Adrenaline Board Game Review

Do you like First Person Shooter Games? Do you ever just want to invite your friends over for games so you can shoot their in game characters? Well you’re in luck! Come join me as we look over “Adrenaline”, a 3-5 player game from CGE and Filip Neduk.The idea behind Adrenaline is simple. Choose a spawn point, pick up really cool guns and ammo, and try to kill your friends before they kill you.How to playPlayers can take two actions their turn, and have three actions to choose from. There is the move action, the pick up action, and the shoot action. Pretty simple. After players take their two actions, they can choose to reload a gun if they have the ammo.Players will continue taking turns and shooting each other until a predetermined number of kills has occurred, after which, points are counted up and a winner is determined.Each player has hit counters of their color. When you shoot a player and do damage, you give them hit counters equal to the damage dealt. Players actually become better after they get shot because a player’s actions get stronger when they are injured.When someone receives hit counters equal to their life points, they are killed. All players who hit them receive points, with whoever did the most damage getting the most points. The player who died instantly re-spawns, keeping all of their guns and ammo, and will continue playing when their turn comes up.Each time a player is killed, they become worth less points the next time they are killed which makes them a less desirable target.Players also get extra points for first blood, and for overkilling a player.My thoughtsI bought this game because I thought it sounded really fun, fast, and easy, and that is exactly what it has been.In order to get the first person-like experience, it has been really important to always tell whoever I am playing with to focus more on shooting your friends, and having fun, then on actually attempting some sort of Call-of-Duty like strategy. I fear the game could get really long and drawn out if players are taking a few minutes per turn.Having said that, sticking with this rule, every person I have played this game with has had an absolute blast.The art, the look of the board, and the colors, give me a nostalgic “Unreal Tournament” like feeling. I go back to my teenage bedroom playing first person shooter video games and drinking an insane amount of soda.Adrenaline is really clever with how players become worth less points after they are killed. This gives incentive to trying to kill the players who have not died yet and stops players from dying over and over.I also really enjoy how players become stronger after they have been injured. I feel like it really lives up to the name “Adrenaline” as I imagine my character’s adrenaline kicking in when he feels pain. This reminds me of “Doom” and how your player’s face in the corner of the screen seemed to thrive on the pain it felt.The weapons are also really cool. In my first game I picked up the “Cyberblade”, and I didn’t even know what it did, I just had to have it because it sounded so awesome. The gun “T.H.O.R”, so appropriately named, has a chain reaction effect, throwing lightening at multiple targets. You get to actually feel like Thor! Really though, the guns are clever, diverse, and some really pack a punch.Deciphering the weapons is a task though. I always need to have someone willing to hold the booklet and answer all of the “What does this weapon do?” questions. For my specific group, this isn’t really a problem, but I can see how this could be burdensome.The components in the game are nice. I enjoy the miniatures, especially the smily faced robot. The board has multiple sides, giving some variety to the playing field.I appreciate that the game goes to 5 players. I would love to see it accommodate more players but think it would make the game drag on and it would lose its fast-paced feel.Overall I think this game is exactly what I was hoping it would be, a first person shooter in a box. This isn’t a game that I will bring out every game night, due to its player vs player core mechanic not always being appropriate for every group, but it will definitely keep coming out, and I get excited about playing it with new people.If you like first person shooters, or have fond memories of a time when you did, I highly recommend this game to take you back to those fun times. It certainly did that for me.Play on boys and girls.Photographs by Happy Hill Photography