Arkham Horror

Arkham Horror.

If you don't play a boardgame once a week, if you don't have a group of geeky friends like you that you call up for yet another gaming session, if you don't enjoy sitting around a table playing the same boardgame for hours on end, if you're not a TRUE GAMER, then stop. Read another article. Close the tab. E-mail your grandmother. Just don't read this, because it will be an absolute waste of your time.

On the other hand, if all of the above is false for you, go ahead. Keep reading. And bask in the Horror.  The Horror of Arkham.

Published by Fantasy Flight Games in the year 2005, Arkham Horror is based off of H. P. Lovecraft's infamous short story "Call of Cthulu," a pulp horror concerning an apocalyptic organism slumbering in the darkest depths of the ocean, soon to emerge and wreak havoc on the world.

The game itself follows a similar plot: the supreme beings known as the Ancient Ones are awakening.

Yes, that means the players are all on the same team. Yes, it's one of those games.

In the fictional city of Arkham, Massachusetts, during the 1920's, players take on the role of investigators, certain individuals who are noticing the horrific changes taking place on the city. Luckily, there's around twenty of them, so you don't have to worry about being last to pick and receiving the one you didn't want.  So far I've used a different Investigator each of the times I've played, and I've enjoyed all of them.

Each investigator has their own qualities.  The two most important stats are 1. Health and 2. Sanity.   If either of them goes to zero, you are sent to a hospital or asylum and get a nice vacation from the dangers at hand.  Also, for each character, their health points and sanity points add to 10 (such as 7 health and 3 sanity, or 5 health and 5 sanity), so there is a sense of balance between the characters.

There are also three pairs of statistics: ____ ____ and ____, and for this is where the characteristics get a little unique. Essentially, these stats will change throughout the course of the game.  That is, if you want them to.

Let's take Lore and Luck, for example. My investigator has 4 pairs of numbers along a horizontal line.  One of the numbers for each of the pairs represents my Investigator's Lore, and increases from left to right. The other number in each pair represents my character's Luck, which decreases from left to right. My Investigator can only have one pair of the number's active at any given time, which is shown by a small slider circling both numbers.

In essence, each turn you can change your character's stats for that pair by moving the little slider. The closer you slide it to the left, the more the Investigator's Luck increases. The more it is moved to the right, the higher my character's Luck gets. Customization! Hooray!

However, you can only slide the marker so much.  Each character has a focus value, ranging from 1 to 3. You can only move one slider a single space for each focus point. Thus, I could move all three of my sliders to the right, or I could move just one of my sliders three times to the right.

But I'm getting way too far into this.  Let's move on, shall we?

In this dangerous town of Arkham, you are running around to certain locations on the board trying to acquire helpers, weapons, and spells to help you close the portals that are opening across the city. You pretty much have to go through as many portals as you can and close them, which slows down the awakening process of the Ancient One.

*Side note: There are 8 different Ancient Ones, each with their unique characteristics, resulting in a different game every time!

In order to close a portal, you have to go to the location it's at, go to the space the portal leads to (there are spaces on the board representing the 8 or so Other Worlds the portals lead to), and stay in the Other World for a turn. After exploring it by drawing 2 event cards and participating in the requirements, you return to Arkham and close the portal. Then, if you actually want to win, you have to try to seal the portal by making a skill roll. If you rolled the right stuff, you have sealed it and a portal can't appear on that space again for the duration of the game.

There are two ways to win Arkham Horror: seal a certain number of portals, or defeat the Ancient One after it has awakened. It is much easier to seal the required amount of portals, as the Ancient Ones are pretty tough to kill. But it is possible! I've done it before, singlehandedly.  Is there an award for that? Because there should be.

So this sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? Well, I haven't even covered the worst part: the monsters.

For every portal that opens up across Arkham, a monster appears. And monsters move. Toward you. Actually, only some do.  There's a pretty complex system to moving monsters, but I'm not going to take the time to explain it. Let's just say some of the monsters are pretty deadly. But if you kill one, you get a trophy! And trophies earn you awards! And awards help you seal gates!

But there's a monster limit to the city. It sounds pretty helpful, right? No. It's not. You see, if the monster limit is exceeded, the terror level of the city advances, and the Ancient One is that much closer to awakening. The terror level is directly related to the Ancient One.

Just a hint: when playing competitively, there is a way to add up how important to the team each player was. And believe me, monster trophies rack up a lot of points. So kill them. The monsters.

I'd say the only problem about the game (besides the monsters) is the time requirement. A single session of the game has taken four hours before. Luckily, you can choose the Ancient One (if you want to be picky), and if you want a shorter game you could pick a weaker Ancient One. This also works the other way: a powerful Ancient One makes for a longer game.

