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Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
$9.99PC
This title is available for purchase in United States and Canada.
Also on:Xbox
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IGN Review of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
As an impressionable teenager, I greedily devoured the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. There was something about the indifferent, otherworldly nature of his horrors that really made his stories appealing. Sure, he had his tales of human depravity but, compared to the monsters of Steven King and Clive Barker, the really terrifying thing about Lovecraft's evil monsters was that they didn't take pleasure in human suffering; they were completely unconcerned with how their actions (or in some cases, their very presence) might wreak havoc on the minds and bodies of regular people.
While it makes great material for short stories, that kind of approach just doesn't work as well in movies or video games. I mean, honestly, which sounds like the more marketable, understandable movie: one where zombies get blasted apart by shotguns or one where a strange color emerges from a meteorite to turn plants to ash and people to jelly? The complete lack of a human perspective in Lovecraft's monsters makes it tough to translate it beyond the printed page.
But where so many others have failed, Headfirst Productions has succeeded with Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. They've managed to create a genuinely entertaining game that's also true to Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories. Naturally, there are some concessions here and there but even August Derleth himself would be hard-pressed to call this an unfaithful adaptation -- and not just because he's dead. Lovecraft fans will recognize that the game takes the basic plot of The Shadow Over Innsmouth and adds healthy touches of many of his other stories, mostly The Shadow Out of Time.
The game opens as our hero, Jack Walters, is called in to investigate some strange goings on at a perfectly eerie house. The game launches you right into the action, teaching you all about the controls and letting you get a feel for how the world operates. Jack has a truly bizarre experience inside the house and lands himself in the looney bin. Flash-forward to several years later and Jack finds himself out of the nuthouse but suffering from a serious case of amnesia. He's taken a job as a private eye and is called on to investigate a disappearance in the town of Innsmouth. As he begins to unravel the mystery of the disappearance, he'll also discover a truly terrifying secret behind the town itself and start to figure out just what went on in the insane asylum.
The first thing you'll notice about the game is its thoroughly convincing atmosphere. It's a bit hard to pin down just what it is that makes the game so convincingly eerie. The cumulative effect of the grainy visuals, gloomy environments, HUD-less interface, good story and encounters that are as deadly as they are frightening all work to make the game scarier and more unsettling than most horror games. I won't spoil the story by spilling any of the details here but it's full of great moments of genuine terror.
That's not to say that the game is without its faults. The overall difficultly level seems pitched a little too high, particularly when you consider that this game appeals more to Dreamfall fans than Splinter Cell junkies. The stealth sequences and shootouts are relatively merciless and it's all too easy to make a fatal mistake even in the early stages of the game.
The early levels focus on lots of sneaking around. Since the residents of Innsmouth seem none too cooperative (if not downright hostile), you'll spend a lot of time trying to find surreptitious ways to get around town. Sneaking through sewers and back alleys is pretty much the main focus of these early levels. The odd puzzle is thrown in here and there as well but most of these won't be too taxing. Soon enough, however, you'll reach a point where the game really starts trying to kill you...and it's very, very good at this.
For the next few hours you'll find yourself in one of two positions: either trying to sneak past enemies who would kill you on sight, and trying to run past enemies who have already spotted you. Unfortunately, there's usually a set solution to these problems and it's largely a matter of trial and error to find it. I genuinely dislike the "keep dying until you figure it out" approach to game design, particularly when it's used so much. At least in games like Commandos, you have the option to succeed in a variety of ways. Here you're fated to die until you figure out exactly where you need to hide or exactly how to time your jumps.
Not surprisingly, you'll spend a lot of time reloading your last save and taking another stab at it. Rather than allowing you to save whenever you want, Dark Corners of the Earth relies on checkpoints. While the spacing of checkpoints increases the tension, it can only be sustained so long. Having to replay a lengthy section four or five times after getting killed just before the next checkpoint does happen a lot in this game. Fortunately, some of the really difficult parts usually come right after a checkpoint so there's not a ton of backtracking, but it still disturbs the pace of the game a little.
Happily, none of the control problems of the Xbox version seem to be present on the PC. The mouse-aiming is still a bit swimmy but it's not all that aggravating. Manipulating the various objects in the environment is a lot more predictable and reliable with the mouse and keyboard. Still, the game's not without its problems in this regard. Mostly it has to do with manipulating small objects that are placed next to other objects. Trying to activate the bolt on a door for instance might very well lead to you opening the door by accident. It's obnoxious under most circumstances; when you've got a posse of shotgun-toting fish-heads after you, it can be deadly.
Eventually you'll get your own shotgun (or pistol or knife or submachinegun) and turn the tables on at least some of your enemies. It might relieve some stress to fire on the really nasty ones but, trust me, it does no good at all. Nevertheless, once you get your hands on some firepower, you'll find yourself less inclined to sneak around every single obstacle in front of you. Though it's clearly not designed as a run-and-gun shooter, the game does offer up plenty of opportunities to blast your way through sizable groups of enemies.
