Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet

The Good
Shadow Of The Comet would have been a pretty standard point and click adventure game ala the old Sierra King's Quest line. What makes it stand out is the atmosphere. It perfectly creates the sense of creepy tension that the best Lovecraft stories convey.

There's all sorts of things going on 'just beneath the surface' of the story. When you talk to most of the characters in town, you'll see a nicely rendered portrait of them. In a nice little throwaway touch, most of these townsfolk are based on people from old scary movies. In the course of your adventure, you'll run across cameos by Vincent Price, Jack Nicholson (watch out for him!) and even H.P. Lovecraft himself. There's many others. I just can't remember them all now.

The voice acting for Parker is very good. The rest of the cast is at least decent. (Except for that nurse. Most wooden voice acting ever.) They did a very good job of making you feel that they were hiding something without making it too obvious or over the top. Everybody oozed the sense that they were thinking 'You've found what you want. Now leave!' while being polite to your face.

The Bad
While the gameplay is pretty straightforward and the puzzles are amazingly logical for an adventure game, there's one point at which EVERY player WILL GET STUCK.

There's a part where Parker receives a map (if I remember correctly) and needs to look at it to move on. Simple enough. Unfortunately the only way to look at the map is to head back to your rented room, sit at the desk and view the map. There are no clues suggesting you should head back to your room or any good reason that that should be the only place to view it.

Simply having Parker saying he didn't feel safe viewing the map in public or something along those lines would have been a huge help.

Also, the maze full of monsters, while not terrible or even out of place wasn't quite as good as the rest of the game.

The Bottom Line
Aside from the one TERRIBLE 'puzzle', Shadow Of The Comet is a great adventure game. The puzzles are logical and the atmosphere is fantastic.

If you're a Lovecraft fan, you owe it to yourself to pick it up.

Followed up by Prisoner Of Ice, though it isn't as highly recommended as Shadow Of The Comet.