In conclusion, Arkham Horror is pretty much the game to play when you're feeling like an adventure. With it's unique mythos, complex system of gameplay, and just the general horrific atmosphere it creates, this game is one to look out for.  All in all, this game deserves a solid:

8/10

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Superman Earth One Review

Here on planet Earth, we are quite familiar with the Man of Steel.  He has been around a long time and is easily the most recognizable superhero across the globe.  We know his origin, how he dresses, his secret identity; we even figured out how Superman shaves. 

Your move, Gillette.

  Without a doubt, Superman is the first and most recognizable superhero this world has ever seen.  Welcome to this month's graphic novel review by the skeptic formerly known as Kid Batman.  Today we will be looking at DC’s re-imagining of their most iconic character in Superman Earth One.  This book was well received and became and instant hit and best seller.  Written by J. Michael Straczynski and illustrated by Shane Davis, this story takes us to a world that has yet to meet the Man of Tomorrow.

The Pros

    

     One of the biggest stumbling blocks for a book like this is the difficulty of renewal of iconic characters.  Superman is a character we all know and love, but if you change too much about him your story won’t seem believable.  For instance, if this new Superman had the power to eject adamantium claws from his hands and his weakness was fire, you would scoff and put your book down.  But if he wasn't different in some significant way it would be just like every other superman story we've been telling for one hundred years. Previous authors have tried this, and some have succeeded but plenty have failed, even outside of Superman titles.   

The story unfolds with a 20-something Clark Kent moving from his home in Smallville to a small apartment in Metropolis, and is trying to make a decision about who he really wants to be.  He goes to various employers and tries out a myriad of professions, all of which he is phenomenal at.  But there’s something still lingering in the back of his mind.  Earlier his parents had suggested using his powers to help people whenever trouble arose.  This is where the story begins.  Straczynski does an excellent job timing flashbacks throughout the story, giving us a good idea of what life was like for Clark before he came to Metropolis.  The writing gives us a look into Superman’s past and shows the character in depth like we’ve never seen him before.

The art is also worth noting.  This is the first time I have been exposed to Shane Davis' work and I have to say I was quite impressed.  His work, along with Sandra Hope's and Barbara Ciardo's (which we saw some of in Batman: Noel) adds a fantastic atmosphere to this narrative.  This looks like Superman, but it also feels new, which is exactly what should be going on.  There's plenty of splash pages in here as well, and that's not complaining.  Some of them are truly eye-popping, especially all the fun spaceship battles over the Metropolis which I can't get enough of.

The Cons

     Renewal of this character is obviously the focus of this book, but it also tries to introduce some new players to the board, most notably the villain.  Personally, I am in comic books for the villains.  The heroes are fantastic too of course, but they get fleshed out all the time.  I mean Superman is the most important character, but the supporting characters should never be overlooked and the antagonist needs plenty of work here.  He and his robot warships invade very abruptly and it goes downhill from there.

*(Spoilers ahead)*

He introduces himself as Tyrell, an alien warlord who comes from the planet Dheron, the fourth planet from Krypton’s sun (Krypton is the third).  Krypton and Dheron were constantly at war, until one day the Dheronians had a visitor.  This mystery person came to them with a proposition.  This mystery guest offered to blow up Krypton for the Dheronians, in return for a favor that is not mentioned either.  Tyrell is here because he found out years later that Jor-El sent his son into space before the fallout because he knew what the Dheronians were planning.  Under the terms of the agreement previously mentioned, not one Kryptonian was allowed to survive, and so here Tyrell is to finish the job.  There are a couple problems with this.  Not only does it fail to explain the agreement thoroughly, but if Tyrell found out about this years after the agreement went through why is he even bothering?  I mean it’s possible that their visitor might have demanded that Superman be killed, but it’s unclear as to whether the Kryptonians destruction was a mutual end or if the agreement constituted something more.  This revelation left me with more questions than answers.

*(End spoilers)*

    

     Looking back, however, Tyrell seems like an unnecessary character.  I mean, of course we need a bad-guy, but this character seems to already exist in the form of General Zod.  Zod would have had more reason to come after Supes than Tyrell, and this new take on the DCU via the Earth One titles would have granted Straczynski a chance to change him up a little bit.  Zod would have met the same ends as Tyrell and would have been a better pick for Superman’s reintroduction.  They even used him in The Man of Steel movie to serve the same purpose!  Actually it seems to me like Man of Steel got plenty of inspiration from this book.

The Verdict

     Straczynski does an excellent job of pacing this book, as well as doing what this title set out to do.  Superman is modern and cool now, underwear and all.  Not everything here works though, and I was left confused as why this writer went out of his way to introduce us to a new character.  While Tyrell looks cool, he could have been substituted with a myriad of different characters and is porbably not going to be used again, in or out of this title.  Probably. . . .

     Regardless, this is a radiant piece of work and a great place for a new fan of Superman to start (though you might be more comfortable with a monthly series in the long run).  And yeah, I will be reading the second one with hopes for a cooler villain.

Score: 7/10