Couple Gaming

Ever since Xbox 360 introduced us to their version of a Mii, we have been longing to abuse ourselves in various ways.  Sure, we now have our little avatars having Party Chats, and we can dress our avatars in ridiculous clothing (if no one has seen what I did to Ymiris’ avatar, I highly suggest looking for it. He’ll be the adorable man in bright white pigtails & leather biker jacket), but it doesn’t seem to be enough.

Thus Xbox joins with Ninja Bee (@ninjabeegames for twitterers) to give us Kingdom of Keflings.  In it, we use our lovely avatars to help little Keflings build their little renaissance village.

Let’s get this straight:  Yes, this is a basic building game.  You are given basic blueprints to make buildings (say, a house) and you (and your keflings) gather resources (wood, coal, gems, wool) to build the basic parts dictated by the blueprints.  This is a fairly basic concept for any gamers that have played any of the building games – Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires, Empire Earth, SimEarth, etc.  “Get Resources, build 1 piece, put multiple pieces together to make building”.  It’s so simple, non-gamers catch on quickly and gamers get that nostalgiac twinge.  Awww.

What makes this game more amusing is watching your Giant Avatar towering over the little keflings.. kicking them around, picking them up, watching them scream & flail madly.. it’s hard not to be amused.  OK, especially when your giant avatar is in a red dress & high heels.. I admit it, I loved watching my Mii..err.. avatar.. wander around in her platforms carrying piles of rocks and bricks. Building up your little kingdom gets to be mesmorizing while you build an art house, schools, a theatre, a wizard house, etc.  I had to fight Ymiris & The Couple Gaming Child Test Subject for 360 Kefling time nightly for a good 3 days.  It was brutal, but I feel justified tying them up & leaving them in the closet (I did turn on my Hulu Queue & now they’re totally caught up on Colbert Report, Burn Notice, & House).

The Keflings have a cute sense of humor in the few places they communicate, and it is fun to put the Keflings through school, and then have them do your dirty work mining/logging/relocating materials.

This game is incredibly addicting, very colorful, and great fun.. until halfway through.  At about the halfway point, you realize a few things:

1. You have a limited number of keflings.  You do not get more, no matter how many houses you build.
2. The buildings you are now making don’t actually add anything to your game play.  You build a hospital or a theatre, but the Keflings never get hurt nor take a break from your slavedriving.  They don’t even change their outfits to an Armani suit when you build them a mansion.
3. You do not have enough Keflings to gather, move, and inhabit all the useless buildings
4. The blueprints leave NO wiggle room.  You cannot point the buildings in another direction, add things to the blueprints to personalize them (like an extra garden or such), or increase their value by doing such things.
5. The only personalizing you can do are paint the roofs, paint the walls, and add random trees & shrubs.  Doing these things does not actually add anything to your keflings, nor make any difference more than slightly aesthetic.
6. There is no adversary, nothing to harm your keflings, no real level of difficulty.  The only way you know that you are increasing difficulty in this game is the number of pieces per blueprint & the amount of resources per piece.  In other words… turn on your game, and then walk away for a night and this game should be easy as pie.

I am about 5 or 6 buildings from the end of the game, and I have just lost interest in it.  I don’t know why I’ve built a nursery, nor a mansion (instead of just a simple house).    I’ve built a hospital, but I think it’s more for myself (in case I trip over a Kefling in my clogs).  I find myself remembering why I don’t like to buy the Xbox Downloadable Content:  When you’re done, you can’t give them to someone else to try.

Still, for $10 we as a family got a lot out of it, and I highly suggest it for gaming couples that may not be experienced gamers.

I am hoping that, if there is a Keflings II, someone throws in a little more than what I can do with my Lego’s… because at least Lego’s I can  listen to Hulu at the same time… Ymiris is refusing to just tell me what happened in Burn Notice.  *sigh*