I'm still pondering if I'm an "aimless loser" while my brother is a "functioning alcoholic" but without the "buying-up houses" part unfortunately. The "depressed" and "burnout" is behind me already.
I’m so glad Matt is reviewing again. I love everyone at SU&SD, but Matt’s reviews are my favorite. His humor, the games he finds, the way he reviews, it’s all my cup of tea.
SUSD videos have continued to get better and better and more amazing with each one they put out, and then adding Tom to the mix in the past year or so made the skill level skyrocket even more... just a brilliant team
Always love watching your videos. Being in Japan, I miss out on silly in English humour sometimes. And I think, just like classic Top Gear, even if you don't like board games/cars, anyone can enjoy it because your content is informative, fun and so upbeat. Thank you very much!
You keep saying "it's not for me". Did you have fun? Then it's for you. It's okay to admit that we sometimes really enjoy "light" games. Embrace it. It IS for you.
Something they didn’t mention in the video is that there’s an additional 24 post-campaign missions to do, most of which are more difficult than the average difficulty of campaign missions. Also, there are overarching puzzles and codes that interconnect through first the campaign, but then continue post the campaign as well, which ramp up in difficulty and are more challenging than the basic gameplay “find the secret code” puzzles you solve each mission.
Having survived several hundred games of Outfoxed with a 4 year old, I am looking forward to the time when games like the initiative are within his range of play.
seeing more than one of you in a single frame talking to each other again makes the review so much better :-D I wonder how you replay the game once you solved a mission.
love the slow zoom shots and the cautionary tale of preceding generations. reminds me of a netflix special that came out last year about the time we spend Inside. XD
I'm one or two games away from completing the campaign and have to agree with everything Matt says here - if maybe a little less effusively. It absolutely feels like a game for younger teenagers. In part that's because it's about kids of that age (the tone of their story and their personal challenges that you 'solve' for them really needs kids that age to land meaningfully), but moreover it's an elegant smooth presentation of cool ideas that anyone older who's interested in this sort of stuff has probably already seen 100 times before. I won't say I regret the time I've put into it, but I will say I personally could have had a much better time with something pitched at older/more experienced audiences.
@@jeremyarcus-goldberg9543 I finished it yesterday! Some spoilery thoughts below: It's...pretty wildly tonally inconsistent. Personally I liked the addition of actual peril at the end, but it's such a phenomenal gear change from the first 12 missions that it feels like a massive misfire: if the ending lands, you've probably spent 12 missions being a bit bored by the very gentle story with oh-so-easily resolved character challenges, OR you've enjoyed that angle to the storytelling and then suddenly OH WAIT THESE KIDS ARE IN LIFE-AND-DEATH PERIL (you lost this particular mission? That's on your conscience now!) I'm really unclear on how to marry the two elements together and who the target audience was intended to be for that, but I think regardless it's a massive mis-step.
yes, it is a great family board game, I got it for xmas and we've played half the campaign already. The codes and surprises may seem a bit simple and silly but they're genuinely exciting for kids. Though I have to confess we'd made the missions even easier for ourselves by misreading the regroup action and having it clear all the action cards, not just one! Will have to see how much difference it makes when we do that properly in the next mission.
Excellent review. Looks like a great game that may not be for me as well. Maybe at some point they, or someone else will make a darker version of the theme...
I've been playing this game with my family, and it's okay. Honestly, my biggest problem with it is that there's just nothing at stake whether you win or lose the missions. The story still progresses exactly the same in nearly every case. So we end up getting a little bored. We've had much more fun with Decrypto.
This looks great! A lot better than the thumbnail made it seem. Then again I guess that's my fault for guessing the censored word wrong. I suppose it said "cracked" all along.
I love this game. I think the easiness is a fair point but I also think it strongly contributes to the playability. You never get bogged down by the game, it's always zippy and fun.
