Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Xbox/PC
Developer: Headfirst Productions
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Rated: M for Mature
Released: 2005 (Xbox)/2006 (PC)
Completed: 16 May 2015
I have never had such a love/hate relationship with a game as Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. Based on the seminal horror mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu weaves an intriguing narrative that stays true to the spirit of its inspiration, but numerous game-breaking bugs ruin the experience.
Set mostly in the 1920s, you play as Jack Walters, a private investigator sent to the fictional town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts to investigate the disappearance of a local grocery store manager. This may not sound like a very good catalyst for a video game, but trust me, things quickly get interesting.
The entire first half of the game is based heavily on Lovecraft's classic novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth, pulling many characters and events straight from the work. Though it takes plenty of liberties with the story, Lovecraft fans will most likely love meeting Zadok Allen and Brian Burnham, not to mention exploring the eerie port town that intentionally cut itself off from the outside world. Most of Innsmouth's inhabitants are hostile folk with an ugly, amphibious appearance and gurgling speech patterns. It's unsettling in the best way for those of us who grew up reading bone-chilling tales of creatures so horrific, they could not even be explained.
Dark Corners of the Earth starts off very much as a first-person adventure game. There's very little combat, and some fun puzzles to solve as you discover the truth behind Burnham's disappearance. Stealth segments are handled surprisingly well, and the game is very forgiving should you be spotted. To make the experience as immersive as possible, there is no heads up display. The player must manually keep track of how many bullets remain in their gun, and injuries are usually noted by visual and aural cues such as blood spatter, a pronounced limp, heavy breathing, and color fading from the screen. You can heal yourself using medical kits scattered about, but while you're immobile during this period, the enemies are not so you must find a safe place to do so.
Immersion is one of Cthulhu's strongest suits early on. The rooftop chase, cribbed from the novella, is brought to life in an exciting sequence that will leave your palms sweaty. Sneaking past guards is always a tense moment. Uncovering clues about the mysterious Esoteric Order of Dagon is genuinely intriguing. Then it all falls apart when you encounter one of the game's many glitches.
As an extremely late release in the Xbox's life cycle, it's obvious that Dark Corners of the Earth was not given the proper time for playtesting and polishing before being shoved out the door. Indeed, shortly after the game's release, developer Headfirst Productions closed up shop, leaving two potentially great sequels lost to the world. It's admirable that Bethesda still spent the time and money to publish the game, but it could have benefited greatly from another few months of testing.
My first encounter with a game-breaking glitch came at the tail end of the game's first half. Desperately trying to escape Innsmouth with Burnham and his love, Ruth, I carefully clambered across ceiling beams to avoid the armed goons below. Ruth was trapped on the other side of the expanse, on a rotting wooden platform and before I could reach her, it gave way and she fell to her death. In theory, the game is supposed to let you continue, but on my Xbox version Brian Burnham stubbornly refused to continue, insisting I rescue his already-dead fiancée. To make matters worse, my most recent saves were all mid-glitch, after Ruth had perished, so I had no choice but to go quite a ways back in order to continue and hopefully avoid the glitch.
Faced with the prospect of replaying a large chunk of the game, I opted instead to switch to the PC version and take advantage of the higher resolution graphics, as well as a fan-made patch that supposedly fixed many of the glitches. It may have had some effect, but as the game progressed, I still encountered bugs too numerous to count.
In fact, the entire end segment of the game was so badly glitched, I had to revert to an earlier save once again and plow through multiple sections without saving, just to avoid a known corrupted save bug that renders the game unwinnable. Multiple, smaller glitches also saw me backtracking in order to do some minor action just to progress, and if clipping through the scenery counts as a glitch, then this game deserves a world record for its apparently insubstantial walls.
The second half of the adventure isn't quite as good as the first and focuses more on action, which is clunky. The lack of any aiming reticule takes some getting used to, forcing the player to use their weapon's iron sights for precision. It's a nice, immersive touch once you get used to it, but combat is made more difficult by enemies that run to and fro with little rhyme or reason, and some jittery animation. Still, the two big set piece boss fights - even with the horrible glitch in the final one - are clever and fun.
Graphically, Call of Cthulhu doesn't look particularly hot on either PC or Xbox, but the PC version definitely has sharper visuals. The Xbox version is extremely blurry and lacks definition. Both versions feature an in-game brightness modifier, but the Xbox version's caps out much lower than the PC's. Normally, this wouldn't be a big issue, but at the default settings the game is exceedingly dark to the point where sections of the levels become nigh invisible.
Character models all look odd as well. It's fine for the Innsmouth folk, who are supposed to be creepy anyway, but the human characters all look slightly off, as though the symmetry of their faces is wrong. The lip-syncing is also little more than open/shut mouth movements, which is a bummer since the game features mostly good voice acting.
There isn't much music, but it's largely very good whether appropriately atmospheric and ominous, or exciting and pulse-pounding for the game's faster paced segments. Sound effects are serviceable, with the guns standing out with just the right amount of punch.
The game is fairly linear, and does feature a few frustrating segments (even without bugs), but the narrative pushes it along without overstaying its welcome and turning into a slog. I was always anxious to see what happened next, due in part to my affection for Lovecraft's work, but the constant fear of another impassable glitch left me more afraid than the thought of ancient creatures rising from the depths of the ocean to reclaim the world they once inhabited before us.
By the end of the game, I'd suffered just as much sanity loss as my in-game counterpart, courtesy of the wretched, untold programming horrors. There are things no man should have to experience, lest he welcome the comforting embrace of madness. Like Jack Walters, I began to yearn for amnesia so I could forget the things I had endured. It's a shame because Dark Corners of the Earth is a really good game underneath the technical monstrosities. This is a game for devoted Lovecraft fans with a lot of patience. The adherence to its source material makes this a fantastic tale of cosmic horror with some truly thrilling and memorable gameplay moments, if you can just stomach (and, most importantly, get past) the bugs.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was completed on a PC with no cheats.
The entire first half of the game is based heavily on Lovecraft's classic novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth, pulling many characters and events straight from the work. Though it takes plenty of liberties with the story,
Posted by: motupatlugames | March 06, 2017 at 08:00 AM