Grab The Games: Call of Cthulhu®: Dark Corners of the Earth

 A great idea and scarily creepy atmosphere ruined by bugs, glitches and crashes galore.

In terms of ideas for a game the writings of H.P Lovecraft sound like a glorious idea. Their psychological themes mixed with the dabbling of the occult and spiritual could have made for a great game in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the World, but some development issues have let it down.

Going into the game I was all ready for a game which looked dated but still delivered the punch I was expecting from a Lovecraft inspired game. After playing Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines I didn't care much for HD graphics or super hyper realistic physics, it seems only triple A titles get those anyway.

When the game first started I was oddly charmed by the graphical style of it, it reminded me of games like Morrowind and Vampire as it shared a similar style which made me a little reassured by it. It looked like a game from the dawning age of modern RPGs.

The creepy tones of the menu mixed with the disembodied sounds of beings which may or may not exist did well to set the mood and as the game begun with me walking towards a creepy mansion in the early 1900s I was ready for action.

Sneaking inside the house I found it to be horrendously dark, clearly the game was trying to set the mood with dark areas, but it just looked like there were floating void spots where the games lighting had't loaded properly. Having to turn up the brightness isn't rare in horror games but I at least was hoping to be able to get away with a brightness setting lower than 10 to even see what I was doing.

But even with the brightness turned up I still find enjoyment in the sneaking around that the game recommends you do in order to avoid inevitable capture and punishment.

The hero of the day is Jack, a private investigator.

At the beginning of the game our P.I comes into contact with some rather freaky looking cultists having a shootout with some police. After attempting to secure co-operation from one of the cultists things go from bad to worse as Jack finds himself trapped in the house and subjected to some pretty freaky stuff.

As the game goes on the involvement of the occult, spiritual and source material from the writings of Lovecraft get more and more prominent as things get creepier by the minute.

This is a great game for the time it was made and that said it holds up well today as something different from the fantasy RPGs. This is a game for those who fancy something a little different. I would call them hipsters but that offends too many people, so we'll call them hippos.

A classic RPG which is severely underrated. Crashes and glitches may be a problem sometimes but there’s always a fix if you just look hard enough, and nothing will stop me from enjoying some Lovecracftian inspired gaming joy.

8/10

Pros:

Setting is beautiful

Source material is used quite well

Creepy atmosphere throughout

Cons:

Crashes can plague certain areas

Freezing is a problem too

Could be brighter

Nathan Dack