Some games have toyed with the idea of removing the heads-up display but Dark Corners of the Earth really shows how it's done. The intense atmosphere here would seriously be compromised by health bars, stealth meters, and ammo icons, so it's wise that Headfirst found a way to communicate some of the crucial information in other ways. Damage to your character is communicated through blood splotches on the screen and grunts and groans, for instance. In many ways the removal of information increases the tension of the game. Trying to remember how many bullets you have left in your gun really puts you in the character's head in a way that's just not possible in a game like Call of Duty.
The game presents the player with a seemingly complex but utterly unnecessary healing system. Every injury you sustain, from falling off a roof to being shot, injures a specific part of your body in a specific way. The wounds themselves don't always seem appropriate to the type of damage you've taken but that's really just nitpicking on my part. What really seems stupid is that the game includes four different damage types and four different healing supplies. A handy little box graph shows you which parts of your body need which supplies.
While it's neat to match up the bandages and sutures to your wounds, it seems kind of ridiculous to go through the trouble when the game will automatically apply them all for you with a simple touch of the "quick heal" key. It seems like that extra layer of management just isn't necessary. Perhaps someone at Headfirst or Bethesda simply decided that having a single button would make the whole experience easier for more casual players.
While you're worrying about your physical well-being, you might as well keep an eye on your sanity as well. I really liked this feature of the Call of Cthulhu pen-and-paper game so I'm really glad to see it included in Dark Corners of the Earth. Any traumatic experience you have or any disgusting sights you see are likely to impact your character's ability to accurately perceive the world around him. You'll start to move a little slower and the screen will start to shift and distort. It's a great visual approximation of the character's state of mind and one that has a real impact on the game. Suffering from vertigo as you try to leap from rooftop to rooftop or spacing out when an unspeakable (and certainly aggressive) monster appears really ratchets up the tension.
Dark Corners of the Earth has been in development for quite some time now and the graphics suffer for it. Though the atmosphere is completely creepy and the character models are convincing enough to elicit our sympathies, the textures and effects in the game are a bit behind the times. It's never bad enough to be distracting but the muddy textures and relatively low-poly models make the game seem older than it is.
The sounds work in conjunction with the visuals to create an unsettling atmosphere. Nevermind the grunts and groans Jack lets out when he gets shot; let's talk about the slight cracking noise you hear when he walks on a broken leg, or the cries of a father who has found his daughter ripped apart by an unspeakable horror, or the shouts of a group of hostile townsfolk as they try to break down the door to your hotel room. All of these touches add immeasurably to the drama here. The voice acting is hit or miss for me; some of it is quite good and some of it is pretty amateurish. Luckily, the score manages to hold everything together and keep the suspense rolling even during the more laughable parts of the dialogue.
©2006-04-26, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
While it makes great material for short stories, that kind of approach just doesn't work as well in movies or video games. I mean, honestly, which sounds like the more marketable, understandable movie: one where zombies get blasted apart by shotguns or one where a strange color emerges from a meteorite to turn plants to ash and people to jelly? The complete lack of a human perspective in Lovecraft's monsters makes it tough to translate it beyond the printed page.
But where so many others have failed, Headfirst Productions has succeeded with Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. They've managed to create a genuinely entertaining game that's also true to Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories. Naturally, there are some concessions here and there but even August Derleth himself would be hard-pressed to call this an unfaithful adaptation -- and not just because he's dead. Lovecraft fans will recognize that the game takes the basic plot of The Shadow Over Innsmouth and adds healthy touches of many of his other stories, mostly The Shadow Out of Time.
The game opens as our hero, Jack Walters, is called in to investigate some strange goings on at a perfectly eerie house. The game launches you right into the action, teaching you all about the controls and letting you get a feel for how the world operates. Jack has a truly bizarre experience inside the house and lands himself in the looney bin. Flash-forward to several years later and Jack finds himself out of the nuthouse but suffering from a serious case of amnesia. He's taken a job as a private eye and is called on to investigate a disappearance in the town of Innsmouth. As he begins to unravel the mystery of the disappearance, he'll also discover a truly terrifying secret behind the town itself and start to figure out just what went on in the insane asylum.
The first thing you'll notice about the game is its thoroughly convincing atmosphere. It's a bit hard to pin down just what it is that makes the game so convincingly eerie. The cumulative effect of the grainy visuals, gloomy environments, HUD-less interface, good story and encounters that are as deadly as they are frightening all work to make the game scarier and more unsettling than most horror games. I won't spoil the story by spilling any of the details here but it's full of great moments of genuine terror.
That's not to say that the game is without its faults. The overall difficultly level seems pitched a little too high, particularly when you consider that this game appeals more to Dreamfall fans than Splinter Cell junkies. The stealth sequences and shootouts are relatively merciless and it's all too easy to make a fatal mistake even in the early stages of the game.
