Kotas Reviews Hint Sparkling Water

Boy oh boy, flavored sparkling water is certainly becoming a thing, isn't it? It's been around for a long time, with brands such as Perrier and Le Croix starting decades ago, but it wasn't until recently that I started seeing other brands in stores, and an explosion of flavors to boot. Probably because sugary sodas and other drinks perceived as "unhealthy" have been experiencing a long decline in popularity. Gotta get that fizz fix somewhere! Even so, sometimes we get something weird as hell. Ladies and Gentlemen, let's take a look at Hint!

Courtesy of my local grocery clearance rack.

I can honestly say that I had never seen a mint flavored sparkling water until the day I saw these, so of course I had to try them. When I go for a sparkling water, I tend to go for fruit flavors or something like tonic water, which has a surprising amount of sugar in it, because quinine. The packaging is fairly generic. The "logo" if you can call it that is just a bolded font in red. The rest of the package is just...boring as hell. Then again, I paid $0.70 for this. How bad could it be?

Well, it certainly smells like peppermint, so it's got that going for it. It also tastes a bit like peppermint, though...well, it tastes like you would expect on the aftertaste of some other drink to taste. It's like they took the mint portion of the aftertaste of peppermint schnapps and bottled it. Not very sweet, fairly minty, but it doesn't linger at all. It's not bad, but it isn't great either.

On the FACE Rating System, this gets 0 Faces. It's fine, I guess, but unless you really, truly want mint in every aspect of your life, you can give this one a pass. The novelty is certainly there, so if you can pick it up for cheap while buying other, better things, it can't hurt to give it a whirl. 

Kotas Reviews Carrot Cake Oreos

It'll be a cold day in Hades before you can convince me that trying to make food into something it isn't is a good idea. From the utter failure of the "Snackwell" cookie to come off as good for you, to the sheer lunacy of "healthy potato chips" full of Olestra, usually when a junk food tries to be healthy, it is either terrible in and of itself, or has weird and strange side effects from consumption, usually involving pooping. That said, some foods may sound healthy, but they pretend nothing, and it's your own fault for thinking that they could in any way be good for you. Enter the carrot cake. Ladies and Gentlemen, let's take a gander at Carrot Cake Oreos.

Carrot Cake is the like all children grow to love.

Well, here we are. Yet another Oreo review, and frankly I'm surprised it took this long for Nabisco to further plumb the depths of cake flavors beyond Red Velvet. I can't say anything bad about the packaging though. Nice picture of the flavor item, along with the actual Oreo version. Unfortunately for Nabisco, I'm not a fan of carrot cake. It's fine, I guess, but I certainly would never go out of my way to get it. I tend to think of it as trying to hard to differentiate itself from a spice cake, but it just ends up like a not quite as good spice cake that has carrot bits in it. Let's open this thing up!

Participation trophies all around.

There is a lot stronger spice scent to these than I was expecting. Maybe I've only ever had shitty carrot cake, but it hasn't really ever smelled like this to me. It's not a bad smell though, so that's good. The cookies look appropriately "non-normal Oreo" as befitting their status as "carrot cake cookies". The creme is either very similar or the same as the cream cheese creme from the Red Velvet Oreos. Very sweet, though not super chemical fakey, which is nice. 

The flavor is "cream cheese icing, with some spice cookie notes". The cookies themselves are very heavily spiced, but it is much more muted when paired with the cream cheese icing creme. These cookies taste alright, is what I'm saying. Still, I don't get much out of them that is carrot cake-ish. It's just a decent spice cookie with a decent paired filling. It is most definitely a cookie.

On the FACE Rating System, these get 0 Faces. They are a decent cookie, but I am just not a huge fan of the flavor they are trying to replicate, and the cookie doesn't do anything to change my mind. It's not very carrot-cake like to me, but it's a decent spice cookie. Some of you out there may adore this cookie, but it just isn't for me.

