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> Results: Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners Of The Earth
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We got out of the car in a cold blustery rain. I made dinner while the game's case sat in the middle of the coffee table and the kids walked around it with quizzical eyes but they didn't actually touch it. I started a fire in the fireplace and made some tea. The gang got to bed, and the storm outside really got going. I plugged in the game and settled in on the couch, looking at the loading screen. A big gust of wind rattled the flue and the branches of the oak tree lash at the window right behind me. I just about jump out of my skin. Perfect.
You play Jack Walters, a private eye back in the roaring 20's. You've been having a run of good luck on your cases. A buddy on the force calls you in to help them figure out exactly what's going on with a house full of psycho cultists. You go through the house, trying to get your bearings and figure out what's going on. The occupants of the house start shooting at the cops outside, but you're unarmed and things are really weird. You uncover something in there that day, but in the process got sucked into something so horrible that you loose your mind. Flash forward six years later. You're doing much better. Can't remember a thing about it but you're okay now and just trying to get back on the beat. A missing persons case in a dingy seaside town lands on your desk and after a phone call you decide to take it. But this case turns out to be a whole lot more than you bargained for. They didn't go for the cheap and easy route to horror. There's plenty of blood and nastiness, don't get me wrong, but they don't bathe the thing in red pixels. This isn't Resident Evil or Doom. There's no big shattering blow, no huge events. As you proceed there's a slow realization that something really really wrong is getting ready to happen. The dread builds over the course of the game as you see horrible thing after horrible thing, but somehow it never seems to lessen. You know it's just going to get worse. And then it does. This is not a shooter. You don't just run around mowing through hordes of undead whatevers. You're a normal human guy faced with an immortal evil from beyond the stars, and you don't even start with a gun. You don't get one for quite a while. In the beginning the game concentrates on you figuring out what exactly is going on here and is mostly puzzle and discovery. Even once you are armed and in the thick of it, there's a lot of thinking and sneaking and hiding. You don't just open up on stuff and hope you live through it. Not if you want to live through it, anyways. And there's several sections of "run for your life" that raise your pulse to the point that it should qualify as cardio-vascular exercise.  The atmosphere is the very best part of this game. It's not a graphic power-house. The music is low and the ambient sound cues realistic. The whole game feels a lot like those sepia-toned, fingerprinted illustrations in a library edition of an old book. You know which ones I mean. The ones covered with dust and that strange stiff fabric cover in a color that has no name. You look them up and find the catalog shows no one has checked out since 1923. The pages are ivory and tattered. There are faded notes in smudged pencil here and there that you can't quite read. The game really brings that sort of feeling alive. Things aren't clear - the whole place is dirty and faded and dingy and sometimes you can't see what's coming at you. In the opening sequence of the game, there's a disclaimer that there will be effects on the controls and display that are not a reflection on your Xbox, or your sanity. It's worded kind of oddly, and you don't think about it much until later on in the game. As Jack goes through his story he sees all sorts of traumatic things. And as he does, his sanity starts to slip. In the game, you start to see things and hear things. As time goes on and the story gets more intense it gets worse. You won't be able to tell for sure if the monsters are real or just in your head. The controller will start to work backwards. You start to shake hard enough you can hardly aim and your controller will vibrate. This is an incredibly cool mechanic, and it brings the books to life in a way I was afraid would be lost in the game. After a while you start looking at your controller and wonder if the plastic looks a little like some unnamably awful substance. Maybe you've just picked up the new version of the Necromicon.  You're hanging onto the thin edge of sanity. By the end you don't know if that strange sound is a bug in the game, or if you're really loosing your mind. The whole experience is so subtle you just don't know what you're seeing. The only thing I ran into for certain was an absolutely huge load at the very beginning of the game, but from there on out it runs quite quickly. I loved it, but if you're expecting a run-and-gun like some of the sites have categorized it I can see where some people might not like it. After playing it through I have to believe that somewhere H.P. Lovecraft himself is smiling. Or maybe someone just had that little eldrich shiver run down their spine from having a ghost put down the pen and leave the room.... 
If you haven't read any Lovecraft, you're going to be kind of confused. The story contains elements from many of his works, but sort of sticks to the events in "The Shadow over Innsmouth".
If you've read any Lovecraft, you probably already know better than to have young kids play this game. It's purposely trying to drive your character crazy. Your character tries to hang himself in between the first section and the main game. There's a scene where you talk to a little girl and you try to talk to her parents but her daddy isn't home and her mother has to be kept locked in the attic. Why? The little girl tells you quite matter-of-factly, "She bites." Later on, she claws her daughter to death right in front of you. I don't want to spoil, but it gets worse from there. My eighteen year old eldest has been playing this along with me, and he's starting to think this maybe wasn't a good idea. Besides, most younger kids really aren't going to want to play it. The puzzle elements, especially in the beginning, can be very difficult and if you're just out to have some fun this game just isn't. There are life-and-death puzzles all over and not getting them solved means death. It's work to figure things out, and if you don't keep close track of what's going on you'll end up dead and not even know why. There are multiple difficulty levels, but even the easiest is no joke. If your child likes current horror films, they're probably not going to like this either. The pace is slow and there's just a building sense of horror rather than the "Ewwww, GROSSS!!!!" moment. The game is rated M. I'd stick with that. The original materials are bloody and creepy. The game is bloody and creepy as all get out. If you want a thinking man's sort of scary, I'd definately get this one. Just don't play it at night, by firelight, with the wind howling. That w as my mistake. Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Browse Amazon.com's selection of "Cthulhu" themed games Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners Of The Earth |
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