When it comes to cheap entertainment it’s hard to beat the simplicity of a game show. Real people compete for real stakes that may not be life-changing, depending on the show’s prize budget, but at the very least will make things easier for a while. While the stakes aren’t quite on the “Are you not entertained!?” level of gladiatorial combat it’s still a serious competition, but the good humor plus genial hosts take the edge off and keep the games a family-friendly affair. It’s just good wholesome fun until someone slams a train right into your base, after which all bets are off.
Review: 3 Out of 10: Season Two
The five episodes of 3 Out of 10: Season Two are smart, funny and entertaining from start to finish.
Battle Train is a lot of things all at once, but the biggest thing is it’s the newest from Terrible Posture Games, this time around working in association with Nerd Ninjas (an indie probably best known for assisting Niantic on Pokemon Go). At its core Battle Train is a card game, where each card lets you work towards dominating your opponents with deadly train strikes on their base. It’s also a game show, complete with a host and a whole cast of notably weird contestants, and to top it off they get cut scenes that will look familiar to anyone who’s a fan of Terrible Posture’s underrated and as-finished-as-it-will-ever-be series 3 Out of 10.
While there’s a lot going on to dress it up, the heart of Battle Train is the card game. Each card has an effect or lets you take an action, with the cost dictated by the mana crystals on its corner. Track tends to be cheap at one point apiece, letting you lay it down on the board wherever seems best, while more direct and potentially explosive actions can quickly get up there in price. Gold, on the other hand, is used to outfit your train with fancy parts, each of which has its own effect on the train-based combat. Meanwhile, each player has their own special abilities that can come into play, with the one in the trailer showing Pirate shooting his anchor-hand across the board to yank it a few squares thinner while scrambling the track layout. It’s the type of combination card/board game that would be incredibly expensive to pull off physically but certain players would love thanks to keeping track of all those numbers, but us mortals can enjoy thanks to the PC keeping track of all the variables.
Battle Train is still a ways off, coming out in the first quarter of 2025, but the reveal trailer is available now. It’s a train-based game show card battling animated adventure, which is a perfectly sane and normal thing for any game to be and not at all going for any type of overachiever award in design. However Battle Train turns out it’s bound to be worth watching, because even if you strip away all the weirdness you’re still left with exploding trains. Are you not entertained?