Ooh, I would love a more difficult, adult-focused version of this.... I'm pretty good at puzzles and was able to solve the code shown in this video based on just the letter I being shown, sadly, but having something real chunky to dig into (and frankly, a less-wholesome theme) would be so ideal for me
I've played the campaign. Spoilers comment/question Did anyone else think the story did not end up being "sweet" and about "anxiousness" like said around 11:20 ? The last situations got very dark - there seems to be a dead teenager and the group is suddenly expected to take down a crime lord and possibly join them. What did you all think of that? My group was not happy about the story in the last missions.
Wait a minute… doesn’t Tom have like 20 siblings of varying ages? I would like to know if he played The Initiative with smaller siblings and his experience.
Could you guys review ‘Moon Adventure’ some time? It’s a successor to Oink Games ‘Deep Sea Adventure.’ I’m curious of your option on how well a press you luck game translates into a co-op game.
Hi everyone! A friend of mine is recovering from surgery and is confined to sitting on the sofa. Does anyone have any recommendations for 4 player games that we can play on a sofa? We like co-op Escape Room style games, light party games like Exploding Kittens or Dobble. Is there anything puzzle-y, co-op, or adventure-like that we can get into one evening and could play on the sofa?
Feel like this spoiled a little too much but not enough to ruin it. Loved this game it was great I would recommend for sure and really quick to get through all the games.
Tom, you're the youngster of the group. So why are you making the old man sound when you stand up? (15:18) Lessons my body taught me in my 20's: you are what you eat and you need to stretch if you don't want to get hurt, even just helping a friend move furniture. Try some Gloomhaven curls and 7th Continent deadlifts once/week.
Normally, I'd complain about them spoiling one of the answers, but having clues necessary to work out the answer to one of the puzzles in a review of a game that is all about working out the puzzles almost feels like playing a demo.
@@rensrain3926 It's a very hollow experience. It's also incredibly frustrating for people with accessibility issues in a way that no board game I've played in the past ever has been. It just was not worth the money spent or the time involved in playing it. It's also full of outdated escape room mechanics that might have been surprising and endearing back when the genre first came out, but now just feel cheap and worn out to death. We stopped playing when I figured out what the "Big reveal" of the game would be long before we reached it.
The art style of the comic seems similar to that of all the profile pictures on Twitter accounts that have too many hashtags in their bios. Between that and the review, I can assume this game is not for me, also.
Is it possible to actually ask someone nearly 15 years younger ? What is Tom's opinion of the game ? Is it different or do they both agree on the recommendation for a younger more familial audience ?
I am literally 15 years longer younger (21 to his 36). I love board games, especially coop games. This is one of my favourite coop board games by far. The code breaks aspect is super fun, and my friend and I are definitely engaged with the campaign and want to figure out where it’s going from here. Loving it!
I'm still chuckling to myself at the line 'flirting with disaster doesn't mean you have to marry it'. Bravo.
What about, "You naughty, messy monkey"?
That is good writing right there
I'm still pondering if I'm an "aimless loser" while my brother is a "functioning alcoholic" but without the "buying-up houses" part unfortunately. The "depressed" and "burnout" is behind me already.
Game is not for you but you still recommend it. This is why I've watched you all for years, you just get it. I wish other reviewers would follow suit.
‘Functioning alcoholics that somehow bought up all the houses’ 😂
Worst thing is, I'm not sure there's a single developed country where that joke doesn't apply.
This is a game I loved to play, and my son loved to play it with me. It definitely blew his mind, I think your recommendation for families is spot on!
How old is he? I think this could be fun to try with my nieces
@@DaBigBase He is 7, but has played other games like castle panic and kingdomino. My 9 year old niece also loved it.
So, how do you guess the answer and check if the guess is correct without looking and spoiling the whole puzzle?
Jeez, I love this intro. The editing is so sweet and the acting is on point.
Amazing review, SUSD is after all these years still making my day.
