Horror Game Classics – Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

doesn’t this game have what is known as the giant spook man?

“what are you doing, snooping around here? get out!”

Gotta say, I agree. Mind, I couldn’t go on after it became a FPS, as I died every two seconds and… well, I flat-out got 100% stuck.

But GOD, that hotel scene. I thought I blocked the door behind me, but something went wrong at one point… and as I was about to perform a jump that I had died from just before, I hear something, turn around, and THERE’S A MAN RUNNING AT ME WITH AN AXE.

I was so startled that I literally jumped so hard that the controller flew in the air. This caused my character to jump. Out the window. To my leg-crunching death.

sigh.

Being on top of tall things, I will add, was incredible. I am not afraid of heights. At all. But the sanity effects that imitate the feeling… made me sortof experience the symptoms. Top-notch job there.

Not much to say that hasn’t already been said. Great atmosphere with some awesome moments (fleeing the hotel while trying to block the doors with furniture and locking doors), but ridiculously frustrating and difficult at certain points that make you want to rage quit.

Much as I hate to be accused of granting ‘armchair praise’ which might influence anybody, I have to say, thanks for including my favorite video game of all time.

wow I can’t believe other people have played this game!!! I always though this was one of those little oddities that made gaming store clerks cock their heads to the side and make a confused little grunt like a dog watching fireworks. I LOVED this thing, no matter how many basically game breaking bugs would crop up (control being a huge problem, and as i think someone mentioned, the collision detection and sneaking stuff was basically non existant and the sanity meter, while a very interesting concept, usually just bugged out and resulted in you randomly shooting yourself in the face, which got REALLY annoying especially later in the game when you would have to see a rapid succession of “spooky shit’ at one time) but it was one of the first…maybe only games i ever played that really captured the essense of lovecraftian horror. especially that early scene in the hotel, the “attack of the fishmen” i think it’s called, it is one of the most intense and genuinely frightening sequences i’ve ever played in a game. in fact, the parts without a weapon are some of the best, not only because they provide you with genuine fear and helplessness, but they were actually a little easier. as when you didn’t have a gun, you pretty much knew “well, i better beat cheeks outta here and be quiet about it” which is what you were pretty much meant to do 9 out of every ten times anyway, but when you had a gun, the temtaption was too high to start blasting fishmen for making you wet your pants earlier and it almost always resulted in you getting mauled by all his buddies.

though i must admit, the very first thing i did upon getting the pistol and shotgun was to save my game, prepared to shortly reload later, cocked my boomstick and marched outward into the streets and expended every round i could find into those bug eyed gill neck bastards. my brother watching me do this asked just what the hell i thought i was doing to which i replied “I’m going…to sort it out..I’m going to show those sturgeon faced commies what for!!!”

though as a side note, i would reccomend seeing the movie “Dagon” that came out around the same time, if not a little before the game. they are both based heavily on the shadow over insmouth and though it’s not nearly as awesome as the game (it’s a little too close to the older “full moon productions” style of it’s predeccessors at times, and that really can’t be helped, but it doesn’t sink the whole movie), it stays true to a lot of the lovecraftian elements that made the game so awesome (plus that awesome lynchmob chase is in the movie and it’s pretty much as awesome as it was in the game)

I honestly think there has never been a “good” lovecraft movie, but dagon is as far from bad as they will get for now, so give it a look if you haven’t already.

I remember the part with the mob really well.
But another memorable moment was when you were at the Marsh Refinery and you have just escaped a room where a Shoggoth was placed by a member of the Marsh family, as you walk down this long corridor, you hear the heavy metal doors behind suddenly burst open like if they were paper and right behind you is the Shoggoth!
That part really really made my pulse go through the roof, it was that tense.

I liked this game.

Terribly difficult, but very well made.

Man, I really wish the sequel didn’t get canned. This is pretty much the only game I ever played that truly scared the piss out of me. Shame it got so ridiculously hard near the end, if only due to the lack of savepoints.

