Customer Reviews

Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners Of The Earth

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I sincerely hope anyone who has never played the Call of Cthulhu RPG or read any Lovecraft will give this game a shot. You've all heard of Cthulhu by now and may not know what the Cthulhu mythos means. This is a great introduction. It's incredibly faithful to the original Lovecraft texts and to the RPG rules. So if you LIKE CoC:DCotE video/PC game, you should move on to buying the CoC RPG or going to the Chaosium (publisher of CoC RPG) website and downloading the free quickstart rules and giving it a whirl.

Someone said that you can't skip cut scenes which is untrue. Backspace on your PC keyboard will skip any of those long cut scenes. You can do it on XBox, too.

Some people out in the community have had technical problems with the game. These issues for the PC will never be fixed/patched as Headfirst, the developer of CoC:DCotE, went under and Bethesda, the publisher, will not hire anyone to fix the problems. I play the PC version and I have had only a few problems. In one scene you're supposed to shoot at blue lights; but my video card on my laptop isn't powerful, so the lights didn't show up. Luckily, the community for this game is currently very strong, even after 5 months of release. You can download saved games to help you get past sections that are too difficult or that you can't get past or technical reasons (see my blue light example above). One person at the Bethesda user forums has even offered to get you a custom saved game to get you past the section you're stuck on for free; just email him.

There is a scary factor to the game, but it cheats at this--it will cut to something scary and make a loud noise. That's fine. I was scared along the way, although nothing was as originally scary as the hotel level in Vampire: Bloodlines. The game is still dark and creepy and the architecture, lighting, weather effects, etc. do a lot to put you in a horror mood.

The gameplay isn't as bad as everyone says. It's just that the latter levels require more shooting which makes it less Lovecraftian. However, the game still requires you to do a lot of investigation (as done in the stories) and your character gives you lots of feedback so you aren't searching every pixel on the screen ("Just some old papers. It's not important.") And I had an absolute blast with the game as-is--not too much combat, not too much puzzle-solving. I'd consider myself an average-competent gamer and I found that level 2 difficulty out of 4 was just fine for me and the puzzles weren't too difficult. If you find them hard, there are walkthroughs available on the web.

Your character gives you feedback based on his mental state. If he's had a shot of morphine, the screen gets blurry. He's afraid of heights, so you'll get vertigo when you look down a drop and will need to look up for a few seconds to get rid of it. If he's terrified, the screen will start distorting as he loses his sanity. If he's bleeding to death, the screen will go black and white as he loses blood. If he's poisoned, there is a green film on the edges of the screen. It's all very cool.

Combat is neat too. No heads-up reticles to ruin the mood. What you see down the barrel of the gun in front of you is what you hit. And no ammo count either. You have to do that yourself. I like that; it adds to the realism. Also, if you hold the gun in the aimed position for too long your hands start getting tired and wobbling, making it harder to hit something. Very neat!

In conclusion, give CoC a shot and judge for yourself. Even if the game isn't that original (I happen to think it is), you will at least get the best multimedia presentation of Lovecraft Country out there.

I have both good things and bad to say about this game, so I want to make sure you get the right idea: I highly recommend Call of Cthulhu, Dark Corners of the Earth. In spite of the bad things, I loved it, and wished I could simply play it straight through with out pause for rest or real life. For a long time now, I've wished for a game that had challenging puzzles like Myst, but came in a 3D environment and also contained a risk of violence, combat, and death. Being a horror junky, I've also been in search of a game that was genuinely frightening. Call of Cthulhu was both. It had a great mix of challenging puzzles and action sequences, and there were times when I was so scared I had to remind myself it was just a game. The story is great, world interaction is pretty good, and the lack of any heads-up display adds a new element of realism. The fact that you can only save when near certain "magic" symbols (or when the game autosaves at a key point) was a mixed bag. It made the stakes higher, and the victories sweeter, but sometimes it got really tedious revisiting 14 parts of a particular sequence because you kept flubbing the 15th part.
The sound effects and music were awesome, and the graphics and modeling were stellar. Environmentals like rain and fog were also pretty well done, and the worlds were intricate and intriguing
Also intriguing was the less abstract way in which damage and healing are handled (you may find yourself having to treat a broken arm or leg with a splint, for example, and if you leave a major wound untended for too long, you might bleed to death).

Be prepared for some VERY frustrating (sometimes idiotic) drawbacks. Also, be warned: the weapon and combat engine is rather poor compared to the rest of the game. Bullets sometimes pass through things they should hit, hits dont always do the damage you expect, and all the terestrial guns are about the same in terms of range vs accuracy/damage (except the tommygun, which is next to useless). It's not HORRIBLE, per say, but you shouldn't buy this game if that's your main interest; Quake 4 would probably serve you better there.