Kotas Reviews Peppermint Bark Oreos

Winter has certainly settled in, after that weird "warm snap" at the beginning of the new year. It's cold, wet, and ugly out, and I'm not happy with it. Still, this is the kind of weather that turns one's fancy toward hot chocolate and peppermints by the fire, under the warm glow of whatever show it is you are streaming on your giant HDTV. The simple life right? Eh, fuck that. Let's eat Oreos. Ladies and Gentlemen, let's take a look at Peppermint Bark Oreos.

Extra Fancy this go around.

For some reason, my in-laws always have a tin of "fancy yet generic at the same time" peppermint bark around Christmas time. It's a fine candy and all, but it's nothing to get too excited about. Still, it's pretty tasty and tends to pair fairly well with other things: coffee, other candy, the warmth and love of a family evening spent posting on social media. You know, the classical holiday stuff. So, naturally we have to somehow condense all that into a cookie manufactured by a corporate conglomerate. Well, the packaging is pretty good. Large pictures of the "item flavor", along with examples of the actual product, good font choices, the whole thing. Nabisco generally does a good job here and this is no exception. Let's rip it open!

Yup. That's an Oreo with candy cane bits in it.

The cookies themselves look like bog standard Oreos with pulverized candy canes added to the filling. I mean, that's probably what I expected but it's still kind of meh. The flavor however is very nice. The peppermint bits add a little texture, and the mint flavor is definitely there, but it's not overwhelming or dominating. It pairs very well with the dark chocolate flavor of the cookie. A solid little package of taste, and a bit refreshing. Good job Nabisco!

On the FACE Rating System, these get 2 Smiley Faces. Tasty, somewhat addictive, and perfect for any holiday gathering. I wouldn't want them all the time, but as soon as the air turns frosty, I will probably find myself reaching for these. And they taste great dipped in hot chocolate. Happy Winter!

Kotas Reviews Viticulture

Well, it's a brand new year we've found ourselves thrust into, eh? Last year was not the finest year for Kotas Reviews Everything. We had a lot of interesting reviews, but the review volume was much lower than I hoped it would be, with only 33 reviews all year! That's our lowest number of reviews since 2013! Isn't that crazy? Well, no. Been busy. Anyway, let's start the year off right with a board game review. Come with me into a land of vines, grapes, and being ruthlessly efficient with your employees. Ladies and Gentlemen, let's look into the world of Viticulture.

As fashionable as a Hallmark Card, and just as intense.

In case you weren't aware, board gaming is currently in the middle of a new Golden Age, or so I'm told. While board games have always been popular, the release of Settlers of Catan in 1995 kicked off a 24 year rise in the popularity of board games that continues to this day. I mean, heavy board gaming never really went away. My parents used to do marathon sessions of Diplomacy in their college years, and I remember playing Axis & Allies in high school, along with other classics like Hero Quest, Talisman, and in college, Cosmic Encounter. Still, with the rise of web video series like Tabletop in the early 2010s, and the advent of Kickstarter to fund much smaller production runs of "prestige" games like Scythe, Kingdom Death: Monster and today's subject, board gaming has never been hotter. Granted, I liked complex board games before it was cool, but you know, I'm glad everyone else is catching up.

Today we are looking at Viticulture, the first game release from the company Stonemaier Games, funded via Kickstarter in 2012, and released in 2013. Since then it's had an expansion (Tuscany), a second edition, and the version I have, which is the Essential Edition of this game of strategic wine making. This version incorporates rules updates from the second addition along with a few elements from the original Tuscany expansion. I got it as a Christmas present. Let's take a look at the board!

And what a board!
(Original Image from Shut Up & Sit Down: https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/review-viticulture/)

Yeah, I should have snapped a picture of the game I played recently, but I didn't so I'm forced to "borrow" from another source. Anyway, my spouse and I played this with another couple, while our children devastated a room that wasn't the one we played in. Setup took a bit of time, for sure, and then explaining the rules took a bit longer, and we ultimately decided "let's just figure it out as we go". This worked surprisingly well, but I had watched a video on how to play so I was somewhat familiar with the game already. Anycrap, Viticulture is a game where you all are vineyard owners trying to become the most prestigious vineyard in all of...wherever the hell you are...by scoring the most victory points. Victory points can be scored for a number of actions, but most of them will come from fulfilling wine orders (the purple cards). 