That was simply one of the BEST games i have ever played. There was a ton of annoing bugs and impossible driving stages but the rest of the game, especially the first “no weapon” part were great!

*** HP Lovecraft***. Sorry Lol

wow, I gotta check this out if I ever get the opportunity

I remember my brother having a game called ‘Full Throttle’… for some reason, the main male voice from this clip reminds me of the lead character voice from that game. The voicing sounds very similar.

I’d like to see a ‘let’s play’ of Full Throttle, while I never got to play it, I loved the story an music from the watching point of view.

Well first off, good little review, and while I say that the game had some decent scares, was a fairly faithful adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft game, and was a bit original for it’s time I couldn’t play too far, mostly for the fact of the technical difficulties on the PC as stated before. I will have to say that Zack Dolan really encapsulated what that game was like for me, the shock scares of seeing a Deep One or a Polyp for the first time was honestly scary, but then you die. Then you die, again, and again, and about the third time about it goes from fear to anger, then to hate, as a wise little green guy has stated. You just wanted to be able to DO something semi-intelligent than just gibbering, especially after you’ve been running into Deep Ones for several levels, you’d think the guy you were playing would be used to it by now. With a game like this you had to put in a sanity mechanic, but the way it was implemented was fairly ham fisted.

The other thing wrong is that the game does stick close to the H.P. Lovecraft stuff, which I know I’ll probably be burnt at the stake for but just don’t really get most of the stuff. Yes there’s some gems in there, but there’s a lot of silly stuff and purple propose to wade through to get to it, as well as the fact that I think that I might not come from the right cultural background/time period/mindset to get some of his stuff. I will admit that he did come up with some really weird aliens, it’s sort of hard to find things weirder than the Elder Things, Yithians, or Mi-Go that you know function on some sort of logic but different from your own. When you get into things more complex than that…. well… I honestly don’t know what’s so horrifying about Cthulhu. I mean yea, if you see him, you’d crap your pants, but no more than seeing King Kong or Godzilla because it’s a big thing going to eat you, and in the end is incredibly anthropomorphic. I mean, all you got to do is put an octopus on Ken Davitian’s head, paint’em green, and put some wings on him, and boom, you pretty much got the gross anatomy of Cthulhu, which is really a shame when you compare it to the things that I listed earlier. Not to mention the fact that the writer was coming from a very prim and proper New England xenophobic direction, hell the man freaked out just by finding out his Grandma was Welsh. Personally I think that whole ‘corruption by the blood’ thing that comes into his stories quite a bit is well worn out and just a bit more like a cop out to drive the story along.

That is just my opinion, and sorry if I went a bit off base here, but that’s just my opinion on the subject.

you know if that were me and i went up to a door with the sound of an ailen queen behind it i would tend to not look in there

You know, this one is a good game, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a classic. Penumbra series are far more creepy than this one for me. Those games catch Lovecraft’s atmosphere way beyond this one. Sanity loss and panic are far more effective there than they are in Dark Corners (heart beat and breathing as your character panics, are more realistic to me than just blurry screen). Also, here are not that many monsters or encounters, but when they do happen, you just want to hide somewhere in the dark corner and look away. The game system forces you to do this, because monster can hear you breathe when you panic, and more clearly you see them as your senses sharpen in the dark… well, enough about that.

Another great game that has never gotten the attention it deserves.
The only real problems I have ever had with this game is the combat and the fact you can fall like two feet and break your legs.

Another one to look into. My original Xbox bit the dust some time ago (well, it works, but the disc drive won't open, so it might as well be dead), and I'm not shelling out money for a 360, considering how unreliable and death-prone they are. But I may look into the PC version. Sounds like that's the better deal, anyway.

Playing the PC version now. It's messed up and very good so far.

Source? Do you have any pictures of these anatomically correct Cthulu?