The early levels focus on lots of sneaking around. Since the residents of Innsmouth seem none too cooperative (if not downright hostile), you'll spend a lot of time trying to find surreptitious ways to get around town. Sneaking through sewers and back alleys is pretty much the main focus of these early levels. The odd puzzle is thrown in here and there as well but most of these won't be too taxing. Soon enough, however, you'll reach a point where the game really starts trying to kill you...and it's very, very good at this.
For the next few hours you'll find yourself in one of two positions: either trying to sneak past enemies who would kill you on sight, and trying to run past enemies who have already spotted you. Unfortunately, there's usually a set solution to these problems and it's largely a matter of trial and error to find it. I genuinely dislike the "keep dying until you figure it out" approach to game design, particularly when it's used so much. At least in games like Commandos, you have the option to succeed in a variety of ways. Here you're fated to die until you figure out exactly where you need to hide or exactly how to time your jumps.
Not surprisingly, you'll spend a lot of time reloading your last save and taking another stab at it. Rather than allowing you to save whenever you want, Dark Corners of the Earth relies on checkpoints. While the spacing of checkpoints increases the tension, it can only be sustained so long. Having to replay a lengthy section four or five times after getting killed just before the next checkpoint does happen a lot in this game. Fortunately, some of the really difficult parts usually come right after a checkpoint so there's not a ton of backtracking, but it still disturbs the pace of the game a little.
Happily, none of the control problems of the Xbox version seem to be present on the PC. The mouse-aiming is still a bit swimmy but it's not all that aggravating. Manipulating the various objects in the environment is a lot more predictable and reliable with the mouse and keyboard. Still, the game's not without its problems in this regard. Mostly it has to do with manipulating small objects that are placed next to other objects. Trying to activate the bolt on a door for instance might very well lead to you opening the door by accident. It's obnoxious under most circumstances; when you've got a posse of shotgun-toting fish-heads after you, it can be deadly.
Eventually you'll get your own shotgun (or pistol or knife or submachinegun) and turn the tables on at least some of your enemies. It might relieve some stress to fire on the really nasty ones but, trust me, it does no good at all. Nevertheless, once you get your hands on some firepower, you'll find yourself less inclined to sneak around every single obstacle in front of you. Though it's clearly not designed as a run-and-gun shooter, the game does offer up plenty of opportunities to blast your way through sizable groups of enemies.
Some games have toyed with the idea of removing the heads-up display but Dark Corners of the Earth really shows how it's done. The intense atmosphere here would seriously be compromised by health bars, stealth meters, and ammo icons, so it's wise that Headfirst found a way to communicate some of the crucial information in other ways. Damage to your character is communicated through blood splotches on the screen and grunts and groans, for instance. In many ways the removal of information increases the tension of the game. Trying to remember how many bullets you have left in your gun really puts you in the character's head in a way that's just not possible in a game like Call of Duty.
The game presents the player with a seemingly complex but utterly unnecessary healing system. Every injury you sustain, from falling off a roof to being shot, injures a specific part of your body in a specific way. The wounds themselves don't always seem appropriate to the type of damage you've taken but that's really just nitpicking on my part. What really seems stupid is that the game includes four different damage types and four different healing supplies. A handy little box graph shows you which parts of your body need which supplies.
While it's neat to match up the bandages and sutures to your wounds, it seems kind of ridiculous to go through the trouble when the game will automatically apply them all for you with a simple touch of the "quick heal" key. It seems like that extra layer of management just isn't necessary. Perhaps someone at Headfirst or Bethesda simply decided that having a single button would make the whole experience easier for more casual players.
While you're worrying about your physical well-being, you might as well keep an eye on your sanity as well. I really liked this feature of the Call of Cthulhu pen-and-paper game so I'm really glad to see it included in Dark Corners of the Earth. Any traumatic experience you have or any disgusting sights you see are likely to impact your character's ability to accurately perceive the world around him. You'll start to move a little slower and the screen will start to shift and distort. It's a great visual approximation of the character's state of mind and one that has a real impact on the game. Suffering from vertigo as you try to leap from rooftop to rooftop or spacing out when an unspeakable (and certainly aggressive) monster appears really ratchets up the tension.
Dark Corners of the Earth has been in development for quite some time now and the graphics suffer for it. Though the atmosphere is completely creepy and the character models are convincing enough to elicit our sympathies, the textures and effects in the game are a bit behind the times. It's never bad enough to be distracting but the muddy textures and relatively low-poly models make the game seem older than it is.
The sounds work in conjunction with the visuals to create an unsettling atmosphere. Nevermind the grunts and groans Jack lets out when he gets shot; let's talk about the slight cracking noise you hear when he walks on a broken leg, or the cries of a father who has found his daughter ripped apart by an unspeakable horror, or the shouts of a group of hostile townsfolk as they try to break down the door to your hotel room. All of these touches add immeasurably to the drama here. The voice acting is hit or miss for me; some of it is quite good and some of it is pretty amateurish. Luckily, the score manages to hold everything together and keep the suspense rolling even during the more laughable parts of the dialogue.
©2006-04-26, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved