Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

The Good
Before I started playing Call of Cthulu I had no idea what the big deal was with H.P Lovecraft. I had never read any of his stories or watched any of the poorly made college films based on his source material. Part of the reason I avoided his work was because it was a popular thing for "alternative" teenagers and to a lesser extent, adults, to latch onto. They would look at you with disgust if you didn't know who Lovecraft was, yet they knew little about the mythology beyond reading one of his short stories in between writing bad poetry. There are also those who genuinely love Lovecraft's work and appreciate how instrumental he was in horror becoming mainstream.

Headfirst seemed to come from that second camp. They appreciated his work, resolved to treat it with respect and ended up creating a fine game. They were not pretentious though, the game doesn't rely on you having scrutinized Lovecraft's entire body of work. Call of Cthulu is a license done right, and to see this happen always gives me a warm feeling.

A large portion of Call of Cthulu is based on a pen and paper RPG. You play a private investigator who, after losing some of his life to period of darkness, resolves to take on a missing persons case. He travels to the town of Innsmouth and after some investigating is almost killed by the inhabitants. The rest of Dark Corners of the Earth is centered around his journey to discover what happened to himself and what happened to Innsmouth.

The artistic direction in Dark Corners of the Earth is to be applauded. Innsmouth itself is moody, faces peer out of windows and doors close as Jack walks past. The inhabitants are twisted and loathsome, watching Jack with suspicious eyes as he walks past. It's all definitely scripted, but it adds a degree of depth to the atmosphere that is missing in many survival horror games.

Because in the end, above all else, Dark Corners of the Earth feels like a survival horror game.

The gameplay is a combination of FPS action and stealth elements with a degree of investigative puzzle solving thrown in here and there. Jack relies on fire arms and more silent bladed weapons to fight the various twisted inhabitants of Innsmouth however most of the time it is better to avoid fights whatsoever. If Jack is injured instead of the standard "health kit" items the player must apply certain treatments specific to the injury sustained. For instance if his leg is injured it must be splinted, if it isn't he will hobble and his jumping will be compromised until the injury is taken care of. The gameplay in general is fantastic, Jack controls flawlessly and sneaks and jumps intuitively. Firing weapons relies on a steady hand and in a refreshingly realistic dynamic enemies can be killed with a single well placed knife thrust instead of requiring a barrage of slashes.

The variety of environments is remarkable and Headfirst seems to have mastered the art of backtracking. In many games, backtracking is employed as either a way of extending the length of a game or artificially convoluting puzzles. Backtracking in Dark Corners of the Earth feels natural and how it is employed here relies on you keeping your wits about you and watching for things that could potentially be useful later on. It isn't simply "I need to go back down 8 hallways to use red key on red door" it is more "I walked past a broken valve a little while ago, maybe I can use this valve handle there?"

The environments look good as well, which is a blessing. Each crumbling building sits with moody light being cast on it from a dirty bulb. Most characters look good, some don't, typically they do though. The weapon models contain decent enough detail and environmental effects like heat haze in the refinery and chill air linger around Jack as he explores.

The sanity mechanic introduced in the game transcends the foundation laid by Eternal Darkness as a launch title for the Gamecube. In Eternal Darkness your sanity was drained when enemies were nearby and if your sanity ran out the game would simulate odd things happening to either your character or your television set itself. In Dark Corners of the Earth your sanity doesn't break the fourth wall, it is there to make you want to keep Jack alive. If you don't keep him away from corpses, odd sculptures of things Cthulu can channel the screen will blur and Jacks world will warp and deform. If his sanity drops too low he will take his own life either by beating himself to death or shooting himself.

The Bad
Dark Corners of the Earth shines in its opening moments. The chilling cinematic nature of these, the feeling that you're simply part of something much bigger and grander is lost as you progress through the game and it becomes essentially nothing more than a corridor shooter. There is little technique in how you play beyond repeatedly using trial and error to either tediously log a mental path for yourself or risk jumping out guns blazing to face hordes of respawning enemies.

