19 August 2007

My aversion to Clue




Eric Mayer wrote a post last week about his attraction to Clue that made me start thinking about the game again. I've always lumped Clue in with all the other American games that were in almost every house when I was a kid. Although I don't think board games are exclusively for kids, there are some games that I don't play because they are part of my childhood. As with many things, my philosophy is "So many XYZ, so little time." Why stick with the same old games when there are so many others to explore?

Anyway, that isn't the reason for my aversion to Clue. It is all my husband ABM's fault, really. Early in our marriage, I discovered that he had never played Clue. This was unimaginable to me. We went right out and bought a copy of the game. That was when my nightmare began. ABM fell in love with the game. He wanted to play the game every time we got together with friends. We played it so much that my fond memories of the game have been replaced by the sense of boredom I felt during those sessions. The desire to move Clue to the back shelf propelled me to research and find other games for us to play.

I'm wondering now if enough time has passed for us to bring Clue back into the house again. My kids have never played it, and I hate the idea of depriving them of a culture reference point. ABM still has the tendency to request the same games again and again, but these days he is leaning toward fast-moving games. I think the danger has passed.

4 comments:

Yehuda Berlinger said...

Thanks for the link. Keep up the god work.

Yehuda

Yehuda Berlinger said...

"good" work :-) I'm not that fanatical!

Yehuda

Mark (aka pastor guy) said...

Why not try Clue DVD, which I think is a better game than the original Clue? (And that has nothing to do with the fact that I was a playtester for the American version.)

You can check out my review at http://akapastorguy.blogspot.com/2006/05/summon-butler-clue-dvd-game.html

Nathaniel Todd said...

I do enjoy Clue from time to time, but I have never had the misfortune of playing it too much. In fact, I can't really think of any game that I've played to death. Sure, Monopoly and Risk both got lots of play when I was younger, but never so much that I'd shy away from them on that account. I don't play many of the games from my childhood nearly as much as I used to for the same reason you mention: too many interesting new games, not enough time.