I recently started playing Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth for the PC. I’m ambivalent at this point. At first, I really, really liked it. I liked the strong sense of narration, the little breadcrumbs of information, the insanity effects, the fact that I didn’t have a gun and had to solve combats by either hiding or running away. It was great, and all very Lovecraftian. Even after I found a gun, it was pretty good; there was a nice sequence where I was on the back of a truck, dodging gunfire from cranky Innsmouth residents (very cinematic), and a pretty fair sequence in a fish packing plant, followed by an excellent, pseudo-interactive cutscene.

Then, I had to go to the Marsh Refinery. I am now carrying a pistol, a revolver, a shotgun, and a tommy gun. I have killed many, many Innsmouth residents, and the hoards don’t seem like they’re going to let up any time soon. It’s a long, ugly, boring level with a lot of combat and jumping puzzles. In short, the game has suddenly changed from something fresh and interesting into a standard horror shooter. Now, I have no idea if this trend is going to continue throughout the rest of the game (I’m really, really hoping not). And I really want to like this game; I liked it a great deal at first, but right now I just want to get out of the Marsh Refinery. And not in the Lovecraftian, “I have to get out of here before I am eaten or go insane” sense, but in the gamist, “I have to get out of here before I decide to stop playing this game entirely” sense. Oh, and I also ran into a nasty bug that made me have to either a.) retread a large chunk of the level to get back to where I was or b.) go through the rest of the game with permanent vertigo whenever my field of view dropped below looking straight ahead.

At any rate, these are my preliminary impressions. I’ll try to post a real review when (if) I finish the game. It’s starting to wear on me, though. I’d much rather be playing Arkham Horror. If any of you have views on this game one way or the other, feel free to comment. It’s free, I swear; you don’t even have to register.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.