"Flirting with disaster doesn't always mean you're going to marry it". this is gold!
I’m so glad Matt is reviewing again. I love everyone at SU&SD, but Matt’s reviews are my favorite. His humor, the games he finds, the way he reviews, it’s all my cup of tea.
My goodness, the Matt and Tom combo is just *Chef's Kiss*.
I love the opening sequence! Also, I love that Tom's carrying around what looks to be a backgammon case.
The editing in this video is next-level. Brilliant.
it's pretty basic. but yeah, for a boardgame review channel this is probably the best production
SUSD videos have continued to get better and better and more amazing with each one they put out, and then adding Tom to the mix in the past year or so made the skill level skyrocket even more... just a brilliant team
The editing here is top notch, and it's great to see multiple members of SUSD together in person again!
Matt finally getting to do his shoe gag from the Game of Thrones review but this time he's 11.
And Quinn's did during the amazing Boy-Fetch thing on Brass Birmingham
The initiative was one of my favorite games of last year. The puzzles combined with the cardplay made it a great co-op experience!
Always love watching your videos. Being in Japan, I miss out on silly in English humour sometimes. And I think, just like classic Top Gear, even if you don't like board games/cars, anyone can enjoy it because your content is informative, fun and so upbeat. Thank you very much!
Great review! I played through the campaign with my children (9 and 11 years old) last fall and wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Lees' recommendation.
Can't wait for "Blind Dark Guessing" (tm), the hit party game of assumptions and shrouded mysteries, coming soon to a gaming store near you!
You keep saying "it's not for me". Did you have fun? Then it's for you. It's okay to admit that we sometimes really enjoy "light" games. Embrace it. It IS for you.
I was so bummed to hear it's too simple, I was loving the concept. That said, if it ever gets a translation, I'm definitely buying it for my kid.
Something they didn’t mention in the video is that there’s an additional 24 post-campaign missions to do, most of which are more difficult than the average difficulty of campaign missions. Also, there are overarching puzzles and codes that interconnect through first the campaign, but then continue post the campaign as well, which ramp up in difficulty and are more challenging than the basic gameplay “find the secret code” puzzles you solve each mission.
@@iam1hobbit good to know! I'll dig some more.
@@Zagardal Also worth mentioning: it's not hard to find ways to tweak the rules and make life quite a bit harder on yourself ;)
IS so weird to finally watch you two together on a game review, it brings me a lot of joy to see your chemistry on display once more.
Having survived several hundred games of Outfoxed with a 4 year old, I am looking forward to the time when games like the initiative are within his range of play.
seeing more than one of you in a single frame talking to each other again makes the review so much better :-D
I wonder how you replay the game once you solved a mission.
Ooh it's been a minute since we have had a Tom/Matt review!
Great editing on the intro and nice camera work generally.
love the slow zoom shots and the cautionary tale of preceding generations. reminds me of a netflix special that came out last year about the time we spend Inside. XD
This really is a great game, especially for families. Matt is right.
Excellent team review there! Great energy, and watching Tom awkwardly shuffle a chair sideways made me chuckle
Yes!! The duo review has returned!! I missed those videos.
The production of this video is too notch. I'm just floored by it.
Matt’s background lamp game is off the charts!
'It's going to blow their tiny minds' - Implying that non boardgamelovers have tiny minds 😂
I'm one or two games away from completing the campaign and have to agree with everything Matt says here - if maybe a little less effusively. It absolutely feels like a game for younger teenagers. In part that's because it's about kids of that age (the tone of their story and their personal challenges that you 'solve' for them really needs kids that age to land meaningfully), but moreover it's an elegant smooth presentation of cool ideas that anyone older who's interested in this sort of stuff has probably already seen 100 times before.
I won't say I regret the time I've put into it, but I will say I personally could have had a much better time with something pitched at older/more experienced audiences.
I would love for you to come back and comment about what you think of the story when you finish the main campaign.
