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50 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Christmas Story: The Board Game, December 12, 2007
Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars Educational:1.0 out of 5 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.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Bad Directions, December 31, 2007
Durability:3.0 out of 5 stars Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars Educational:1.0 out of 5 stars
This game should be fun but the directions of how to play are so confusing, badly written and organized, and so complicated that it is difficult to teach others how to play. After explaining it you start to sound like Ralphie's Dad battling the furnace.
The game pieces and board are cute. The game looks better on the shelf as a collectors item than as an acutal playable game.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A HUGE UPSET!!!, December 29, 2007
Durability:3.0 out of 5 stars Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars Educational:1.0 out of 5 stars
I bought this as a christmas gift for my boyfriend because this is one of his favorite movies of all times! We opened it on Christmas Day to play it and started to read the directions (which is in fact 4 pages) After reading the first page of directions I felt stupid because I wasn't understanding them at all. I looked online to read the reviews to see if maybe we were stupid by not understanding the rules for this game, but it turns out we aren't stupid, the creators of the game were! It seems they didn't even bother test out the rules to make sure they work. Overall, this was a huge disappointment and a waste of $30. Don't bother to purchase this game, enjoy the movie and the memories that you, your friends and family get from A Christmas Story.
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