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great survival game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

For the price it is a great survival and adventure game.Plays well on xbox 360 too.

All that's going for this game is its Lovecraft roots.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I saw an ad for this game in an old issue of Game Informer. They advertised First Person action, insanity meter, and of course Cthulhu. I was thinking Doom when I read First Person, Eternal Darkness when I read insanity meter, and "Thank the gods, they finally made a H.P. Lovecraft game!" when I saw the title. All right, turns out to be 2 strikes and one ball. The first person action, well there really isn't any. You spend most of your time running away from creepy villagers, and not in the fun way like in RE4. The insanity meter is pretty bad, no mind-blowing hallucinations like in Eternal Darkness, just a bunch of pounding and blurred vision. Their concept of going insane is my idea of a DWI stop. You really can't screw up the story of Cthulhu, so that bit was all right but done very sloppy. It was as if they had to change the storyline to make the game play better, but really they ruined up the only thing they had going from the start. The details are great and I have spoken with others who absolutely adore the game. A warning to those who aren't into H.P. Lovecraft, you will most likely hate this title. Imagine playing through Silent Hill without getting your first weapon until you're in the hospital. Sounds hard right, yeah well this game is ridiculous when it comes to survival.

oh my gosh

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

phenominal game. like the other guy, i am about 21 percent through the game but i found the chase exhilerating, like no other in any game. the blurryness is from your panic and if you do well, you won't be very blurry but if you keep looking at the guys breaking down doors that you lock behind you, or get shot a couple times, it goes downhill fast, but that is what makes it so intense. i wish they made more games like this where you actually do things and flesh out the story before going in guns blazing (like half life 1). overall one of a kind game and actually pretty scary and intene. I don't even find games like resident evil or silent hill 2 to be scary or intense like this. hell of a game with great graphics on my 360 and great surround sound with an enthralling storyline and detailed world. very good for a mature gamer who has other games like devil may cry and halo to satisfy my bloodlust.

Probably the most Lovecraftian game ever to be made

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 15, 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 have got to be kidding me!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

All these people rating this game so low! Are you serious? This is the greatest horror game I have ever played. The atmosphere is amazing and it has so many intense moments. Everyone is complaining about how "difficult" and "unfair" it is. I completed the "Attack of the Fishmen" part (the one everyone seems to complain about) after three tries! Just be patient when playing this game. Some people are just too used to other types of games. That's one of the reasons why I love this game, you can't just rush through a level or mission, you need to take your time and study the environment. Everyone is going to disagree with me, but this game, in my opinion, is much better than any "Resident Evil" game or anything else. Also, I am a fan of H.P. Lovecraft's stories, and it helps to be a little familiar with some of the things in the game (mainly "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and some of "The Call of Cthulhu" are partly what this game is based on). The length is great, and it is cool how you have no weapons until almost the middle of the storyline. I agree, it is a fairly difficult game, but you won't have too many problems if you just take your time and also look for help online (I needed walkthrough help a few times).

Pretty good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: February 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Ill admit, im not to big into mystery games and solving puzzles. But for some reason, this game kept my interest, and it still does, because I havnt beaten it yet.Im planning on succsefully completing this game although I have been using alot of cheats.

Wah!!!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: July 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Being a huge H.P.L. fan, I was hyped beyond all compare when they announced the release of this game...ABOUT 6 YEARS AGO!

Anyway, after hearing date push-back news for years, I gave up. Then, one day at Bookman's I see it used for 19 bucks!! I think "SCORE".

I should have known that when I tried to tell the sales person the name of the game so he could take it out of the locked cabinet and while pronouncing it, I spit all over his face and he punched me in the eye, that I should leave this one alone.

Of course, I have to do eveything the hard way, I ran home with it...then wondered why I didn't drive.....oh well.

The game sticks really close to the HPL stories and has nice, super-creepy visual scenery, but it plays about like games from the early days of playstation. the whole time I played it, I wondered, "where's all the neato, high-speed things they kept talking about, like non-track, and all the interactive things that don't exist?"

Trying to get past the Innsmouth folk was a nightmare, and caused my game controller to riccochet off of every wall in the house. there was other spots that were equally hard, but i don't want to ruin the game for others.

I guess I could have just said, "okay, if your a gamer that loves HPL stories, try it out", but I drank too much coffee today, so I felt I had to ramble.

Lovecraftian fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: July 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Those who ever dreamed of experiencing the dark and fantastic world of Lovecraft will rejoice that Call of Cthulhu is a game that fairly captures that world.

Much like the writer's long list of stories, in this game you start as a normal human being whose life takes a subtle, but very absolute descent into madness. You assume the role of Jack Walter, a 1920s Private Detective who is summoned to a house by the local authorities of Arkham. The house is the dwelling of an infamous cult that has gone too far in their religious practice and are unwilling to cooperate with the authorities until they talk to you.

You are committed to an asylum after your body was recovered from the house, being diagnosed with schizophrenia. Six years later, you abruptly recover from your mental absence and are released from the asylum's care. Having no memory of the events that occurred within that household or of your hospitalization, you try to discover for yourself what caused your sudden illness by delving into books which you yourself purchased while you were not yourself. But the answers you seek sure enough find you when you receive a mysterious phone call by a Mr. Anderson, who wants you to investigate a missing person's case in the infamous seaport town of Innsmouth.

