Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

The Good
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."-H.P. Lovecraft-

Call of Cthulhu, has been in development for a long time. Too long. Perhaps like the elder god himself the developers were just waiting for the “stars to be right”. More likely the long delay was a direct result of the game having no publisher until recently. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners on the Earth, is based upon the works of American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.(The 20th Century's successor of Poe.-MM-) It is the first and hopefully not last game based on his work from Euro developer Headfirst. Sure there have been other games inspired by Lovecraft, such as: Alone in the Dark, Shadow of the Comet, Prisoner of Ice, and the excellent Eternal Darkness. This game is like nothing seen before in survival horror gaming.

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange eons even death may die."-The Necronomicon, Abdul Alhazard-

In CoC:DcotE, you assume the role of Jack Walters, a Private Investigator, whom has recently had some luck cracking difficult cases. The game begins with what will be his most difficult yet, and lead Jack to confront The Great Old Ones. Years later Jack is released from Arkham Asylum, as he rebuilds his life, he receives a call that will send him to Innsmouth, a decrepit village only spoken of in hushed tones. And should be well to familiar to any Lovecraft reader. The investigation will soon have Jack running for his life in some of the most exciting sequences in any game. And will draw him deeper into the abysmal horror that exists just beyond the veil of reality. I will not divulge any more of the plot. It is the games strongest suit, and will keeping you playing even as the game gets exceedingly difficult, but more on that later.

"Out from ruins once possessed fallen city, living death"-The Thing That Should Not Be, Metallica-

The Graphics are quite good, and I found that the screens do it little justice. The use of lighting is pure genius, as is the grain filter, which helps Innsmouth look dilapidated just as it should. The only downside would be that the sanity effects can be quite annoying at time and incredible at others.

The Sound and Music excels as it should in any horror game worth it’s salt. Creepy sound effects heighten the experience especially during the Jack’s decent into madness. Music is scare but all of the tunes are memorable, particularly one recurring tune with lyrics.

"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."- H.P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu-

The Gameplay, is different from typical horror games in a good way. Firstly the P.O.V. is entirely in the first person, which helps draw the player into the game, as well as alleviates, bad “cinematic” views in which you cannot see what you are doing. Resident Evil I’m looking at you. And healing wounds is not as easy as quaffing a potion, you must treat each wound individually. With bandages, splints, and stitches. The sanity effects heighten the experience, hearing voices, hallucinations, and vertigo are all common place. The effects can get in the way particularly the vertigo, and panic attacks. This game is truly an adventure game with combat, as most of the game is spent collecting items and solving puzzles. Mostly you avoid combat, yet the combat itself is functional, and enjoyable, there’s nothing like blowing away an evil hybrid. This game is not for children, as just about everything that a game can receive an Mature rating for this game has.

The combat can take some getting used to. As the FPS with no cross heir is non-existent. Once you obtain a gun, a few hours into the game, you can finally fight back. However that is not an invitation to blow everything in sight away.

When using guns there are two ways top fire. Normal fire, which is less precise. And aimed mode. In which you can target certain body parts. The head, of leg or arm, etc. However if you hold the gun in aim mode too long, Jack's arm will start to shake and make your shots less accurate.

Targeting has other benefits as well. Head shots, of course will deliver instant death to any foes. While shooting the arm of an enemy will make it harder for them to shoot you. If you shoot them in the leg, they will limp and be easier to kill or escape from. Be warned however as they can do the same to you!

The Bad
The Shadow Over Innsmouth

This being said this one is far from perfect. As mentioned certain sanity effects can complicate things. The game can also be frustratingly hard. The game is actually very liner. That is to say that you have to accomplish events an exact way, and you may fail often until you find it. But it will be the excellent plot that keeps you coming back for more.

At some points in the game there are endless hybrids. This is a gameplay flaw. It is annoying. And often you will not realize that the foes will not stop. This also contradicts the short stories, from which the game is based. As in those we learn that Innsmouth has only about 100 people. Where as in the game it can seem there are 10 times that.

In the later stages of the game save points become less and less common. Which means you will end up playing some of the same parts over and over.

The Bottom Line
The Shadow Out Of Time

Any fan of Lovecraft’s “Weird Fiction” as he called it, should check this one out. They probably already have. So anyone who like horror games, or adventure games should also check it out. In the end this game shows how inferior other older horror games are. Headfirst is working on two more Cthulhu games here’s hoping it does not take as long to come out this time. If they ever come out at all. So heed Cthulhu’s call and try this game.

The Good
The idea of an adventure inside Lovecraft's universe is always appealing especially to those of us who play games loosely based on horror novels like Alone in The Dark, Realms of the Haunting and Clive Barker’s Undying. Call of Cthulhu was in development for quite some time and the game shows why. The graphics and music are great; you can see there was a lot of detail to create great looking places and effects rarely seen in other games. The story is well written and if you have enough patience to proceed throw the game the cinematics will make an excellent job disclosing the plot.