So, you may ask, how do you make wine? First, you have to plant vines in your fields. Then you have to harvest vines to get grapes. Then you have to crush the grapes into wine and store them in your wine cellar. Then, once they age up correctly, you can sell the wine! Seems simple enough...until your buddy decides they simply MUST crush grapes this winter and takes the last slot available to do so, and now you are stuck making one lousy coin. Ah, the joys of worker placement games. Each player has their own board, and interacts with both it and a central board. You start the game with a certain amount of workers and some money, along with a few cards and other bonuses based on your draws from the "Mama" and "Papa" decks. Then you randomly determine who the first player is, and the game begins with the Spring season. 

The game progresses through a full year on a turn, starting in Spring, where the players determine their action order for the rest of the year. Except for the first slot, each "slot" in the turn order grants a particular bonus to the person who selects it, from extra money to more cards to an extra worker for the year. Once everyone has picked a slot with their chicken token, the Summer season begins. Players place their workers in chicken order to take actions such as giving tours (generating funds), planting vines (playing green cards), drawing vine cards, building structures (which are required for some vine types, and grant other bonuses), or playing "Summer Visitor" cards that represent randos who wander into your vineyard and want to help you for some reason. Each of these actions has a limited number of "slots", which is usually about half the total player count, so you can get locked out of a slot. To ease this pain, everyone starts with one Grande Worker, who can ignore this rule. Once everyone has placed all they want to, and passed, the Fall Season begins. Everyone draws a new Visitor card (Summer or Winter), and then the Winter Season begins.

Bear in mind you do NOT reclaim workers from spaces until the end of the year, so if you used 'em all up in the Summer, Winter is gonna be dull. Winter is for harvesting grapes (making grape tokens), making wine (turning grape tokens into wine tokens), selling wine (playing purple cards), training new workers (getting more meeples), and playing "Winter Visitor" cards, representing additional weirdos. Once everyone has passed again, you do the "End of the Year" clean up stuff, reclaim your meeples, and start the whole thing over again with the Spring. Once someone hits 20 Victory Points, you just finish out the year and whoever has the most points wins. 

This game has a LOT of moving parts, and it takes a turn or two to get into the groove of play. Oh man, I could sell this wine for so many points and some money! But Jane just took the last wine making slot and my Grande worker was used for harvesting. Well, I can just do it later, but I'll need a bigger cellar, so I will need money, etc, etc. Once you get a decent wine making engine going, you can churn out a ton of wine, but if you didn't make time to sell as you go, you could still be behind in victory points at the end of the game. Or, if you go all in to try and end the game early, and make a mistake (like I did), you can give your opponents more time to catch up and ultimately take the win for themselves. A random worker card can really speed up your plan, or throw a wrench into it as you try and redirect your efforts into a new direction to take advantage of a powerful card you drew. It's fun, it's thoughtful, but it can be VERY slow...right up until it isn't. We played for three hours, and we probably could have gone another one, but I rushed to end it and everyone followed suit in a flurry of victory point gains. It's quite the time investment and can be somewhat confusing at times, since you often don't go in "table order", but by the order of your chickens, which is not something I'd ever thought I would say.

On the FACE Rating System, I give it 2 Smiley Faces. I enjoyed playing it quite a bit, but it's a heavier game than most and requires about a movie and a half's worth of time to experience. It is certainly possible to trim this down with familiarity, but the 45-90 minute claim on the box is a dirty, dirty lie. The theme is certainly there, but it supports the mechanics, rather than the other way around. All in all, if you like heavier board games and have a few hours to spend, it is a great way to relax with some friends, and maybe have a few glasses (or bottles) of the stuff you are pretending to make.