For these reasons, the game only got four stars. It's a totally awesome puzzle game with a great horror element, but it looks like the programmers might have slacked off a bit in some areas.

-Z

Here is the simple low down on this game. It's one of the best horror games ever made, and follows the Lovecraft Mythos really well. Fun and creepy.
Bad news, it has 1 million bugs. No matter how nice your computer is, there is a decent chance that at some point in this game it'll bug up and you won't be able to finish it. And the company doesn't intend on releasing any patches, ever. 5 stars for the game, 1 star for the programing.

Featuring an intense storyline, the game boasts a well designed interface (though seemingly older technology) and involved first-person perspective - the use of colors, fading, and distorted vision (such as vertigo and "fear shakes") to heighten the "being there" feeling of the player. The biggest problem I have with the game deals with the fast-thinking and forced-action gameplay. Often, you (as the player) are required to react quickly and often for what I consider an extended period of time. With absolutely no room for error (and no way to continually save your progress), you find yourself clumsily groping around to figure out where to go or what to do; this groping about is infrequently intuitive. And if you don't figure out what to do quickly, so sorry, start over from the beginning of that scene. The other big problem I have is the save-game system. You can only save when you find the same-game icons. So, if you want to save, you have to hope that you didn't lose access to the last one (or hope that another one is coming up). While this style of game play may highly appeal to some, to me it was a dud.

"You Are Dead". You will see this screen over and over and over again. You can't skip the many cutscenes so you will have to sit through the same ones over and over again. You can't save so you have that to add to the frustration.

In only the second level of this game called "Attack Of The Fishmen" you will want to hurl this game straight into the trashcan! So very frustrating. You are forced to quickly lock doors behind you in several spots, open windows, and make perfect jumps while being chased. You must do all this without any slight error in timing at all. There are no saves in this game, except for checkpoints in other areas, so you will repeat these types of scenes over and over and over.

This game also has a strange feature that you can't turn off in the options. The main character evidently has a panic attack constantly which makes the sceen constantly go blurry with a loud beating heartbeat. This blurriness makes it down right impossible sometimes to make the many jumps required. It also makes you wonder if this guy chose the right career path or maybe he left his blood pressure meds at home. It is very distracting!

The game is also very linear with cutscene after cutscene. There are so many cutscenes it feels like you are watching a movie sometimes instead of playing a game. The forced timed action sequences should never be in a game without a proper save function.

I am a horror game fan. I have played a lot of horror games and yet I still think this game is exceptional among this genre. There are very few games that can make me feel the kind of desperation and isolation as this game does. As I run for my life, I really feel the helplessness that the protagonist would feel in that situation. Very few games can make I feel this way, not even Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill series. If you are a fan of this genre you really should give this game a try. However, this game is so hard that I have to set the difficulty level to easiest, and yet I can just barely survive. The puzzles are a lot of fun too, if you are used to playing adventure games, you shouldn't have any problem with the puzzles. However, it may be hard for gamers who are not used to playing adventure games.

Note to game developers: when will you realize that NO ONE on this God's green earth likes to be forced to play the same sequence over and over and over? That NO ONE enjoys to watch un-skippable cinematics over and over and over? That NO ONE likes to be THIS close to finishing a chapter just to get killed two steps short of a "save point" and have to start from the beginning?

What can I say, I'm very disappointed and frustrated. Such a great game in terms of atmosphere, audio-visual effects, characters and story. And yet the gameplay, for the lack of a better word, stinks. You can't save your progress unless you click on a special save icon (and those things are not at all plentiful and not always accessible). You can't get analysis of an item unless it's in the middle of your monitor. You can't skip certain cinematics. There's no crosshair, and no way to aim your weapons, so unless a character is right in front of your face, you're shooting blind - and missing. Healing yourself is a loooong and drawn out process and is easily interrupted, which pretty much eliminates being able to heal yourself during combat.

I can understand that all of the above is supposed to give the game a "reality" effect, the "being-there" feel. And it would have worked... if you didn't have to feel forced to replay parts of the game a hundred times in a row. That's when it stops serving the gamer's experience and becomes incredibly frustrating. Or, as it was in my case, makes the gamer give up on the game.

It makes me especially frustrated to have said all this, because "Call Of Cthulhu" IS a good game in all other respects. I WANT to play it, but I simply have neither the nerves nor the time for nonsense that comes with playing it. Some parts were completely engrossing and utterly enjoyable, particularly the beginning two levels. But after that, certain parts are simply unplayable. It's a shame when a good game has to go down a garbage shoot because of poor gameplay design.

