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DS9 makes first contact with a species from the gamma quadrant.

This is an odd episode that has a reasonably good premise, but when the final reveal comes it feels a rather pointless experience to me.

There are some positives, such as some of the character exchanges between Sisko and Jake, Sisko, Dax and Kira and Odo and Quark. You get a good sense of characters loyalty to each other from the situations they are seemingly put in.

Many visuals are a good standard, particularly the cave scenes that feel quite exciting and well made. Plus the general design of the game both internally and how it physically appears within Quark's.

The Wadi are not the most inspired of alien designs, particularly supposedly coming from the far reaches of the gamma quadrant. As a first impression of what DS9 would be serving up using the wormhole concept, it is quite poor.

There are a number of annoying moments such as the crew trying to stop the game with the 'we are not amused' attitude and making futile attempts to talk to characters who do not acknowledge them. The allarmaraine nursery rhyme sequence is (briefly) almost as painful as watching Captain Kirk and Spock's humiliation at the hands of Parmen. Dr Bashir (also briefly) is again poorly characterised.

When the final reveal comes it is exactly what you thought it might (but hoped it wouldn't) be.

Seriously the look on Siskos face when he has to do hopscotch is hilarious, it's like he wants to strangle whoever wrote the episode lol. Also the new aliens look terrible, as someone else has stated they clearly cheaped out on the costumes for this one. Fairly forgettable but not as bad as some people say.

Avery Brooks didn't apparently like this episode according to IMDb and after seeing the show, I can certainly understand why. It's simply a bad episode...one that is inexplicably stupid.

The Wadi are a race of folks who just came from the Gamma Quadrant. Oddly, instead of initiating normal diplomatic or first contact behaviors, these weirdos are solely interested in going to Quark's place and gambling. At first, Quark thinks they are a bunch of easy marks but soon they turn out to be gambling savants. So far, so good. However, when they show Quark one of their games, the command staff disappear and find themselves in some sort of live action game much like a platformer game.

None of the show makes any sense...none. And, after kidnapping the crew and scaring the crap out of them, the Wadi just leave and the episode ends. Huh?! Poorly written...and in a way that might just make you cringe.

UPDATE: By the way, it isn't just me who hated this episode. At the 50th anniversary Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, this was voted as one of the 10 worst of all episodes from every Trek franchise! That is some ignoble designation!

Haven't seen this in a long time and it is not the best episode of DS9, but like early TNG episodes, early DS9 episodes tent to get better over time.

When this episode and DS9 first aired, I did not like it very much, now I like it. When Voyager first aired I did not like it either and I hoped that the same would happen, what happened to DS9 a couple of years earlier. But it never happened.

This is actually very entertaining with kind of a surprise ending. Just watch it, you will like it. The characters are not fully developed yet and feel fresh.

I liked several of the scenes in this episode. For example the conversation between Sisko and Benjamin, the aliens when arriving at the station immediately asking about games, Bashir screaming thinking he is having a nightmare, Quark freaking out begging the game to stop and more. I don't agree with those who find the game concept unbelievable or unrealistic. This culture of aliens have taken the art of playing games to a completely new level because they are totally obsessed with games. Makes perfect sense and also makes sense that they would put the four highest ranking officers on the space station in the game to make it more serious.