Christmas Story Board Game
by Neca
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Our Price: $31.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $24.00 (click here) Category: Toy See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of Christmas Story Board Game
Customer Review: A Christmas Story: The Board Game
Summary: 1 Stars
"A Christmas Story: The Board Game" provides a game board, a 36-card question deck (28 cards with 3 questions on each and an additional 8 "life lessons learned" cards), a 75-card game deck, 6 player tokens, and 6 scoring tokens. In the store where I purchased it for $29.99, it seemed like a good way to remember the excellent movie on which it is based. However, it turned out to be, without question, the biggest disappointment I have had in purchasing games in many, many years.
The best thing about this game is the big, cute picture of Ralphie on the box. Having loved the movie, it was irresistible not to buy this board game, and I feel victimized by a cute picture on a merchandising sham. This is not a game; it's a money maker for someone who could not have ever tested the game to see if it "works." Instead of providing fun, it provides frustration.
The instructions consist of a four-page booklet of the most indecipherable guidance I have ever encountered. Key information on how to proceed is not presented in a logical order. I disliked wading through unnecessarily long sentences of cutesy phrasing throughout the instructions. Example: "The cops and fire department need to come to pry the tongue from the lamp pole. The other kids can't wait around as Christmas loot is on the line." What are passages like that, padding to make the instructions longer?
The leg-lamp tokens provided to move around the board refuse to remain standing. We gave up on using those within the first few minutes of trying to play the game.
There seems to be no real objective to the game and no conventional way to begin it. Having been dealt 7 game cards, players begin to go through areas of Ralphie's neighborhood - his home, the alley, the school, the schoolyard, and the department store. Players move pieces without the aid of dice or spinners. Choosing a card to discard with a number on it and then moving my token is not challenging nor does it provide the element of chance, a key to experiencing luck (winning) or failure (losing).
We tried rereading the instructions numerous times, only to be further frustrated. After clearing off the game tokens and forsaking the use of the game board entirely, we sat around and had a bit of fun reading the questions and answers to each other. It took only a short while to exhaust the small question deck. Unlike many games with hundreds of questions, "A Christmas Story: The Board Game" has only 92 questions. So, for the $30 cost of the game, I figure that worked out to 33 cents per question - too expensive for a tiny deck of question cards I'll go through only one time.
My advice to families that want a fun board game: admire the packaging of this game in the store and leave it there.
Customer Review: For collectors only
Summary: 1 Stars
First, I don't understand why the price listed here is so high. The manufacture date on mine is 6/2009, so it's not an old discontinued game. I bought mine today at a local drug store for $19.99.
Anyway, I didn't know this game existed until I saw it on the shelf in the store today. Like everyone else here, I bought the game because I (and my kids) love the movie, so I thought it would be fun to play. I'm a big fan of board games, so I'm no beginner at learning new games. The quality of manufacture seems to be very good. Which is surprising considering they didn't seem to put any effort at all into testing the game by letting people unfamiliar with it read and interpret the directions. I could make no sense of it at all. The directions follow no logical order and don't do even a mediocre job of explaining game play. I went over it several times, thinking I was just missing something, but to no avail. I think I'd have better luck trying to figure out a Space Shuttle operator's manual an hour before lift-off.
I finally came to Amazon to read the reviews and see what other people had to say about this game. I was relieved to see I'm not the idiot I was starting to think I was. Forget the "8 and up" age recommendation. I wouldn't even recommend it for adults of any age, much less children.
I can't comment on the game's durability because I didn't own it long enough to find out. I got rid of it after owning it less than five hours.
The only person I would recommend this game to is the collector of 'A Christmas Story' memorabilia who simply wants to add another movie-related item to their collection. For everyone else who would like to actually play the game, all I can say is don't waste your money.
Customer Review: I need some Excedrin after playing this game
Summary: 1 Stars
Like others have said, this has got to be the worst board game ever produced, and if I could give it 0 stars, I would. We were flabbergasted when we opened the cute shiny box to discover the longest, most complicated instructions we'd ever seen. My theory is that they let an intern make it, who then decided to cram every board game element possible into this one game. There are two different decks, two different sets of tokens (the "Player Tokens" and the "Scoring Tokens," though they never tell you which is which), two completely different paths on the board...
Here is an actual quote from the directions:
"To move down the sidewalk, players discard one card and move as many spaces as the number on the card. However, cards printed with a '1' will move a player '2' spaces if played in this manner. If a player does not wish to discard a card to move on the sidewalk, they may move one space only"
...WHAT? The whole four pages are like this. You know the directions are bad when they have to give you plenty of examples of what to do when different combinations of plays are made.
The leg lamp tokens, while cute, tip over constantly, there aren't nearly enough questions (and many of them are written too poorly to understand) and I highly doubt anyone has ever made it through an entire game since it appears it will take about three years.
I did give it two stars for fun because we got a pretty good laugh about how awful it is, and two stars for durability since it will never get played again, let alone enough to wear it out. But just thinking about this game and trying to describe it is making me need a cocktail.
Customer Review: Directions are RIDICULOUS!
Summary: 1 Stars
We LOVE the Christmas Story and were THRILLED to find this trivia game! That said, our experience went downhill once the game was opened. First off...all the characters on the board have 'blurred' out faces with the exception of Ralphie. (is this some sort of copyright infraction)? Next come the horrendously confusing directions!! Do this, do that, go here..or if you dont choose this, dont do that do this instead...blah blah blah. Our heads were spinning trying to decipher what kind of game play this would be like if we followed this nonsense!! We opted for our own version....which involved picking the cards...deciding which dare we chose, and then based on that choice, we would move the number on the dice as they were for a single dare, we would double the amount moved for a double dog dare, and we would triple the amount for a triple dog dare! If you didnt answer correctly...of course you went nowhere on a single dare, but if you didnt answer correctly on the double or triple...you moved backwards that number of spaces. We used the flat tokens to advance...and the leg lamps would be our foolish reward if we made it to the end. No one did! We set a one hour game play and werent even close to finishing. Some of the questions are quite tough...but it was entertaining. I just wish the original directions were as exciting as the game looked!Customer Review: It's really a shame how bad it is ...
Summary: 1 Stars
I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of bad reviews to hopefully help hammer home the point to other consumers that they SHOULD NOT buy this game. The instructions are absolutely impossible to decipher, the layout of the board is bizarre ... it's just a train wreck. The designer must have been a mental patient. All of the other reviewers who said the manufacturers must never have play-tested the game are definitely right. Whomever controls the rights to "A Christmas Story" should be genuinely peeved at this blight on their brand name, and should never have allowed this unplayable mess to hit the stores. Five minutes with this game and there's no question that it's nothing more than garbage churned out without even the merest effort at quality, mass-produced and relying wholly on the "Christmas Story" name to sell it.
Another point that I noticed no one made is that the instructions repeatedly refer to "Home" on the game board, although on the actual board, it's labeled "Ralphie's House." And there's no clear instruction on how to proceed from one phase of the game to the next. My wife and I gave up after a few minutes of trying to make sense of it. You can't even use the cards to quiz yourselves for much entertainment, because there are so few questions. A frustrating endeavor to say the least.