Nemesis: Retaliation

Nemesis: Retaliation is the third occasion on which a group of socially unreliable specialists walks into an alien death trap, each with a reason to cooperate and an equally sound reason to leave someone else as bait. The series can still create a scene: someone is suddenly reliving Dutch versus the Painkiller across the table, and you have to decide whether to help or pretend you heard nothing.

You pick a character, take some gear and a small deck, then try to stay alive in the base with two actions each turn. Like Lockdown, Retaliation trades the spaceship for an installation; this one gradually unfolds as rooms and corridors are revealed. It gives the game a light sense of exploration while keeping the familiar Nemesis rhythm.

That reveal system is clever, but it brings a fair amount of baggage, and Retaliation felt more cumbersome to me than its predecessors. Aliens kept appearing, the AI pathing was not always convincing — and a few rules deserve a second reading, because they leave room for doubt — while move safely and secure tokens made movement cautious rather than twitchy. Perhaps we got something wrong. Either way, the tension never quite built as I expected.

For a first encounter with the series, the theme and machinery will still make a strong impression. I want another game or two, plus a look at some of the stranger rules, before closing the file completely; but I was not won over, and the original with aftermath remains the most entertaining combination in the line for me.