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Your CoC gateway drug

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 23 / 25
Date: November 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I sincerely hope anyone who has never played the Call of Cthulhu RPG or read any Lovecraft will give this game a shot. You've all heard of Cthulhu by now and may not know what the Cthulhu mythos means. This is a great introduction. It's incredibly faithful to the original Lovecraft texts and to the RPG rules. So if you LIKE CoC:DCotE video/PC game, you should move on to buying the CoC RPG or going to the Chaosium (publisher of CoC RPG) website and downloading the free quickstart rules and giving it a whirl.

Someone said that you can't skip cut scenes which is untrue. Backspace on your PC keyboard will skip any of those long cut scenes. You can do it on XBox, too.

Some people out in the community have had technical problems with the game. These issues for the PC will never be fixed/patched as Headfirst, the developer of CoC:DCotE, went under and Bethesda, the publisher, will not hire anyone to fix the problems. I play the PC version and I have had only a few problems. In one scene you're supposed to shoot at blue lights; but my video card on my laptop isn't powerful, so the lights didn't show up. Luckily, the community for this game is currently very strong, even after 5 months of release. You can download saved games to help you get past sections that are too difficult or that you can't get past or technical reasons (see my blue light example above). One person at the Bethesda user forums has even offered to get you a custom saved game to get you past the section you're stuck on for free; just email him.

There is a scary factor to the game, but it cheats at this--it will cut to something scary and make a loud noise. That's fine. I was scared along the way, although nothing was as originally scary as the hotel level in Vampire: Bloodlines. The game is still dark and creepy and the architecture, lighting, weather effects, etc. do a lot to put you in a horror mood.

The gameplay isn't as bad as everyone says. It's just that the latter levels require more shooting which makes it less Lovecraftian. However, the game still requires you to do a lot of investigation (as done in the stories) and your character gives you lots of feedback so you aren't searching every pixel on the screen ("Just some old papers. It's not important.") And I had an absolute blast with the game as-is--not too much combat, not too much puzzle-solving. I'd consider myself an average-competent gamer and I found that level 2 difficulty out of 4 was just fine for me and the puzzles weren't too difficult. If you find them hard, there are walkthroughs available on the web.

Your character gives you feedback based on his mental state. If he's had a shot of morphine, the screen gets blurry. He's afraid of heights, so you'll get vertigo when you look down a drop and will need to look up for a few seconds to get rid of it. If he's terrified, the screen will start distorting as he loses his sanity. If he's bleeding to death, the screen will go black and white as he loses blood. If he's poisoned, there is a green film on the edges of the screen. It's all very cool.

Combat is neat too. No heads-up reticles to ruin the mood. What you see down the barrel of the gun in front of you is what you hit. And no ammo count either. You have to do that yourself. I like that; it adds to the realism. Also, if you hold the gun in the aimed position for too long your hands start getting tired and wobbling, making it harder to hit something. Very neat!

In conclusion, give CoC a shot and judge for yourself. Even if the game isn't that original (I happen to think it is), you will at least get the best multimedia presentation of Lovecraft Country out there.

Will they never learn?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 31 / 43
Date: November 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Note to game developers: when will you realize that NO ONE on this God's green earth likes to be forced to play the same sequence over and over and over? That NO ONE enjoys to watch un-skippable cinematics over and over and over? That NO ONE likes to be THIS close to finishing a chapter just to get killed two steps short of a "save point" and have to start from the beginning?

What can I say, I'm very disappointed and frustrated. Such a great game in terms of atmosphere, audio-visual effects, characters and story. And yet the gameplay, for the lack of a better word, stinks. You can't save your progress unless you click on a special save icon (and those things are not at all plentiful and not always accessible). You can't get analysis of an item unless it's in the middle of your monitor. You can't skip certain cinematics. There's no crosshair, and no way to aim your weapons, so unless a character is right in front of your face, you're shooting blind - and missing. Healing yourself is a loooong and drawn out process and is easily interrupted, which pretty much eliminates being able to heal yourself during combat.

I can understand that all of the above is supposed to give the game a "reality" effect, the "being-there" feel. And it would have worked... if you didn't have to feel forced to replay parts of the game a hundred times in a row. That's when it stops serving the gamer's experience and becomes incredibly frustrating. Or, as it was in my case, makes the gamer give up on the game.

