Call of Cthulhu. What it was? Why forgotten?
Forgotten masterpiece or another passage?
Usually everyone begins their conversation about this game with Lovecraft’s quote or bursts out as his work is expensive for them. I understand all this and I myself love Howard Philips, but more I appreciate the games in which it is interesting to dive and spend my time there. There is nothing surprising in the existence of the game based on the works of Howard Philips Lovecraft, if you do not know anything about this person, I strongly advise you to get acquainted with his work, not everything is played in toys, because the source is chic.
It turned out badly to transfer Lovecraft’s work in the cinema, there are many attempts, but I did not find a single one in truth of a worthy exhibit. However, the Headfirst Production studio from the UK decided to perpetuate the writer’s work on the screens of our monitors through the game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, which came out of this after 12-13 years and I want to understand.
What, in fact, are we talking about
It is worth saying that https://gamblingdata.net/casinos/matchbook-casino/ I do not want to touch the plot and I will not just immediately indicate that it is fulfilled in the spirit of Lovecraft and watching it is quite interesting. But the eyeballs will have to tell you to understand what kind of Pokemon is.
The player’s controls are given by a private detective Jack Walters, who had lost his mind for several years before the main events, at that time was carried away by occultism, dark cults and mysticism. He was placed in the hospital Arkham (this place is quite significant in Lovecraft), after the recovery of Jack comes an order to work to find a missing person in the port town of Ignsmaut. From here the game begins. Upon arrival in the city, the best moment comes in the whole game: we are allowed to walk along a small but colorful area, chat with local residents who clearly experience poorly hidden hatred, while walking around the city, you will hear something remotely reminiscent of human speech during the howling of the wind. It really shows that the developers did not spit on the source and final product, but something went wrong. The budget roofing felts was not enough, felts of time. Or what else, but this does not mean that they had every right to sell people a raw product that cannot be passed.
I note that I played this year of its release, but I couldn’t pass (below you will understand why), but I fell in love with her, in my head there were quite pleasant memories of her, most likely everyone who puts this game in the top of my loved ones, simply did not try to launch it now. For I just don’t understand how people could love this?
Starting like a stall, the game quickly goes into a first -person shooter, which is not good, because as a shooter it is simply disgusting, now any enemy is not a source of danger, but a carcass that requires cartridges and no more. Artificial intelligence does not provide any interesting pattern of behavior, often noticing the unarmed hero, they begin to shout something in the spirit: “You are the end, bastards”, but they themselves dump on the other edge of the location to depict a violent activity on your search, saying “where are you going”? You will end when I find you!”.
The whole game is very slow, for example, our brave detective, who is fighting in his life, does not make special efforts to this enterprise, he does not even deign to run, but he has a slow step (I still did not understand what he was not using the whole game without taking advantage of them at all). In general, it is clear that the game makes the main bet on the atmosphericity of what is happening, for the sake of the atmosphere the developers generally removed HUD from the screen. Understand the damage inflicted on us, as well as the supply of cartridges only in the inventory.
Separately, I would like to highlight an unusual damage system. The whole body of the protagonist is divided into areas (head, torso, left/right leg/hand), damage to each site affects the gameplay, for example, damaging the leg, the hero will begin to move even more slowly (it would seem where even more slowly?), hand – it will be more difficult to aim. But in addition, there are also different types of damage (scratch, bleeding wound, fracture and poison infection) for each of them you need its own resource for treatment (bandage, thread, tires and antidote). This system seems very interesting to me, I would like to see this in modern games, but this does not save the general monotony in the gameplay.
Although the game tries to end the player to the end of riddles, but it looks very far -fetched, it seems that the developers just stuck it into the game with the aim of you wandering around the little corridors for a day with the shouts “Game that you want from me?!”. It’s just that the logic of puzzles sometimes resembles old quests, such as “Shtyrlitz: Tango Pampasy”. Often, the game does not even set specific goals, and the player aimlessly wandering around the monotonous locations in attempts to understand the logic of the developers, gradually goes crazy.
But don’t worry about it, you are not alone. What work of Lovecraft does not affect the theme of madness? So the British from Headfirst Productions could not bypass this feature. As I already noted above, our hero has already undergone psychological injury, so that his nerves still cannot boast of unshakability. And in addition to the usual HP, we were also given an indicator of psychological stress. There are no exact indicators for him, you have to identify this by blurring the screen. Stress is affected by many factors: the most obvious is the height, which is the main phobia of Jack, then his enemies follow, the more enemy, the more we are afraid. Samo-Soboy that if Mr. Walters is crazy, then Game Over. It sounds interesting. I do not argue. But in practice does not work. Often the fright is determined not by game circumstances, but by the will of the script. This is especially noticeably closer to the final of the game: the prisoner, the prisoner, begs Jack to put an end to his torment, if this is done, the hero apparently forgets that he had recently killed such creatures in packs, without any twinge of conscience, but this specific almost forces Jack to take his vacation and still at the same time visit the resort in Arkham.
Bugs
Who should be the most terrible and dangerous enemy in such a game? Maybe Dagon? Or his wife’s wife? Or maybe just awakened from a long sleep Ktulhu? No. Unfortunately not. This is bugs. And I’m not talking about small bugs that make the passage not the most enjoyable process, but about bugs that make the game almost unlocked. And moreover, there are three of these bugs for the whole game (maybe more, but I know about these myself). This is the most famous moment on the ship where you need to shoot three lights on the island, but these lights are simply not visible
So it should be
