5punk

Introduction
"Call of Cthulhu -- Dark Corners of the Earth is a first-person horror game that combines intense action and adventure elements. You will draw upon your skills in exploration, investigation, and combat while faced with the seemingly impossible task of battling evil incarnate."

Okay, so that's a bit commercial, but essentially, this is an FPS based on the writings of H.P Lovecraft. It's not a straight shoot-em-up, focusing quite alot of stealth and puzzles. It supplies enough of the mythos to both support what happens in the game on its own, and works well at keeping Lovecraft fanboys like myself happy. The story itself seems to take bits from different Lovecraft books, specifically Shadow over Innsmouth and Shadow out of Time. I'm sure as I get deeper, it will have much from the Call of Cthulhu, also.

Gameplay
I found it quite fun to play. It can vary from extremely easy, to almost frustratingly difficult. Even so, I was getting angry with the enemies, rather than the game itself. For a game that has no HUD at all, it works rather well, adding to the atmosphere as it's supposed to. If you're not too sure what's going on, pressing the action button while looking at an object, Jack (The main character) will describe the thing. Not in a way that's irritating or repetitive, and seems to have been done extremely thoroughly. The controls are good, WAXD for some reason, but this can be changed in the menu simply. The guns work like you'd expect, RMB aiming, no crosshairs when not aimed. Realistically, aim for too long and your arms get tired.

The levels are well designed, places look functional, and work for playing in. Sadly, there is no multiplayer, although I can't see how one would really improve on the experience much.

Sights and Sounds
Even before I started playing, just watching the opening credits, the sound was great. It's extremely high quality stuff, little voices telling you to die, screaming for help, that kind of thing. The graphics aren't exactly HL2 or oblivion standard, but the atmosphere pervades every little thing. The design rather than CPU-devouring reflections are what should catch your eye (By this I mean there are essentially none. I do have a bit of a mean machine computerwise, but I think this game is pretty undemanding) . It uses lots of interesting effects, though, such as blurring when scared, I found that Jack has a fear of heights, which makes plank-walking levels very interesting.

Interestingly, it has "cameos" by some historical characters who have no bearing on the books themselves. I'm not sure why, but it does make it more interesting.

Very creepy stuff, however, which isn't really made less scary however well you know what's likely to be going on in the background.

Stuff that sucks
The most annoying thing I found, was how the enemies when killed do not drop guns or ammo. It's plain to see why that was done, for gameplay reasons, but it's still fairly annoying. Sometimes it's alost too easy for Jack to take damage, also, and medical supplies are often hard to come-by. Also, the game has a habit of using items from your inventory on things in the world some times, and other times not. Again, when you think back on each occasion, it's easy to see why, but all the same, it's annoying.

Conclusion
Essentially a good game, well thought out and interesting, although it may drag on a bit, as it is so long.


Score :

Nice review! Good work

I want this.

Good review, but I was half expecting a Metallica discussion!

Lateralus wrote:Good review, but I was half expecting a Metallica discussion!

Metallica are by no means the only people to have referred to Cthulhu Mythos in their work.

I don't doubt it in the slightest, but I've never heard of it before this day so I never even knew Metallica were referencing anything!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu#Re ... to_Cthulhu

If you're interested. Oddly, I didn't see Metallica in there.

Wasn't he the baddie at the end of Quake 1 E1 ? Oh, maybe that was Chthon.

Quake's full of Cthulhu inspired stuff:

Cthon is a sort of fire diety I think, the end bad guy thing was called Shub-Niggurath (I think again), who is a Great Old One. Shamblers (dimensional shamblers) are a servitor race. That's off the top of my head, there's probably more.

I hadn't realized this had even come out already. It looks excellent.

Dog Pants wrote:Cthon is a sort of fire diety I think

Yep, that him

This game just gets better and better...

Massive Sanity Failure?

Sounds like the result of my day of computer building at a charity office. For a Christian Youth organisation, they were a right bunch of squabbling, petty, backstabbing cunts.

It was the result of a fucking massive thing with hundreds of tentacles and more eyes than... well, something with lots of eyes.

Doesn't surprise me in a Cthulhu based game to be honest, although it is nice. I played the tabletop game a few times and while it was astonishingly easy to die in it, it was far easier to end up gibbering in an asylum.

This game is win. Hours into it and I still don't have a weapon, but I have been genuinely creeped out a lot. Losing your sanity has some very strange effects.

i'm at the part where you get your first weapons, but i haven't gone insane yet, what am i doing wrong?

I haven't lost mine completely, but seeing too many bodies and gore and funny crabs has me talking to myself and hearing children. I'm also getting a few funny visual effects, like things keeping moving for a fraction of a second after I've looked around and one of the cutscenes repeating itself.

Dog Pants wrote:...and one of the cutscenes repeating itself.

Sure that's not because it's a bit of sketchy coding?

Anyone heard news on the lovecraft mmong? I'm getting better information about duke nukem than I am for that.

HereComesPete wrote:
Sure that's not because it's a bit of sketchy coding?

Anyone heard news on the lovecraft mmong? I'm getting better information about duke nukem than I am for that.

Could have been.

The Secret World is being deliberately quiet in the same way that Cloverfields was. There's an official forum, but it's 99% speculation. Anery is watching it closely.