@@jeremyarcus-goldberg9543 I finished it yesterday! Some spoilery thoughts below:
It's...pretty wildly tonally inconsistent. Personally I liked the addition of actual peril at the end, but it's such a phenomenal gear change from the first 12 missions that it feels like a massive misfire: if the ending lands, you've probably spent 12 missions being a bit bored by the very gentle story with oh-so-easily resolved character challenges, OR you've enjoyed that angle to the storytelling and then suddenly OH WAIT THESE KIDS ARE IN LIFE-AND-DEATH PERIL (you lost this particular mission? That's on your conscience now!) I'm really unclear on how to marry the two elements together and who the target audience was intended to be for that, but I think regardless it's a massive mis-step.
yes, it is a great family board game, I got it for xmas and we've played half the campaign already. The codes and surprises may seem a bit simple and silly but they're genuinely exciting for kids.
Though I have to confess we'd made the missions even easier for ourselves by misreading the regroup action and having it clear all the action cards, not just one! Will have to see how much difference it makes when we do that properly in the next mission.
glad to see the first duet review in a while!
Oh, I see you are not the only one getting these secrets by that Agent Tom
That intro was so very 70s! Love it!
well, amazing that Peru is even mention :D. Hi guys saying hellow from there
Matt and tom combo wombo is what i need in life
Excellent review. Looks like a great game that may not be for me as well. Maybe at some point they, or someone else will make a darker version of the theme...
One of the best new games I’ve ever played.
Tom is just taking this channel to the next level!
I've been playing this game with my family, and it's okay. Honestly, my biggest problem with it is that there's just nothing at stake whether you win or lose the missions. The story still progresses exactly the same in nearly every case. So we end up getting a little bored. We've had much more fun with Decrypto.
I saw this at Compleat Strategist and thought it was the hidden movement game you praised a few episodes ago.
Mind MGMT.
@@madsam7582 Yes.
This looks great! A lot better than the thumbnail made it seem. Then again I guess that's my fault for guessing the censored word wrong. I suppose it said "cracked" all along.
The way Tom is positioned in the beginning... he looks huge!
Wow, you got Peter Dinklage on the show!
I love this game. I think the easiness is a fair point but I also think it strongly contributes to the playability. You never get bogged down by the game, it's always zippy and fun.
"nobody knows"
A double review?!? What a treat!
Oh I'm looking forward to this review. Nice!
Ooh, I would love a more difficult, adult-focused version of this.... I'm pretty good at puzzles and was able to solve the code shown in this video based on just the letter I being shown, sadly, but having something real chunky to dig into (and frankly, a less-wholesome theme) would be so ideal for me
To be fair, the code shown in the video is basically the tutorial code and used as an example to teach the game.
There is more to the code breaking in this game than merely letter substitutions.
Love those introductions.
I've played the campaign. Spoilers comment/question
Did anyone else think the story did not end up being "sweet" and about "anxiousness" like said around 11:20 ? The last situations got very dark - there seems to be a dead teenager and the group is suddenly expected to take down a crime lord and possibly join them. What did you all think of that? My group was not happy about the story in the last missions.
Wait a minute… doesn’t Tom have like 20 siblings of varying ages? I would like to know if he played The Initiative with smaller siblings and his experience.
To summarize The Initiative's narrative: it's the story of four kids and the game they played together
We love this game! One of the biggest surprises happened this year with us :)
If my math holds out, Tom just made me realize that I am closer in age to Matt than I am to Tom...
Thanks for the new existential crisis...
“Weapons grade wholesome”
Could you guys review ‘Moon Adventure’ some time? It’s a successor to Oink Games ‘Deep Sea Adventure.’ I’m curious of your option on how well a press you luck game translates into a co-op game.
Gwahhh soon we'll have giant reviews with all 4 together
I was thinking that croissant isnt armored …. Until you said it the second time
Teen version of Outfoxed! Super pumped!
lol those traditional real world ciphers
Another obligatory Tom appearance. Love to see it
🎵For British eyes only!🎵
"For British eyes only "
Matt's Really Funny.