O.k, say that's a bit of an exaggeration. This game never turns into a twitch shooter, but it also doesn't do a good enough job of keeping its fires stoked to consistently scare and intimidate you.

When you've come to terms with what the game demands of you you begin to realize that you don't get enough healing items to compensate for the vast amount hits you will take from enemies when you are forced to engage in combat. They are insanely overpowered and can take a lot punishment, while you can only take a few hits before being rendered critical. Additionally, if you take too much damage to one particular body part you will find yourself consistently running out of that one item you need to heal it.

The monotony of environments begins to take its toll after a while as well. I don't know whether or not it's simply because I can't stand dank, boring tunnels and generic stone temples but past Innsmouth the environments lack character or anything interesting for that matter. The dynamic, claustrophobic nature of Innsmouth contrasts greatly against generic mansion A and generic industrial building B.

What didn't I like about the game? The engine. The engine is one of the most unrefined and bug riddled ones I have ever encountered. Whether it was dropping frames or stopping the game from advancing there were so many occasions where something potentially game breaking happened that I almost lost count. I got stuck on ladders, stuck behind ladders, stuck in a vent, the ship scene wouldn't end, enemies wouldn't stop respawning when they were supposed to, events wouldn't trigger etc. etc. It wasn't just one or two things, it was just an endless procession of bugs and glitches that ruined any suspension of disbelief that I had built up. I mean, I have never had to start a game from scratch because of a fault left in by the developer but I had to do it twice with Dark Corners of the Earth. Frankly, I'm embarrassed for Bethesda having released such an unfinished game.

The Bottom Line
Dark Corners of the Earth is a compelling game full of frightening elements that consistently surprise the player. The sanity system is pure genius and the driving, cinematic nature of the opening moments is simply nail biting. The gameplay is solid and the combat is violent and visceral. Having to heal your limbs independently from one another is, at first, a cool concept and the rendering of environments is beyond reproach.

It's a shame then that the game becomes a boring slog during the second half that displays none of the creative flair that the beginning of the game exhibits. The health system becomes a problem when you come up against waves and waves of ridiculously respawning enemies and the sheer glut of game breaking bugs that riddle the package are inexcusable.

While I enjoyed the presentation of the mythology and the gameplay when it worked, Dark Corners of the Earth becomes a tad too mediocre and broken to recommend.

The Good
I'm scrambling along the wall of a warehouse while the yokels inside are blasting away blindly, shooting out the windows above my head and showering me with glass. Diving into cover and applying bandages to stop the bleeding from grazing shotgun pellets. Miraculously, none of my bones were broken after jumping off the loading ramp and out the window.

I am Jack Walters, and I really feel like all of Innsmouth wants me dead.

Of course, I know it's all in vain, ultimately: I've seen Jack die, hanging himself in an insane asylum some time from now. But yet I want to find out how it came to be, to see it through to the end. And that pretty much sums up how Dark Corners of the Earth does a better job than practically any other Lovecraft-themed derivatives at being Lovecraftian — there really is a feeling of being powerless, naked and afraid in the face of unspeakable horrors, and yet crawling along as best you can.

The thing that emphasizes this nakedness the most is the HUD: there isn't one. In fact, this game makes the very notion of a heads-up display seem downright ridiculous, like a remnant of 80's arcade machines. Instead of cute little icons telling you that You Have Activated Sneak Mode, the visual field broadens to give the impression of heightened wariness: when you're near death from blood loss, color drains from the world.

