PC game review: Dark Corners of Tolerance

“That is not dead which can eternal lie;
And over strange aeons even death may die.”

-- H P Lovecraft, The Necronomicon

I’ll admit it—I’ve been neglecting the blog. A bad thing? Hard to say… but will the excuse I’ve been playing a new computer game do?

I know this may sound strange, but I’ve developed quite an appetite for the survival horror genre of videogames, though I’ve only gotten round to buying two: the execrable Condemned: Criminal Origins and this one, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. Trust me, the latter is heaps better.

Why? Maybe it’s because your character dies right at the start, circa 1922. And the narrative is right in the middle of it, urging you on as you uncover the secrets buried in his mind. Who is he? What’s he discovered?

After the initial (shocking) cutscene, you flash back to six years before. As it’s revealed, you play a private detective named Jack Walters (who knows how to crouch, move silently, and reload a weapon—hurray!) on a case that sees him targeted by a shadowy cult dedicated to beings that inhabit the twisted imagination of H P Lovecraft. You lead Jack into the cult HQ… just as he activates a strange machine within and loses his memory. For six years, it’s revealed, he was confined to an asylum before being miraculously cured. He can’t rest, though—after re-establishing himself as a PI he gets a missing-person case from the town of Innsmouth (one of the most fascinating places ever developed in the Lovecraft canon) that changes the (very short) rest of his life. To say more about the story will spoil the whole thing, but the gist of it is this: Call of Cthulhu’s greatest strength is tied to its greatest weakness, and future games in the Lovecraft mythos will find themselves hard-pressed to keep the standard Dark Corners of the Earth has set.

Narrative-wise, CoC does a masterful job. Besides giving us a protagonist we can care about and providing him with very… unique eyes to see through, the story blends two of Lovecraft’s greatest works; The Shadow over Innsmouth and The Shadow out of Time. While I’ve never read them myself I put them all the way to the top of my TO READ list… provided I can find the right library. Anyway, the story is the very core of CoC, and given the genre the game is in (technically an adventure FPS)—please, Bethesda Softworks or anyone else, keep it that way. There comes a point—and given the nature of survival horror, it’s painfully obvious—when a poor storyline can no longer be hidden by technical bells and whistles and leaves the player feeling cheated, angry and often unwilling to spend his money on another game by you ever again. Bethesda doesn’t make this mistake, and I pray companies taking on the genre in future never do. We are Jack Walters as he makes his way through the eerie streets of Innsmouth, sharing his horror as he realises no one trusts him, and everyone who seems willing to help pays with their life.
Speaking of us becoming Jack Walters, the decision to have the game in first person lends itself to all kinds of opportunities to mess around with the player. Call of Cthulhu features a sanity system—look too long at bodies, gruesome scenes, occult magic or heights (!), and the screen goes woozy, Jack begins muttering to himself, and if you don’t fix the issue ASAP he may hallucinate, play with his weapons or even turn them on himself if pushed too far. All this had the unwelcome effect of hurrying me along, pushing me on till I reached the next save point… and these are far, far apart. The two words you’ll most often use playing this are “Oh, shit”—one tiny mistake, and it’s back to where you were ten very frustrating minutes ago.
CoC isn’t your standard shooter. For one thing, medical kits are added to your inventory rather than being immediately used, and supplies from them must be used on different injuries to different parts of your body. While a nice touch, it doesn’t really add much to the gameplay, and a Quick Heal function makes it redundant for the most part anyway. But as anyone who’s played these before will tell you, it’s best not to get hit.
Technically the game is a dream. The graphics communicate those creepy night in 1922 with their film-reel like quality, and voice acting is top-notch; except for when Jack’s scared. As more than one reviewer’s pointed out, the calm he maintains in his tone is so odd it’s freaky. Which is scarier, some horrible monster or the indifference its victim greets it with?

Another annoyance cropped up again and again—what I call the Longest Journey syndrome. Like any adventure game, puzzle-solving is a big part of CoC. Nothing too bad about that… if not for the illogic behind it all. For example, at one point in the game I had to ride a cargo bucket through a gold refinery, and all without a clue where I was supposed to get off. Many times I had to consult a walkthrough when the puzzle-going got too tough, as if the designers had wanted to ratchet up the difficulty to Sherlock Holmes level. Add to that the game’s infestation with bugs (a clipping error once forced my brother to repeat an extremely tedious part of the game), and you have an exact carbon copy of Lovecraft’s view of a deep, grand and mysterious world—but with mighty destructive forces lurking just beneath the surface.

But none of this stops me from urging you to call forth a copy. Your mind—and imagination—will be the richer for it. Just don’t expect to finish the entire game by yourself in one try—it rewards exploration, a constant sharpening of your skills, and a little bit of luck. While I’ve never been so irate at a game in longer than I care to remember, I’ve never felt more satisfied at jumping this gap, defeating that monster, or completing a timed puzzle just as the sand ran out. “Oh, shits” aside, buy this game.

FINAL SCORE: 7.9 (out of 10)