Here at 103% we don’t like to limit ourselves to any one
type of game, but rather discuss gaming as a whole. As such, we occasionally
discuss games that aren’t electronic but more traditional. In the past we’ve
covered the stone-cold classic “Settlers of Catan”, and we’ve also talked about
various 2 player games that serve as a great alternative to sex (after all, sex
isn’t always the best way of interacting with any given person).
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| Sex may not be appropriate at a job interview, but Yu Gi Oh sure is! |
I recently acquired a brand-new copy of the Fantasy Flight
game “Eldritch Horror”, a sequel to the relatively popular “Arkham Horror” game
and it’s various expansions. The mythos of the game is based around the works
of H.P. Lovecraft (I always like to pretend that the “H.P.” stands for “hit
points”), and as such features various monstrous abominations to be fought, as
well as a heavy focus on Lovecraft-crafted narratives. After playing half a
dozen times I felt I should share my thoughts and reactions with the 103
community.
The game is a co-operative effort to win against the game
itself, that can be played by 1 to 8 players. I for one like to envisage the
battle-hardened nerd opting for a solo playthrough yet still reading every
single card aloud. Each turn involves each player taking 2 actions in an
attempt to prevent the advancing of the Ancient Ones, before moving on to the
encounters phase, where each player has a narrative encounter of some sort,
before the monsters make their moves against humanity. These encounters tend to
be the most entertaining part of the game. Either the collective players choose
to embrace these Lovecraftian nuggets with a horrified gravity or they laugh
knowingly at the melodrama of it all; every game I have played thus far has
fallen into the latter category. A particular highlight was when a “partially
insubstantial insect” flew out of Jak’s brain “leaving knowledge of an alien
world”. I hate it when that happens.
After a couple of test games where we had put the game
together with a very easy set up we decided to go for the full Eldritchian
experience, pushing aside the casual menace of Azathoth for the famed insanity
as that internet favourite, Cthulu. Team 103 (myself, Jak, and Liam) did
everything we could to make the game as hard as possible, thinking ourselves
invincible after our near-victory over Azathoth. Oh, did I not mention that
even when scaling the game to super-easy mode we lost? Yeah. Azathoth devoured
our planet. You have us to thank for that one, humanity.
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| We're sorry. |
Needless to say it was a massacre. The focal point of Cthulu’s
Blitzkrieg of insanity ended up being Sydney. You see, if a character dies
surviving investigators can attempt to recover their belongings, and eliminated
players can respawn as a new investigator. Sydney rapidly became 103’s folly,
as the more dead investigators piled up there the more tempting booty appeared.
Also, on an unrelated note, “Cthulu’s Blitzkrieg of Insanity” would make an
excellent name for a band. That’s a freebie.
As the patented “doom” counter hit zero and we had failed to
make any substantial progress we set ourselves the makeshift win condition of
killing Cthulu himself (this can happen in the game, but we were a long way off
it happening. Lovecraft was quite right in describing him as “an excessive
motherfucking badass”). We piled all our weapons and buffs on to my character,
Norman Withers, the aged astronomer, and flew headlong into battle. Wielding a
double-barrelled shotgun with an axe in case things turned ugly, I tried my
luck. Did I win? No.
And so, as I left that accursed object on the table where it
lay, I knew my mind was only a few days away from complete collapse. I leave this
document as a testament to my time table-topping a really, really hard game.