This game looks so neat, I love that it's got a comic. The art is so nice!!!
I def need this on my shelf
Whatever you're paying Tom for the music and editing isn't enough. xoxo
Does anyone else think the character on the side of the box looks like Tom?
This seems like Burgle Bros 3.0 😋
Great video!
What is this, secret agent month?
🎶 Se-cret ... AAAgent Month!
Hopefully it'll be prisoner game month in March.
What's the name of that song in the intro??
what an absolutely killer intro (the rest was great too but damn)
Hi everyone! A friend of mine is recovering from surgery and is confined to sitting on the sofa. Does anyone have any recommendations for 4 player games that we can play on a sofa?
We like co-op Escape Room style games, light party games like Exploding Kittens or Dobble.
Is there anything puzzle-y, co-op, or adventure-like that we can get into one evening and could play on the sofa?
Feel like this spoiled a little too much but not enough to ruin it. Loved this game it was great I would recommend for sure and really quick to get through all the games.
When is the next TI game w/ POK!?!?
So, how do you guess the answer and check if the guess is correct without looking and spoiling the whole puzzle?
When you guess, you reveal the full answer. If you're wrong, you lose the game (so no worry about spoilers).
Surprised search for Planet X wasnt also listed at the end of this video that game is really good and also about decifering codes
The card rule reminds me of Caravan from fallout
Trinston was here..
SPY MONTH SPY MONTH SPY MONTH SPY MONTH SPY MONTH
Intro 11/10
Never go full Gary Oldman
Hands over £0.21
Tom, you're the youngster of the group. So why are you making the old man sound when you stand up? (15:18)
Lessons my body taught me in my 20's: you are what you eat and you need to stretch if you don't want to get hurt, even just helping a friend move furniture.
Try some Gloomhaven curls and 7th Continent deadlifts once/week.
Looking gooooooooooooood :)
So this game has more ludo-narrative consonance than most videogames
Oddly enough, this review was followed by an ad for M&S bread...
Oh jeeze. Did Asmodee fire Corey as well from FFG? I know they fired all of the developers who made them literal billions with their Star Wars games.
Normally, I'd complain about them spoiling one of the answers, but having clues necessary to work out the answer to one of the puzzles in a review of a game that is all about working out the puzzles almost feels like playing a demo.
I really don’t think they needed to give all but one letter to one of the answers :(
It is basically a tutorial puzzle that they tell you in the rule book.
I reckon My City is a really nice similar game to the Initiative.
This game was one of the largest disappointments I played last year.
why? If I may ask
@@rensrain3926 It's a very hollow experience. It's also incredibly frustrating for people with accessibility issues in a way that no board game I've played in the past ever has been. It just was not worth the money spent or the time involved in playing it. It's also full of outdated escape room mechanics that might have been surprising and endearing back when the genre first came out, but now just feel cheap and worn out to death.
We stopped playing when I figured out what the "Big reveal" of the game would be long before we reached it.
There are going to be some trust issues after this review - Matt
The art style of the comic seems similar to that of all the profile pictures on Twitter accounts that have too many hashtags in their bios. Between that and the review, I can assume this game is not for me, also.
Is it secretly spy month on the show?
matt *and* tom? wild days
Is it possible to actually ask someone nearly 15 years younger ? What is Tom's opinion of the game ? Is it different or do they both agree on the recommendation for a younger more familial audience ?
I am literally 15 years longer younger (21 to his 36). I love board games, especially coop games. This is one of my favourite coop board games by far. The code breaks aspect is super fun, and my friend and I are definitely engaged with the campaign and want to figure out where it’s going from here. Loving it!
What did Tom, the family man, think?
god vd love it !
TWO stopwatch symbols on ONE card... is that even legal!?