Overview:

H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos continues to be a popular canvas upon which game designers continue to tread. From role-playing games, collectable card games, video and PC games, all the way to the tabletop – Lovecraft’s dark vision of ancient gods and corrupt and deranged humans makes for an ideal backdrop upon which to thrust gamers.

Arkham Horror, Fantasy Flight’s update to the 1984 game from Chaosium is set, as is the case with most Cthulhu games, during the unflappable 1920s. The quiet New England town of Arkham is under siege from creatures of the unknown. Winged Nightgaunts hover over the town; cultists, star vampires, and much, much worse lurk in the city streets as the Great Old Ones continue to slumber, waiting for the moment to once again rise and take their rightful place atop the food chain.

It’s this dark and mysterious setting that your all too human investigators are placed. Arkham Horror is a co-operative game where the players must work and band together in an attempt to rid Arkham of this terrifying menace. Your alter egos will travel to different worlds via strange gates, scramble like mad to close and seal these same gates through which horrific monsters appear, do battle with creatures of the Mythos, go potentially over the wall insane, and attempt to stop the Great Old One from waking – and gunning it down if necessary.

This is a game that relies heavily on its theme more than it does its mechanics or any real sense of strategy. It’s an adventure game first and foremost where the unexpected can and will happen and your best laid plans go awry through the unlucky turn of a Mythos Card or a poor roll of a six sided die.

It’s also a riot. There is an ongoing sense of inevitable death in the game that if you embrace provides most of the entertainment value. It’s simply a blast to see what insane and hopeless situations your investigators get themselves into and how a base character archetype can turn into a killing machine. Few games allow one player to play a mobster with a Tommy gun while the other plays the role of a spell-casting devout nun – and both work together to fight a common evil.

While the game drips with theme, at times it doesn’t feel like you are playing inside Lovecraft’s world. Most of the stories surrounding the Mythos are more about tension and investigation than it is about gun toting scientists. Arkham Horror is first and foremost a combat game more than it is a horror game. It’s not a subtle, eerie trip to New England – it’s a game where you’re going to be fighting with guns and casting spells.

There are a lot of rules and you will most likely be checking the rulebook quite often the first few times you play it. Thankfully, the updated rulebook includes an Index because it’s certainly needed. It’s not a difficult game to learn, there’s just a lot of rules to remember and a lot of things to keep track of which can frustrate some people. If you stick with it though, you are rewarded with a hell of a good time.

The Bits:

The artwork is great and the board looks very “busy” with multiple locations, streets, Other World locations, and various symbols scattered over the board. The investigators are hard cardboard rather than miniatures, but this fits the game just fine. The card quality is excellent. There is a ton of little bits in the box from clue tokens to skill sliders and sanity and health makers just to name a few so make sure to get a box of baggies to store everything. Without carefully looking after everything you are bound to lose some stuff so you need to be ready when you open up the game.