Game Review: The Walking Dead Risk and Monopoly!

Get your wallets out folks because The Walking Dead has taken on two classic board games and given them new life er...death maybe, i guess?  The comic universe of The Walking Dead is brought to life with The Walking Dead Risk and The Walking Dead Monopoly.

Seminal classics Risk and Monopoly are fantastic games on their own merits but when you add some zombie action to them, they're even more fun.  Especially in the case of Risk, but I'll get to that in a moment.

The changes to Monopoly are mostly cosmetic, much like the seemingly limitless adaptations this game has.  Still, the changes are cool.  From the game pieces (Carl's hat, Lucille) to the extremely clever currency (ammunition/supplies, etc), Walking Dead Monopoly is a neat little twist on this ageless game.

With Risk, things are a little different, and they're a lot fun.  Walking Dead turns Risk into more of a Risk/Pandemic hybrid which brings whole new life to the game.  If you've never played Pandemic, you definitely should as it is a fantastic game.  This version of Risk brings some of those game mechanics here as you are not only warring with other camps but a seemingly endless horde of zombies that increases in size every turn.

This is Risk, so you know you are in for a long game but the tension is ratcheted up when you're dealing with the random appearance of zombies.  It makes for some fun and exciting turns.

Both of these games have been around for decades and both remain among the best board games have to offer.  With a little zombie added fun, both Risk and Monopoly are given just a bit of extra punch for an even funner time.

Both of these games would make excellent gifts this holiday.

The Walking Dead Risk and The Walking Dead Monopoly

10/10 ZOMBIE HORDES!

RAWR(for more)

Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour Comes to the Staples Center

Rihanna’s fans packed the Staples Center Monday night for her Diamonds World tour concert.  The show opened with the many floating, rotating video panels covered in a diamond motif and then closed with “Diamonds,” but the diamond theme ended there.  It could have just as easily been called her Diamonds, Marble, Fire, Chain-Linked, Smoke, Semi-Truck, Mug-Shot, Shattered-Glass World tour.  It was all over the place.  Even Rihanna’s hair was part sexy sophisticated and part punk, with the left side shaved and the right side full of long waves in a permanent Jessica Rabbit ‘do.  She even completed the image by wearing a red dress with a slit all the way up to her hip for “Stay.”

It’s fitting that her concert would be made up of so many diverse scenes; Rihanna’s musical history is just as eclectic.  Her songs range from Pop to R&B to Dance to Reggae to Rock, and she performed some of her best-known and well-loved songs from each genre as well as some of her less mainstream music.  Her voice can be delicate and heartbreaking, but she also knows how to get the crowd up and dancing.  Rihanna also knows how to be powerfully sexy, to the point of being raunchy.  Much of her dancing consisted of a lot of hip thrusting and crotch tapping.  Granted, that may have been all that she could do in her white stiletto boots, which were tall enough to reach just below the bottom of her see-through t-shirt.  Of course, she did have half a dozen costume changes, and she and her backup dancers did some great dancing later in the evening.

All in all, the concert was damn entertaining and the crowd loved the spectacle.  While I don’t need flames shooting from the stage to enjoy a show, I did leave feeling like I just experienced something very special and exciting.  Like many, I only really knew Rihanna from her biggest radio hits, so it was great to be reminded of the many sides of her musical personality.

RAWR(for more)