Arkham Horror
Arkham Horror: Mother’s Embrace occupies an interesting place in how I mentally categorise games. It is, in some form, an adaptation of a board game, similar to Blood Rage . Arkham Horror is an excellent survival board game, and that it would get a digital adaptation at some point seems inevitable. However, rather than a straight digital port like other games, Arkham Horror: Mother’s Embrace instead is an adaptation, transforming the game from its board game incarnation into an actual video game. All the questions I asked about how to best adapt board games into video games in my Blood Rage review come to fruition here, showing there is another method possible.
The problem is that the game itself is not very good.
Exhibit A in why this game is not very good.
Arkham Horror: Mother’s Embrace is a point and click adventure game with party-based turn-based combat mechanics. You play as a team of investigators, initially investigating a mysterious death, but whose investigations take them into the seedy world of cults, elder gods, and the supernatural. It’s a game meant to tell a Lovecraftian story, and it does well in its understanding of what a Lovecraftian story is about. It’s everything else about the game that struggles.
Professor Tillinghast is a woman of few words.
I’m not one to tear into a game just because it’s not a triple A game. Some of my favourite games are games with the clear and visible love of a small team. Small games have an opportunity to tell their story and shine in a completely unique way.
Because when I want to smash my window, my first thought is a wire cutter.
Much of the game is reliant on its story to propel the player forward. Ordinarily, this is great, because it gives the player a way to be involved and motivated. The story itself isn’t a bad one, and has compelling elements. However, when it’s told through clunky, stiff, writing, and the voice of a narrative who can’t decide whether she’s omniscient, or whether she’s in the present, future, or past. The decision to have a narrator who is herself unclear distracts from the narrative and makes it hard to stay invested in the game.
Bad writing alone doesn’t doom a game, though when it’s coupled with clunky mechanics and poor controls, it becomes harder and harder to ignore. As an example, to move an item into your party’s inventory, the player has to select the item, select move to, use the keyboard movement controls to place the item, then enter to confirm the placement. It’s a needlessly complex way to do a simple task of picking up a new item. These overly complex controls or arcane controls exist throughout the game, and add on to the generally unwieldy experience of trying to play the game.
Arkham Horror: Mother’s Embrace clearly tries to embody the Lovecraftian spirit, but, whether intentionally or not, its design and decisions leave the player suffering bouts of insanity alongside their investigators.
Developer: Asmodee
Genre: Adventure, Rpg
Year: 2021
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Play Time: 10 Hours