Blight

Arkham Horror

Last night I went over to the Beav's den with Lobo, and he had us try out his new board game, Arkham Horror.

It seems really complicated at first, and in fact it is a little, but we got the hang of it pretty easily. Something that really impressed me was the fact that the game is cooperative. Usually board games pit player against player, or at least a team of players versus another team. Arkham Horror played more like a cooperative computer game in the sense that we played against the game itself.

It works like this: A team of investigators work to prevent an ancient evil from awakening in the town of Arkham while the town goes to hell in a handbasket. Every turn the clock to doomsday ticks one stroke closer to the end, a portal to an other worldly dimension opens, and monsters spew onto the town streets. The players have to defeat or elude the monsters while arming themselves with weapons, allies, spells and trinkets in order to ultimately close and permanently seal the portals. If they can seal enough portals in time, the ancient evil's return is defeated and you win, otherwise the evil awakes and the players lose.

The pieces and board are really well designed and look great. There are perhaps a few too many tokens but sometimes that's part of the fun I guess.

Board Game Geek has a great write-up on the new 2005 edition, and I would definitely recommend the game to others after my experience with it. I think the cooperative part makes it a lot of fun because players are encouraged to help each other, and less rules are "accidentally" kept secret by the game owner (I'm looking at you Beav!)

EDIT: I thought this game was pretty complicated, what with all the pieces, until I saw this photo. I can't really imagine any parents buying all of these pieces for their children. Must have been pretty cool to play with though. And what's with the metal headband on that kid in the middle?

Labels: board game

posted by Blight @ 8:24 PM