Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth?

The atmosphere is great, and if you've read Lovecraft, you'll feel like they captured the feeling pretty damn well.

The problem is not the atmosphere, it's the gameplay mechanics. The game is more a stealther than a combat game, only the stealthing is extremely poorly done. It's more an exercise in tedious trial and error than it is horror. There, for example, a wonderful scripted scene (taken straight from one of Lovecraft's stories), but it's so utterly unforgiving that unless you already know what to do and where to go, you'll probably die numerous times on the way to your objective, which ruins the whole point of such moments. The game is full of stuff like that.

If you have a lot of patience, or have absolutely nothing at all to play, and you can find it cheap - yes, it's definitely worth it. Some people even think it's an amazing game.

When I first started it, I was very impressed with just about everything. There are a lot of great little touches. You can inspect things (like in FPS/RPG hybrid games), which is cool. Often you'll see horrible or unbelievable things and feel your own sanity slipping away. There's also an extremely good damage/health mechanic. You take wounds to localised areas of your body, and you feel them. When you're in pain, it really seems like you actually are in pain. To heal, you need the correct bandages and sutures, and you need to apply them to the correct parts of your body. The gunplay is awkward, but that's a good thing. It's refreshing to play a game where you aren't an invincible supersoldier.

I didn't finish it - so maybe I'm not the best judge, but I found that as an experience, it works very well. It just doesn't work so well as a game.

Like someone else said, the stealth portions is very unforgiving especially since the foes carry guns and you spend most of the game unarmed or low on ammo. being spotted once often ends up with you dying because you can't get away from the villagers and they are all crackshots with the rifles and pistols. A single shotgun blast will seal the deal too.

So what I ended up doing is playing extremely safe and it ends up working great.

That part I think MFSA was talking about was one of the most amazing parts of any game i've played in my whole life, it was ripped straight from an HP Lovecraft book or the movie Dagon... I made it through in one shot I know that if i had died, it wouldn't have been as amazing.

the game is genuinly creeper through out most of the game and i loved playing it despite it's short comings.

the intro was promising (loved the escape scene near the start), but in the end it all got too weird =S. well, i guess i enjoyed it. very frustrating at different points because it's really difficult to figure out what to do next at times. and you can't save any time you want, you have to save at certain locations in the game, which i guess is not bad and in a way fits the game style, but I felt that at some points I would have appreciated being able to quicksave.

not for the impatient. it's all i have to say.

It has catastrophic voice acting, which can detract from the experience.

There are plenty of "oh ****" moments, which is good:) Unfortunately, the "going nuts" aspect is half-assed. You play as a damn detective, but watching a corpse makes you dizzy?!

It's not impossible, but the great mood it sets is quickly squashed upon restarting a sequence several times.

It's certainly difficult, but if you like challenges then you might want to check it out.

For the most part, the game does the whole 'survival horror' thing quite well (with an emphasis on survival) - you're frequently unarmed, or fighting against a foe that you can't hope to kill with mere weapons.

Unfortunately, the game occasionally relies on the gunplay a little too much, and there are respawning enemies in two or three areas that are quite annoying.
Still, the atmosphere and 'intensity' are really well done, and the 'realistic' gameplay mechanics are quite immersive, so you might be able to forgive the flaws.

I really enjoyed the game, but it may be too frustrating for many players.

Call of Cthulhu was a rather good, enjoyable, cheap game. With alright graphics but the graphics don't matter its the gameplay that counts for this kind of game, its a survival horror so does it offer the player survival and horror, well yes in many parts of the game, featuring some nice dark atmosphere's along with some dodgy characters and decent gun play.

Of course if you know what Cthulhu is then you should know its also a tale by H.P Lovecraft and this tale grips you with an interesting story from the start....to well not really to the finish as it does get quite dull near the end, with it losing all sanity and leaving you with constant dripple and gun play - which is simple aim, fire, out of ammo, must find more styled gun play (I say play more like annoyance).

The gameplay has some cleaver realism to it, not only with its nicely done sanity system but it also includes a realistic injury system - this means if you fall from a high height your going to break a leg, which means bandaging yourself up. Which then leads to if you dont heal you gonna get weaker and more vulnerability to the nasty men, that all ways chase you.

The Sanity system is the overall the best feature and if it wern't for the fact it was in bold letters on the back I wouldn't of bought the game. In the game your character Jack Walters must keep alive - obviously, the system makes the character have overacted reactions which resault in many of the irritating, yet interesting gameplay moments. It has it all halluciations, panic attacks, vertigo, paranoia...etc...etc everything a mental nut case would have and if all too much it leaves you with a nice bullet to the head.

Too end I enjoyed it from start to the middle, yes the middle not because I got bored and stopped playing, no it was because that it got so dull near the end, it felt that Bethseda and Headfirst got a child to direct the rest of the game for them...which in ended in nothing but irritating gun play - as mentioned.

Yet in the end if you enjoy the works of H.P Lovecraft and you want to try a new kind of Survival horror FPS then pick it up. Lets hope they make some sequels - oh wait sod that Headfirst Productions are bankrupt, so thats the Cthulhu sequels out of the window...