s tired and unimaginative. It’s cookie cutter rhetoric we have all heard a thousand times across every possible topic. It’s genuflecting shows of virtue that are amplified across Board Game Geek ad naseum. Yet, we are assured that these “conversations” aren’t happening often enough. In their effort to carve out a “social commentary” niche, they wind up making the show passé and redundant. It’s unnecessary. It’s bland. And — to top it off — it’s incorrect. False anthropology does not equal “cultural respect”. A sad case study in wasted potential.

Mark is one of the most thoughtful critics of boardgames and the hobby as a whole. His understanding of boardgames and mechanics, matched with his ability to put them into words, is top notch. Is he overly pedantic? Sometimes. But most of the time he is just the right amount of pedantic. And then Walker is the balm that soothes my ears afterwards. Without him the show wouldn’t work. Probably the best reviewers out there and are not afraid to share their opinions about bad games. In a hobby with 1000s of new games coming out each year, most are going to be bad and these two will let you know about them.

These guys provide the kind of board game analysis I want. They bring up specific features about games that they like or dislike and explain how those features impact the play experience. The reviews are very insightful and intelligent. Marks extremely cringe politics really spoil it.