This could be a great game, except for the fact that you will be forced to play the same scenes over and over until you get the timing right. Run, open door, lock door, open next door, lock door, move cabinet, open door, lock door. Oops, I accidentally opened the door instead of locking it. Let me watch the cutscene again and try to get the timing right this time...

Don't waste your money.

look I will make it short-the story is well written, graphics are OK, puzzles almost always make sense resulting in a great atmosphere for this horror game. What takes 2 stars off its ranking is asinine game design making fights overly punishing and frustrating and the game is also way too long. Either monkeys were used as testers or the designers do not give a XXmn about players enjoying their moneys worth. I feel cheated that I won`t be able to finish the game after investing 15 plus hours because of bad game design. I hope designers got paid accordingly. Totally unacceptable

I hate to quit a game in the middle, especially one that I was excited about beforehand. I've played a couple of Cthulhu-based table-top RPGs, so I was pleased to discover Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth for the PC. It's an older game, but I'm not too put off by that.

The first chapter or two were spooky and very Mythos-laden. I did notice that the controls were kind of blah (which you expect with console games ported to the PC), but since it seemed to be more about avoiding enemies, finding clues and solving puzzles than fighting, I didn't think it mattered so much. Gradually, however, the game got more and more action-oriented, until it plays more like a straight-up first-person shooter with clunky controls and a limited supply of weapons, ammo, and save points. For awhile, I kept trying to soldier on, hoping it would get back to more of a puzzle-solver/suspense game, but after struggling through battle after battle with very little control of my amazingly lily-livered character, I've had enough and I'm throwing in the towel.

Here's what makes the game SO ANNOYING:

First, it's been said before, but, NOT ENOUGH SAVE POINTS! I got SO SICK of having to repeat huge, difficult (for me) swaths of the plot because I died before I had a chance to save. Second, the "hero" (Jack) is ridiculously weak and has a tendency to get "terrified" at the worst possible times. (Like, when he's trying to walk across burning beams, but he can't look down or he starts to wobble and get woozy! Fair enough if you can feel your feet, but otherwise, yikes.) Third, if you're going to make this a first-person shooter, at least give me access to adequate guns and ammo instead of stripping the character at the end of just about every "chapter" and making him start over from scratch. You find lots of weapons and ammo when it's suicide to try to fight enemies (they swarm you if you do), but in chapters where you HAVE to fight, they're few and far between. Or at least that's how it seemed to me.

The game is very linear and railroads you into doing things just the right way, in just the right order. When you fail, you have to go way back to the last save point and do it all again. And get it right this time, fool! Grrr. After getting that routine a few times, I was about to quit, but thought maybe if I used a walkthrough to get past the part that was kicking my butt, it would get better. Really, it didn't. Even with a walkthrough, I got tired of Jack wigging out on me, or not being able to turn him fast enough to face an enemy I KNEW (through bitter repetition) would be there. And dying. Again.

Here's an example: Jack started a chapter empty-handed as usual and was quickly thrown into a battle situation. He was given a rifle to fight with (which only holds five bullets and is slow both to fire and to reload). Numerous enemies popped up, and several times Jack responded by getting "terrified," which the game simulates by having the screen get blurry and wobbly and having Jack move even slower than usual--just what you want him to do when his guts are about to be handed to him! When he's wounded, he moves even SLOWER! Which gives enemies plenty of time to finish him off. Mmmm . . . fun times.

Anyway, after several attempts, I survived the battle sequence, only to die right afterwards because Jack had to perform an action (I'm trying not to give too many plot points away for those who may play the game anyway), but you have to have him positioned Just Right to get him to do it. Naturally, I died and had to do the whole battle sequence again--a couple more times--until I got the hang of it. Then I died again because I couldn't figure out how to operate a certain piece of large equipment. You only get about 5-10 seconds to try to master it before you have to run away and do something else, but you can't progress until you operate the big piece of equipment properly, so I died and had to repeat the whole battle sequence again. And again. Until I finally realized, "You know, no one's actually PAYING me to do this . . ." *lol* Yeah, I'm done.

By the way, I had tried to experiment with controlling that piece of equipment beforehand (knowing it would come into play--walkthrough and all), but the game won't let you do THAT. Obviously, failing at that spot was the intended outcome, because the programmers thought it would be so much fun to have you do things over and over again. Really, I'm shocked this company went out of business.

Still, I'm giving it two stars because I liked the concept and, for those who are computer game "jocks," it might be a piece of cake to get through it with a minimum of frustration. For a casual gamer like me with a full-time job and responsibility for my own laundry, it's just not worth the aggravation.