The game consistently never mentions 'hit points', only blood loss. If you caught the early marketing hype, you may have been given the impression that the simulationism went one step too far, with your character being able to catch pneumonia. That didn't make the final cut, probably for the better. Instead, the game implements localized damage to the head, torso, arms and legs. Locations can suffer heavy or light bleeding, poisoning, or broken limbs; different wounds require different medical treatments. This has tactical implications, as for example heavy bleeding requires the short-in-supply sutures, deterring you from getting too close to shotgun wielders. (To make sure the game is still playable, Jack has the metabolism of a hummingbird; he'll heal within a minute if all wounds have been treated, however untreated poisoning will kill him within four.)

It's also true to the Call of Cthulhu tabletop roleplaying system in that fighting is fast and deadly. Don't expect your "circle-strafing" skills to be much use, you need to concentrate on shooting abominations in the head before they can reload. That is, if you have a gun.

...you don't have a gun. You were, after all, just going to a quiet backwater fishing village to investigate a missing grocery store clerk. And no, there aren't guns just lying around for you to pick up. Those things are dangerous. What do you think this is, some sort of game? Nor are you in possession of Garrett's ability to magically fade into the shadows; you're just a private dick caught unaware.

See, calling this game "survival horror" gives people the entirely wrong impression: it's come to denote a very particular style of gameplay, to the point where a game like Disaster Report, which is not a horror game, gets called "survival horror." That's not Dark Corners of the Earth; it's inventive to the point of practically being a genre of one. There really is little today that resembles it — the easiest comparison would probably be to Alone in the Dark of 14 years past, and that is again largely because of the general feeling of style and genuine frights.

This style is evident from the very beginning of the game: when the first cutscene ends, you may not realize it, the transition is so subtle. Walking along, you can sense Jack's footsteps. No, not "head bob," his footsteps. Go into the house and in the door on your left. Peer into the darkness. "It's too dark to see anything, but from the rotting smell, it's probably a food store," Jack tells you. Outstanding. There should be (darkened) demo booths of that intro sequence, it'd probably make it up in shifted units.

All of this inventiveness goes towards lending the game gravity, making you forget that you're playing a game. You know, immersion. That thing games are supposed to be all about. This holds true to such a degree that at one point, going back to try and make it through a section with more medical supplies felt like I was violating the story. It happened that I had been scoping out an area and just happened to look up, and— well, that would be spoiling it. Suffice to say, things that would just be "look, scary thing" in a less inspired game are lovingly crafted in Dark Corners to sneak up on you when you least expect it.

Oh, and the music: you don't notice it. You only notice what it does to you. It's brilliant.

The Bad
This game is meant to be played in the dark, and they mean it. Fiddling with the brightness will give you a genuine feeling, when appropriate, of stumbling about in a darkness where things are vaguely sensed rather than seen. This also means that you simply can't play during the day.

Looking at the minimum specs, you might think this game was outdated long ago; that's more of an artifact of the game's long development history, but yes, the graphics are a bit two-years-ago. However, it puts newer graphics cards to work on dynamic lightning, subtle visual enhancement and the effects that give the impression of being groggy when you've just woken up, queasy when in a room with a corpse, scared out of your wits or high on morphine.

There's little point in running the game at higher resolutions than 800x600; you're better advised to spend the horsepower on antialiasing instead. The thing is, and I realize this is a cliché, it moves beautifully. I could spend all day, or rather all night, looking at that old geezer in the poorhouse as he gazes out the window. Half-Life 2 might have super-detailomatic ReActor(tm) technology or whatever; in Dark Corners of the Earth you're talking to people—really talking with them—who are brought to life within the story.

Okay. In all honesty, there is one thing that detracts from the game later on: dead bodies simply fade into the air. If there was one thing about the game I could change, that would be first on the list.

The Bottom Line
Look a couple of paragraphs above. "Queasy when in a room with a corpse." Have you seen that in any other game? Is there anywhere else you've played a character with enough humanity to actually be a bit dizzy in the face of death?

You need to play Dark Corners to see that a game can do things previously unthought of. And you need to play Dark Corners to be Jack Walters, scurrying along the streets and rooftops of Innsmouth, trying desperately to stay alive.

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.