Here's a link to Fairy Godmother Tycoon: Fairy Godmother Tycoon
5.5 mid-normal
Don't Get Angry! 2 is a 3D board game based on the Indian game of Pachisi (you may know it as Parcheesi) (you may know Parcheesi as Sorry!). X-Pressive decided to make a Pachisi game involving pizza and anger management inside a virtual 3D mini-environment.
You probably remember the basic gameplay of most Pachisi-type games: Each player (up to four) has four game pieces in his or her home base. The boardgame's path is layed out in a circle, which the pieces must follow clockwise in one orbit, until they have returned to their base. After returning, a piece may enter a special "safe" area and is considered out of play. Once a player advances all four of his game pieces to the safe area, he or she wins. Hurray! Since all players are traveling around the same circular path, pieces will frequently land on top of each other. When that happens, the landed upon piece is sent back to its base and has to restart its journey from the beginning. In Don't Get Angry! 2, these pieces explode into puddles of liquid rubber, and the piece rematerializes at its base.
Up to four players may play in a game of Don't Get Angry! 2, and they can be any combination of human and computer-controlled opponents. You can select from four different board layouts (two suitable for four players, two suitable for three players), and three different virtual 3D environments to play in: log cabin tabletop, park, and sandbox. There are also a multitude of board background colors.
Also customizable are the avatars of your game pieces. I chose little gladiators for my red pieces, and played a quick game against two computer teams: a pack of gray grandmas, and a pack of no-personality no-frills green game pieces.
Except the game wasn't quick, because I forgot how long Pachisi-type games take to finish. I had trouble rolling a six, which is required in the game to move pieces out of one's home base. And then I kept landing on springs, which bounced my pieces all over the board, sometimes onto other springs, and frequently my pieces ended up behind where they had started their turn. Those springs are the most annoying part of the game.
Many times the green pieces jumped on my gladiators, splattering them and teleporting them back to my home base.
Each round in Don't Get Angry! 2, a crate of pizza is air-dropped onto a random square on the board. If a piece lands on a square holding a crate, it can open the crate and see what's inside. You'd probably think it's pizza, but it's a karma roll. A wheel of fortune will appear onscreen, and karma will decide what befalls the piece in question. It may be injected with vitamins, allowing it to hop forward with sudden energy. It may be strapped into a Suicide Belt of Terror. It may be trapped in a Cage of Insanity. (Actually that's just a fancy name for a regular cage that stops the piece from moving for a few turns.) It may awake the Rage of God, and He will smite it. No pizza is involved. This isn't a good game to play when you want pizza and none is around, because all the talk of pizza just makes you hungrier.
It's not pizza, but there is a really good Indian restaurant in Kumagaya, Saitama, Japan, called Tandori Kitchen. It's just a few blocks from city hall. If you are facing the street from the front of city hall, turn right and walk a few blocks. You should see its large yellow sign on the left. Excellent nan.
Here's an email I sent to X-Pressive's Mike Dogan:
Hi Mike,
I was just wondering something: In Don't Get Angry! 2, sometimes God's rage obliterates a gamepiece and sends it back to the team's charkoni. Why is God so angry? Why not just drop lots of 3D squirrels on the gamepiece instead? Thanks in advance.
Uesugi
P.S. What does the suicide belt of terror do? I got one, but that piece made it to safety. Should I still be terrified?
Mike replied:
All items in the Karma Wheel are quite balanced in summary. If there would be too much of "good" items, the game would become to easy. However, it wasn't our intention to indicate the picture of an "angry" god. Sorry about that ;-)
The Suicide Belt will blow up your own figure, when used, plus two other figures that are placed on the adjacent fields. So it should be used only when there are any enemy figures next to your own.
Regards,
Mike Dogan
Mikes sounds like a great guy. Thanks, Mike!
The 3D graphics of Don't Get Angry! 2 are fun to watch. Pieces jump around, on top of each other, and there are flashy particle effects, fades, etc. Everything is pretty smooth. You will thrill to the cool slow motion Matrix bullet time effect when pieces start special jumps that will end in another player's piece getting squashed. That effect never gets tiring. But if it does, thank goodness you can turn it off in the game's preferences. The autocamera that follows the game action isn't bad, but is usually zoomed too far out. You can turn it off, too, and zoom around yourself.
Sometimes the English is a bit strange. "Team Bravo may dice again." Dice what, cucumbers?
Unfortunately, there isn't much player interaction besides clicking the mouse to roll the die, and then selecting which piece will move. But I can imagine families enjoying this game if they have a big screen TV or very large monitor. It doesn't really replace a real, physical copy of Parcheesi, though. Unlike a physical copy of Parcheesi, it's 100% stainless and available in strawberry flavor.