This fateful telephone call is what starts you on a long and dangerous ride into earth's remotest history and darkest corners, where you will meet the Things from that history and see firsthand what Lovecraft so often referred to as, "the unimaginable."

One of the greatest aspects to the game is its number of unique locations and settings. The Occult house. The town of Innsmouth. A refinery. The Marsh dwelling. Devil's Reef. And eventually the underwater city where the prison of the flying Polyps reside (people who have read the stories would know what I am talking about). You even embark on a sea voyage on a US Military ship.

Stealth is used when you are weaponless, and you often times are, while at the same time you can take a more direct approach once you have obtained numerous guns, including a Tommy Gun. People have complained about difficulty aiming in this game since there is no crosshair to assist you, but I found the absence of a crosshair and a lifeline obstructing my vision actually made the game more immersive and believable.

Another feature, or a mistake depending on who you read from, is the Insanity Meter. The more pressure or horrific events you encounter affects Jack's mental stability, as it would anyone. The way the game attempts to portray mental instability is by blurring your vision, waving the screen, magnifying objects, heavy panting, mumbling to yourself and slowing down all physical motion. A great idea, but even a permissive player will object to the way a mentally unstable Jack Walter can affect game play. The panting and mumbling to yourself in panic is good, but I don't think your vision should be impaired or your actions slowed. Perhaps if he screamed, or even laughed in his moments of extreme peril...will surely get the message across that he is being driven completely insane. And another thing extremely disturbing about this whole concept is after you have escaped the horrors one moment, the next moment you seem totally calm and ordinary. You go from an uncontrolled state of frantic mumbling and panting to a normal state of composure, just because you activated a talk sequence with another character in the game.

Some parts of the game have an unlimited supply of enemies, namely the refinery, which makes elaborate puzzle solving and a thorough search of large levels tedious. I would have also liked to see my fallen enemies to remain fallen, not just disappear.

Graphics are moderate.

But the biggest fault the game has is with its countless glitches. After some online research I've come to learn that these glitches are prevalent in both the Xbox and the Computer version. Most are activated when you do not do game puzzles in a correct sequence and are fixed simply by reloading your last save. But there is one glitch that may require you to restart the game. I encountered it on the chapter, "A Dangerous Voyage." What it dose is freeze up the moment you reach a certain point in the chapter. I asked technical support on the game's official website for a remedy to the problem and of course they did not reply. The only sure way to avoid this glitch is to not save on the chapter until you have successfully entered the Captain's quarters. If you should encounter the glitch before the Captain's Quarters is infiltrated, you are inclined to reload your last save in the previous chapter and fight your way back up to that point. If ever you save on the corrupted chapter before surpassing the glitch, you will literally have to restart the game or reload a secondary save file, because reloading a saved game on that corrupted chapter will not correct the glitch, because the save file itself is corrupted! What I did is save a game right after the Captain's Quarters have been infiltrated on a separate file should I encounter that glitch again during another play through.

However much the game's numerous faults interrupt the experience, the Lovecraftian authenticity that this game has managed to savor cannot be denied and therefore remains to be one of greatest horror games ever made and I look forward to playing the two more expected to follow.

"Primal myth and modern illusion joined in their assumption that mankind is only one--if not least--of the highly evolved and dominant races of this planet's long and largely unknown career. Things of inconceivable shape, they implied, had reared towers to the sky and delved into every secret of nature before the first amphibian forbear of man had crawled out of the hot sea three hundred million years ago."

My favorite quotation among the many I come to like from his stories.

How do you pronounce that?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: June 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I recently bought this game used, after trading in my copy of the -less-than-two-weeks-old copy of Astonishia Story for PSP (don't f***ing buy that tripe; wait for Valkyrie Profile), I picked this up. I have been intrigued by the premise for a while, but was timid due to the overwhelming number of lackluster titles currently available. Feeling like taking a chance, I decided to bite the bullet.

Overall, this game is pretty okay. It's not outstanding in any sense, but it does the trick. I'm only 21% of the way through the game, and have already picked out a couple of gripes.

First off, it's touted as a first person shooter. I'm almost a quarter of the way through a game, and have yet to find a gun or any form of melee weapon. That's not to say that there haven't been tense moments in the game, but if there's not much shooting, why call it a shooter? This title would have been much better had the developers adopted more of a third-person perspective a la Silent Hill or Resident Evil.

Second off, and the biggest gripe thus far, THE CONTROLS SUCK. Again, if it was a third-person view, it would be a metric buttload easier to judge some of the jumps you have to make. In one particular chase scene you have to hop out of windows, onto balconies, and across alleyways in order to avoid hatchet- and shotgun-wielding bloodthirsty cultists. I plummeted to my demise numerous times before I finally passed that particular chapter.

It's not all bad however. Call Of Cthulhu is definitely atmospheric enough to hold the stigma of a survival-horror game. It's dark and brooding, and the character design I have encountered thus far has only made the in-game world that much more creepy. The storyline is at least intriguing enough to keep one interested...

Overall, I'm glad I took the chance with this game. I have a ways to go, but I'm glad.

had potential

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: June 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I gave up on this during the chase scene when those guys were chasing you in the hotel due to slow controls, blurry screens and slow movement. Very annoying, this game should have been alot better.

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