It makes me especially frustrated to have said all this, because "Call Of Cthulhu" IS a good game in all other respects. I WANT to play it, but I simply have neither the nerves nor the time for nonsense that comes with playing it. Some parts were completely engrossing and utterly enjoyable, particularly the beginning two levels. But after that, certain parts are simply unplayable. It's a shame when a good game has to go down a garbage shoot because of poor gameplay design.

Intense well-written game, hate the game play

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 17 / 21
Date: May 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Featuring an intense storyline, the game boasts a well designed interface (though seemingly older technology) and involved first-person perspective - the use of colors, fading, and distorted vision (such as vertigo and "fear shakes") to heighten the "being there" feeling of the player. The biggest problem I have with the game deals with the fast-thinking and forced-action gameplay. Often, you (as the player) are required to react quickly and often for what I consider an extended period of time. With absolutely no room for error (and no way to continually save your progress), you find yourself clumsily groping around to figure out where to go or what to do; this groping about is infrequently intuitive. And if you don't figure out what to do quickly, so sorry, start over from the beginning of that scene. The other big problem I have is the save-game system. You can only save when you find the same-game icons. So, if you want to save, you have to hope that you didn't lose access to the last one (or hope that another one is coming up). While this style of game play may highly appeal to some, to me it was a dud.

Frustrating!!! Adventure aspect gets ruined by forced timed action sequences.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 20 / 27
Date: December 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

"You Are Dead". You will see this screen over and over and over again. You can't skip the many cutscenes so you will have to sit through the same ones over and over again. You can't save so you have that to add to the frustration.

In only the second level of this game called "Attack Of The Fishmen" you will want to hurl this game straight into the trashcan! So very frustrating. You are forced to quickly lock doors behind you in several spots, open windows, and make perfect jumps while being chased. You must do all this without any slight error in timing at all. There are no saves in this game, except for checkpoints in other areas, so you will repeat these types of scenes over and over and over.

This game also has a strange feature that you can't turn off in the options. The main character evidently has a panic attack constantly which makes the sceen constantly go blurry with a loud beating heartbeat. This blurriness makes it down right impossible sometimes to make the many jumps required. It also makes you wonder if this guy chose the right career path or maybe he left his blood pressure meds at home. It is very distracting!

The game is also very linear with cutscene after cutscene. There are so many cutscenes it feels like you are watching a movie sometimes instead of playing a game. The forced timed action sequences should never be in a game without a proper save function.

The sort of game I've been wishing for for a very long time

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: September 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have both good things and bad to say about this game, so I want to make sure you get the right idea: I highly recommend Call of Cthulhu, Dark Corners of the Earth. In spite of the bad things, I loved it, and wished I could simply play it straight through with out pause for rest or real life. For a long time now, I've wished for a game that had challenging puzzles like Myst, but came in a 3D environment and also contained a risk of violence, combat, and death. Being a horror junky, I've also been in search of a game that was genuinely frightening. Call of Cthulhu was both. It had a great mix of challenging puzzles and action sequences, and there were times when I was so scared I had to remind myself it was just a game. The story is great, world interaction is pretty good, and the lack of any heads-up display adds a new element of realism. The fact that you can only save when near certain "magic" symbols (or when the game autosaves at a key point) was a mixed bag. It made the stakes higher, and the victories sweeter, but sometimes it got really tedious revisiting 14 parts of a particular sequence because you kept flubbing the 15th part.
The sound effects and music were awesome, and the graphics and modeling were stellar. Environmentals like rain and fog were also pretty well done, and the worlds were intricate and intriguing
Also intriguing was the less abstract way in which damage and healing are handled (you may find yourself having to treat a broken arm or leg with a splint, for example, and if you leave a major wound untended for too long, you might bleed to death).

Be prepared for some VERY frustrating (sometimes idiotic) drawbacks. Also, be warned: the weapon and combat engine is rather poor compared to the rest of the game. Bullets sometimes pass through things they should hit, hits dont always do the damage you expect, and all the terestrial guns are about the same in terms of range vs accuracy/damage (except the tommygun, which is next to useless). It's not HORRIBLE, per say, but you shouldn't buy this game if that's your main interest; Quake 4 would probably serve you better there.

For these reasons, the game only got four stars. It's a totally awesome puzzle game with a great horror element, but it looks like the programmers might have slacked off a bit in some areas.

