Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

by Bethesda Softworks

Product Details

• ASIN: B000FIFEGW
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,259 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Supermodel with Head-Lice, April 23, 2008

By 

Karkacabra - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (CD-ROM)

This game has a lot of good ideas, and implements a number of them surprisingly well. In fact, almost everything innovative that this game tries, it succeeds at. Going insane feels like you're going insane, bolting doors and shoving bookcases in front of them to stop pursuers is adrenaline-pumping, having to treat the proper injuries that result from different ways of taking damage makes sense within the game, and the creepy atmosphere is so pervasive that you're practically suffocating on it throughout the entire game.

Where it goes wrong is the most trivial, inane, annoying details.

Checkpoint's frequently come only before extensive cutscenes (upwards of several minutes), or before long walks or tough obstacles, so if you make one mistake, not only have you lost all the progress since the last save, but you frequently have to repeat the same lengthy cutscene or retread the exact same long hallways over and over.

Frequent hard-to-see insta-kill traps often leave me wondering exactly why I died, which compounds the problems of the last point.

The game frequently mistakes an intent to bolt a door as an intent to open a door; trying to close a door behind you, oftentimes the door will catch you and push you into whatever is chasing you; for the game to register your attempt to close the door, you have to be standing just so, which can be very hard to do when you're trying to protect someone that's following you.

Then there's the glitches: if you run the game on Vista, a certain segment involving the artillery guns of a naval ship won't work right, and you'll have to download a save game just beyond that point. Also, the final segment in the game is almost literally impossible without some extremely precise bunny-hopping, and I ended up having to cheat to beat it.

In short: this is a very, very good game, much better than I expected, but you have to be able to stomach more questionable design decisions, poor scripting, and buggy interfaces than it's reasonable to expect of any player. A supermodel with headlice, right next to Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun but Slightly Buggy!, July 10, 2009

By 

S. G. Paxman "~Krow" (Utah) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (CD-ROM)

I am a Huge H.P. Lovecraft fan and The Shadow Over Innsmouth is one of my Favorite Horror Short Stories of all time. So when Dark Corners of the Earth came out, I just had to have it.

It was buggy however from the get go and Eventually I lost the disk after having beaten this game a few times.

TECHNICAL:

This game is Part Survival Horror, Part Action Adventure, all rolled up into a First Person Shooter Shell.

The Health and Sanity system are rather interesting Game mechanics, While not totally realistic, they do seem to do their function in a more realistic manner then say the Halo or Half-Life series.

It's seems and I have heard rumors that all the Games Locations and level had been made using 3D Studios Max or Maya, Which After taking a look at it, Seems to actually be the case. this is not a bad thing to be honest, but the Levels some time came off a Little sparse on details at times.

The music was creepy and there are shockers in the game that can really make you Jump if your not ready for them.

However there are a few hitches in the game engine it self. Using a version of the Gamebryo Engine (The Same engine that Bethesda used to make both Marrowind and Oblivion and lately Fallout 3) has not been kind to this game in such details that the engine is known for. To be honest with you I would have liked to see bigger, wider and vastly more explorable environments out of this game then what we have as for now. and with a whole lot more details.

GAMEPLAY:

For the most part the Game seems to be ahead of it time, at the time it was still not the best looking game but it was far more then most people have seen at that time, and it not really that old of a game.

For the most part the Game play was smooth and fairly friendly as long as you switched the keys around for the Standard FPS movement keyboard arrangement.

There is a area that can really get messed up for no reason what so ever the fault of the player. there is a fix to this, and so you can continue if this happens to you.

This doesn't always happen however, and no one seems to be aware of why this happens.

Lastly This game is difficult in areas and there is hardly any ingame clues of what you need to do next in many areas. If your really Investigative minded, Or find a good walkthrough on the game, You'll eventually figure out what you need to do to get going forward, Later it will become more of a Sneaker Shooter but at first is a weapon lacking explorer game.

OVERALL:

Over all I've owned this game 3 seprate times. the first was from release date, the next was a couple years after which i had stolen along with my computer when I was robbed. I got the computer back but the Disk was gone.

Finally I bought this Game again from here at amazon and also Have a copy Via Steam.

If your going to get this game and have a steam account, I would say that you should get it from steam as the game seems to be fixed in the areas that are broken and stop level progression. Other wise this is fine as well as you can apply the patch and the cheater program for things like god mode and the like after you beat the game fair and square.

4.0 out of 5 stars It's a great game..., January 14, 2009

By 

Marcelo H. Souza "WayBeast" (JacaCity, Brasil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (CD-ROM)

I went terribly sad when i discovered that the company who made this game went bankruptcy, 'cause it was supposed to be a trilogy. But, anyway, it's a great game with lots and lots of lovecraftian elements on it. The game has a feel to it, a lovecraftian feel. I recommend it...