Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

"What should have been incredible was cut down to average..."

Graphics: We had been waiting a long time for this game. Early rumors were that it would revolutionize Xbox graphics, and be a mile stone. Headfirst promised interactive levels and a generation hopping lighting engine. None of this became reality, however, as the modest budget and deadline issues caused an early release.

The games color pallet is brown and gray, with extremely low resolution sky boxes and very linear levels Paired with the architecture of Innsmouth the whole visual package is not what was expected OR promised. The town isn't very run down, just old. It looks like an old port city well maintained with intact stone buildings, wondrous architecture for some churches and cobble stone roads. All of this is delivered without the slightest real time lighting where games like Devil May Cry and Doom 3 had these features and were released way before DCOTE. Not to be completely negative, character models and mouth movements were way ahead of their time on the Xbox and were genuinely creepy to look at and listen to

There isn't much to say about the art direction or graphics. Very bare lighting, linear levels, under-furnished housing covered in sometimes hundreds of repeated paintings on the wall. You won't feel convinced you're in the 30's, as the architecture is very under educated.


Story: Ripped directly from two Lovecraft novels, DCOTE explores an investigator who finds a cult's HQ during a raid and eventual shootout. You find many hints to the "Old city", an ancient religion and some paintings of monsters in the house. The games narrative is delivered much like an H.P novel. Your character narrates everything he sees with a click of a button which is quite original and user friendly. Eventually he finds a great portal type of machine, and meets the Yith's for the first time. After this some years pass and we take control of Jack. He is called by a mysterious man from Innsmouth, and asks you to investigate the disappearance of a store manager. Once you arrive to Innsmouth you realize it has many secrets...

As said, the story is a direct rip from "Shadow over Innsmouth.". You must investigate what the secret of the town is, find out more about the Order of Dagon and unravel this mysterious story. The atmosphere and narration of DCOTE stuck in my mind even a week after playing. Its genuinely creepy, the town feels alive and the potential of this game can be seen in the attention to detail and quick, easy to miss horrifying actions of the towns folk.

Once you discover the "secret" it becomes general lovecraft garble about ancient religions and doom, which lost my interest. What I did love was the general creepiness of the town, the insanely spooky voice acting and watching the citizens do their daily rituals. Even though the town itself isn't very scary, the inhabitants were reflected perfectly from their book counter parts and are very creepy. Walking into a brown, run down Hotel and talking to the bald, fat, gray skinned clerk with just a clock ticking in the background was some of the scariest walking around I've done in a game. Its a shame that the story progression is so linear and the mid and last half are almost on the level of boring.

Summary: The main characters here are the residents of Innsmouth. And they are really disturbing at times. If you walk down a dark alley and peak into a basement window, you can see someone being dragged into a dark room. Talking to them greets you with a grated, dark voice for almost everybody with a convincing unsettling feeling in their voice.

Sound:

DCOTE's sound is probably its best point. The eerie and unsettling music is varied and almost never ceases. Its not intrusive though and fits the lonesome feel of the town perfectly. Almost immediately into playing the game you might notice the voice acting is pretty good. And that feeling is correct. While cops and Jack sound pretty generic, their accents are correct for the setting and the residents of Innsmouth sound absolutely horrifying at times. I was really surprised and disturbed when I first talked to the bus driver outside or the hotel clerk. The voice acting quality never diminishes and as new characters are introduced they'll have brand new voices and dialog. Indeed, there's pages and pages of voice acting to be heard in this game.

The rest of the sound scape can be described as boring or simply un-original. Footsteps don't differenciate based on the terrain most of the time. Guns lack that slam needed to make them immersive. And there are no weather effects to be found.

Note: Most PC users cannot hear the music on the game. I don't know of a fix, but its unfortunate.

Game Play: Dark Corners of the Earth was originally advertised and made to be a co-op, 4 player investigation type of game where you would unravel cases and share clues with the 4 other human players walking around the large town of Innsmouth. Budget constraints, deadline and a too-long development time cropped this down to almost nothing.

You play Jack, an investigator into all things accult and crime. You're brought to the scene of a cultist HQ run by one Victor Holt. They request your presence. As you walk up to Victor, the members of the cult open fire through the windows and you run inside for shelter. From here, you're given full control. Immediately one will notice that everything looked at can be described to do by Jack with a press of a button. This is very intuitive and I enjoyed listening to a vocal explaination of some of the paintings, books on the shelves and other things.

There isn't much investigating to be had though. You can find easter eggs like Victor's hand written speech of that day talking about "Dagon". But there are no shelves to knock over, and absolutely zero items to pick up and examine.

Lets fast forward to Innsmouth. The game features no HUD, so no indication of where to go. Luckily the game is so linear you won't need it. There are only a handful of people to talk to more than 3 times and one of them will give you directions on where to go. Going to where they say usually gives you another person to talk to, the key you need, or to open the door to another part of the town. And, really, this is how the game progresses. Once the enemies show up this game is way too trial and error for die hard survival horror gamers.

For example, your hotel room has visiters. You need to escape. Instinct tells you to push the shelf in front of the door, but you can't. They bust in. Reload. You find a door on the other end of the room. In here you see drag marks under a shelf, so you can move THIS one. You didn't bolt the other door shut leading into this room. Reload, repeat. This really describes a LOT of the puzzles and chase scenes in this game. There is no physics engine so the games mechanics are really dated, based on doing what the game says. It feels very, very boxed in and linear.

Summary: Thats basically it. The game is very, very small on scale and you'll always figure out where to go. There are no back alleys to explore and no sense of imminent doom. When you die, it'll be instantly with little to do about it unless you reload five times and find that escape hatch. If you're unlucky there are four or five game breaking bugs to be found in the game and absolutely no patch support. This isn't the large scale Lovecraft game promised. Its a very small, very linear experience. The only thing going for it is the residents of Innsmouth and the music. There are very few puzzles, little combat thats fair, and no survival horror. Its basically a playable story.

End Statements: Overall DCOTE is an unsatisfying game at worst, and just average at best. It provides some chills and thrills but its narrative is for a particular fanbase of the Lovecraft mythos. The voice acting and atmosphere are top notch but the game itself isn't fun and is just too linear. It really didn't even feel like a game at points, like you were just walking between chapters of a book in a fantasy world.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/27/09

Game Release: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (US, 04/26/06)