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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.

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.

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.

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!

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)

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.

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)

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.

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