Below are user reviews of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and on the right are links to professionally written reviews.
The summary of review scores shows the distribution of scores given by the professional reviewers for Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
Column height indicates the number of reviews with a score within the range shown at the bottom of the column.
Higher scores (columns further towards the right) are better.
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User Reviews (1 - 11 of 21)
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you love CTHULHU? you know you need this...
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User
if you've played any previous call of cthulhu games, you know what it's all about. fear, ancient evil, your eventual insanity. no happy endings here. another cthulhu-themed classic.
Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners Of The Earth
4
Rating: 4,
Useful: 0 / 7
Date: January 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User
This is great game because it visually brings the dark and gloomy world of the 1920's CoC world to life so well. The story line is orginal and has many surprises for the player. The user interface is not complex and can be mastered in a short time by most players. The only detractors of the game is that it takes a relitively short time to complete and has limited replay value. If you love CoC it's a must buy.
if you are a true Lovecraft fan you'll love it
4
Rating: 4,
Useful: 0 / 2
Date: June 26, 2007
Author: Amazon User
Very good game, the story is great and those who are haedcore fans of Lovecraft will love it, I just wish it had the option to play on third person view, FPS are so 1990 ;)
Probably the most Lovecraftian game ever to be made
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 0 / 1
Date: June 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User
I waited years and years for this game to come out, checking in on the forum belonging to the now vanished company again and again for news about this game based on the literary works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the well-known author of horror and weird tales in the early 1900's. To make a long story short, through the work of a single individual with helpers, the game finally came out AFTER the company was gone, and that is the reason for the few bugs remaining in the game (there might be an update available by now, I don't know). There is though help available for how to avoid the bugs, and thereby enable you to enjoy this magnificent game. The story is mostly based on "The Shadow of Innsmouth", a classic tale of degeneration and despair, and one of my 3 personal favourites in the HPL canon.
The pc-game really is an electronic version of the classic pen & paper RPG "The Call of Cthulhu", and I enjoyed every second of it to the fullest. You will crawl and run and sneak around investigating why someone is trying to kill you in Innsmouth, what happened to a missing grocery clerk and basically what is really going on in and around town, with all kinds of scary incidents occurring. Basically, if you've read the tale, you'll now play it. The game is excellently made, and if they had only made more games so true to HPL's fantastic tales, I would be a much happier man.
The few bugs in the game are easy to crack, and once you've done this, you'll have on your hands a game that is almost right-along up there with "Planescape : Torment" in depth and story.
(I played the PC version)
Supermodel with Head-Lice
3
Rating: 3,
Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User
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.
Not so much. Totally linear plot and action. Boring.
2
Rating: 2,
Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User
On the upside, it is very Lovecraftian. Original graphics. But, Not much investigating going on. No need to read clues, just start shooting the badguys, open doors, pull levers to solve the same gay puzzles on every other game, and on and on an on without any development in the plot. Innsmouth is less like a town, and more like a straight alley. Start here, do this, then go here, then do this, and only afterward can you do the next thing, which is just like the last thing you did, and shoot up all the citizens of Innsmouth. The initial getaway level is decent. The citizens are breaking in, and you go room to room and out the window and across rooftops, but after that the whole game is downhill. I recommend Clive Barker's "Undying." instead. It's not very investigative either, but it feels like more of an adventure, and its just as creepy.
Terrifying, but awe-inspiring
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 3 / 6
Date: June 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User
This is a whole lot of fun. The sanitye effects work really well and the use of a grainy film effect is really good. There are many easter eggs, try peering in through windows in Innsmouth, even the ones by the floor, and you'll sometimes get a shock. It's nerve-wracking and the combat isn't dodgy like you'd expect from a largely stealth adventure. Yes, there are hard parts but not as difficult as in certain other games, so frustration isn't inevitable.
The main problem was rather stupid human AI. A shame that sometimes you'll shoot them and they won't notice or you alert two and they spin around, never getting over glimpsing you because one continuously fires the shotgun ever so often.
But oh well, such occurences are rare and the game as a whole is surely a work of art.
waste of money
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User
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.
Best Cthulhu Game ever
5
Rating: 5,
Useful: 3 / 4
Date: March 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User
I loved this game despite the annoying save feature and the frustrating time sequences. It was still the best HP LOvecraft based game ever made. I was so looking forward to the 2 sequels hoping that slight improvements would have made a perfect game. Now the company is no more! That sucks!
Poorly designed
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 5 / 8
Date: July 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User
This game is simply unplayable. The lack of an in-game save, combined with multiple run-and-close-the-doors-behind-you scenes makes it frustrating, repetitive, and boring in places. Scenes which would otherwise be immersive are rendered annoying as they play out over and over again until you make it to the next save point.
The controls are loose, and objects in the world are difficult to interact with unless you can put them exactly in the center of the screen before hitting the action key. Sanity effects are good sometimes, but are often irritating -- your character gets slower whenever he needs to be fast, and can't see anything whenever he needs to shoot.
Even all this would be forgivable for the story. I have long lamented the lack of story-based games, and for that I kept playing long after the gameplay made me sick.
I finally stopped playing when I encountered a third game-scripting bug that made it impossible to progress. I found ways around the first two in a walkthrough, but now, unable to find a solution except to load an older savegame and hope, I have given up. This game is going directly into the trash.
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