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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.

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.

Lovecraftian Gaming....Wonderful

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: May 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First of all, I am not a shooter gamer. I am an H.P. Lovecraft fan. This and Star Wars: Battlefront 2 are my only two shooters, and although I have played many others, I don't much care for them. The sheer realism of this game, however, enchanted me. HUDless, and with extremely realistic gameplay, it brought me into the game more than any game I'd ever played. The game completely has the feel of an H.P. Lovecraft story, with many of the peices in a typical one, and with many similar themes. I couldn't have asked for a better game, either with regard to my favorite author or with regard to realistic gameplay. If more shooters were like this, the genre would be much better.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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