-Z

Excellent game for horror fans

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: May 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am a horror game fan. I have played a lot of horror games and yet I still think this game is exceptional among this genre. There are very few games that can make me feel the kind of desperation and isolation as this game does. As I run for my life, I really feel the helplessness that the protagonist would feel in that situation. Very few games can make I feel this way, not even Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill series. If you are a fan of this genre you really should give this game a try. However, this game is so hard that I have to set the difficulty level to easiest, and yet I can just barely survive. The puzzles are a lot of fun too, if you are used to playing adventure games, you shouldn't have any problem with the puzzles. However, it may be hard for gamers who are not used to playing adventure games.

Could have been game of the year but.....

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: August 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Here is the simple low down on this game. It's one of the best horror games ever made, and follows the Lovecraft Mythos really well. Fun and creepy.
Bad news, it has 1 million bugs. No matter how nice your computer is, there is a decent chance that at some point in this game it'll bug up and you won't be able to finish it. And the company doesn't intend on releasing any patches, ever. 5 stars for the game, 1 star for the programing.

Did H.P. Lovecraft ever dream of this?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: October 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

It's quite signifigant when a video/computer game is made on the sole basis of a work of fiction, written over 80 years ago. Perhaps a bit daring, Bethesda Softworks delves into the dark creations of H.P. Lovecraft to conceive and construct a FP/survival-horror title worthy to the enigmatic name of Cthulhu.

However, the question is whether or not the game is, in fact, able to do justice to the sea creature's prestige.

Dark Corners of the Earth is a detective/action game, focusing on puzzle-solving, espionage, and running for your life. The atmosphere is dark and foreboding, and the story does indeed follow that of Lovecraft's original Cthulhu Mythos (namely, the majority of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", and a touch of the actual "The Call Of Cthulhu). The game is constructed in a way to shift between slow, foreboding gameplay, and fast and frantic scrambling. Struggling against both humans and monsters, players unravel a supernatural tale that challenges their sanity and seeks to ensnare it within the clutches of manic insanity.

That, at least, is the hype.
To point out most of the potential errors of the game, I personally find it to be less scary than other games of the same genre (Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Doom come readilly to mind), for despite plenty of disturbing imagery and encounters with both human and inhuman hostiles, there never truly exists a dread-filled feeling of "I-gotta-get-away/kill-it." Likewise, the attempted feel of urgency (when you're being chased by multiple enemies) eventually comes across as unwanted.

Concerning the gameplay, there is an unevern distribution of ups and downs. For one, the healing system (using different methods - bandages, stitches, splints, etc. - to heal different wounds) is cool, but the rest of the scheme is generally old-hat: save by star-points, wield short/long-range weapons, utilize items to create effects. Not incredibly innovative, the game does however take credit for the unique panic/sanity system, which, according to the situation, will drive the player-controlled character into delusions and other psycho-induced effects...sadly, though this is meant to heighten the playing experience, it comes across largely as a hindrance, often destroying any chance that you have of escaping a dangerous situation (ex.: blurred or obscured vision clouds an escape-way). The weapon system is realistic, which essentially plays against you, but the enemy AI leaves a lot to be desired in terms of common sense and reaction to stimuli.

The game's story is its strongest asset, which is accompanied with surprisingly-good voice acting and decent (if outdated) graphics.
Alas, this game gains much of its value from the Cthulhu name, and would undoubtedly be rated lower had it been an original title.
Simply-said, this game lacks a decisive original touch to distinguish it from the many other titles boasting many of the same features. The game falls short on many of its hyped aspects, and even though it may be a fun romp during the first-time-through, there's not much to be gained by it, other than some knowledge on the works of H.P. Lovecraft (for which you'd be better off picking up the book).

agree with previous reviews - designers mar a potentially 5 star game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: January 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

look I will make it short-the story is well written, graphics are OK, puzzles almost always make sense resulting in a great atmosphere for this horror game. What takes 2 stars off its ranking is asinine game design making fights overly punishing and frustrating and the game is also way too long. Either monkeys were used as testers or the designers do not give a XXmn about players enjoying their moneys worth. I feel cheated that I won`t be able to finish the game after investing 15 plus hours because of bad game design. I hope designers got paid accordingly. Totally unacceptable

Probably the most Lovecraftian game ever to be made

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
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)

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