The Bad
Call of Cthulhu has a lot of problems, the most important is that as an adventure is poor and you almost have no interaction with the environment, apart from pulling levers or switches. As a first person shooter is slow paced and boring the developers had a great idea to mix the different genres but they failed and the result is a bad hybrid.
Other problems in the game are: You can’t run, you either crawl or walk, this is very frustrating since the first levels of the game you don’t have weapons and you need to run for your life (Wait to be avoiding shotgun fire from five different enemies and you’ll know what it means to become a human target). Perhaps that’s why the IA has such poor aiming skills they sometimes miss when you stand still in front of them and sometimes they can hit you from far away. The game has a very innovative system where the player can suffer sanity looses when he is exposed to corpses or terrifying images, that is a great idea but the problem is that you can’t avoid most of them. Finally the player suffers from panic attacks that blur your screen so much you probably be dead by the end of them and also has vertigo which is a terrible thing that forces you to look up when jumping.

The Bottom Line
If you have a lot of patience (and I mean a lot) you might be able to forget the issues the game has and enjoy cthulhu for a while but I regret this is a game you won’t be playing ever again after you complete it, because when you close the story the large amount of problems cthulhu has as a game, will keep you from re-installing it.

The Good
The story from start to finish is executed very well. There's a lot of stories to uncover and although it doesn't match Lovecraft's writing, for a computer game it's one of the better, if not the best.

The interface without any indicators also helps the game to be more realistic (injury is indicated by blurring of the screen, broken leg by limping, and so on).

Atmosphere is very dense and scary, escalated by creepy sounds and occasional but very fitting music.

For Czech language version - only texts and subtitles, but very expertly translated with perfect grammar and without lost of meaning.

The Bad
First of all, there's a big bug in some versions of the game (looking at forums it seems like a very common problem) - it is the place where you need to shoot with cannon at mages on the Devil's Reef. The problem is that you can't see them so you don't know where to shoot. There's three solutions to this: 1) Patch - The official patch is non-existent and fan-made unfortunately doesn't work for all versions (mine, for example), 2) Search through forums for saved game after this scene but you lose your Statistics, 3) set the sight on the exact coordinates - also can be found on internet (YouTube).

The movement and control is a little clumsy. There is no run, only walk, so don't count on escaping from any shootouts. The reloading of weapons is not very precise so sometimes you have to push the reload button at least twice. Auto-reload would be better solution I think.

There are different ending according to the Grade you receive (taking in account several Statistics), if you don't have a Grade good enough you will only see a shortened version of the outro. Not a good idea.

The Bottom Line
Call of Cthulhu can be described as an action adventure, or better - action game with adventure bits. You take the role of Jack Walters, a private detective who is hired by a store owner to investigate a case of missing employee of grocery store in Innsmouth (a village regarded as haunted by many). The story comes from a board game (which I'm not familiar) with. It's a mixture of several better known works of H.P. Lovecraft, most notably The Shadow over Innsmouth but also including events, creatures and references from short stories and novellas Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow Out of Time and At the Mountains of Madness. All of them recommeded read after finishing the game.

Not including the scary prelude of the game (I don't want to give out any spoilers), you start in Innsmouth, a dark town with unfriendly faces all around. You don't need to be a genius to know that they don't like strangers around there. Your first steps are to look for whereabouts of the missing person, but during your search, you'll made a great deal of horrifying revelations. The game changes from adventure, to stealth, to action very rapidly and there won't be many friends to help you. Eventually you pick up a variety of weapons to defend yourself and you have to decide which is better - to sneak by enemies, to fight them or to run away. New clues and events will be added into your diary but not until the very end you will be able to understand what's going on (and maybe not even after that, see column The Bad).

On inventory screen you will see everything you need - the items, ammunition, diary, medicaments and health. There's more than one type of injury - some lighter ones will heal itself eventually, some you must heal, broken bone must be fixed with split, poisoning must be treated with antidote. Injuries can be healed manually by picking the places to heal or automatically by clicking the button. Healing process itself takes a few seconds when you can't move so better hide yourself before you use it. You must also look after your psychical health, it means if you encounter too many scary events in quick succession, you start to feel dizzy, mumble to yourself and in the end commit suicide.

Looking at items and operating them is done by Use button. Using items in inventory on something is very easy, just by clicking at them, there is no combining of the items in inventory.

For the shooting there are two modes - quick shot and aimed shot, the latter being recommended as there is no crosshair to aim at. But don't aim too long or your hands begins to shake.

At last I recommend to play only at night because the game is VERY dark and the atmosphere and horror is greatly increased.

Overall Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is an enjoyable game that is moderately long and can absorb you for a few weeks with a lot to think about during that time.