Dark_Corners

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Graphics 3/5
The graphics are average, nothing incredible about them. Compared to Oblivion, they are lame. Since the novels of H.P. Lovecraft are often graphical, the lesser graphics of this game makes it less interesting for a Howard Phillip Lovecraft fan like myself. I wish I could say that graphics are not necessary in this game but they are, gothic-like horror needs graphics to be at the best, but they are not. For example, a torpedoe launched from a submarine is simply an unanimated drawing that moves... that is lame. The animation is decent though, better than the overall quality of the graphics, but still not good enough to be suitable for a Cthulhu-based game.

Play Control 8/10
You can control your avatar like in any shooter game... which makes me think this game is more a shooter than anything else, as my initial fear were when I have learned that they would make a first person Cthulhu game. My fears came true when I heard about hte game from an acquaintance, and concrete when I played the game myself. The game is a simple shooter that has little to do with Cthulhu beside having a background story like H.P. Lovecraft's novels, the front story is lame since you cannot do what you want in it and must follow it. So, since there is nothing new about the play control, I only give it an eight out of ten, which is very good.

Interface 8/10
I give the interface just a 8 out of ten because it is really annoying to try to heal your avatar when you try to click on him in the inventory only to revert back to the normal view of the inventory. I needed to click several times on the avatar there to heal him each time I had to heal him. Other than this annoying thing, the rest is alright.

Fun 4/10
It is a fun game... once. It is fun the first time you play it, but since he game is always the same each time you play and can be finished in a pathetic three hours and a half makes this game very boring in the end. No replayability or alternative paths or endings makes it even more dull. I mean, once you have gone through the game once, you can play another time to get your "A" rank, but that is it! There is no reason to replay this game AT ALL!!! Very BORING because of that! But because it is fun the first time you play, I give it a four out of ten and I am generous.

Depth 1/15
There is little to no depth in this game. The small amount of documentation, the pathetic three hours and a half game length (which can take up to a great maximum of ten hours to finish... can't believe people paid between 50$ to 60$ for this ten hours game! How to get screwed in a flash.), also the fact that there is little to do in the game except follow the story that the game makers put into the game � la Final Fantasy, makes it even less deep. The fact that you cannot learn a single ritual or spell makes it less Cthulhu like, since in most stories found in the novels of Mr. Lovecraft, the hero or heroes have to learn some sort of ritual or spell that either protects, summons or boost something to enable them to conquer the dark unknown evils of this earth. I would have given it a zero out of ten, but this would mean the game lasts for zero seconds, so I give it a very bad one out of ten, absolutely NO DEPTH!

Story 5/10
A decent background story but a very ordinary foreground story albeit the fact that you cannot change it no matter how many times you play it. The fact that you are in fact either possessed or actually one of those aliens hostile to the Cthulhu faction and you only realise it near the end of the game is an okay foreground story for a Cthulhu story, but quite typical though. The originality of the story remains to be desired, it is basically a clone of a classic of Mr. Lovecraft, so not much work to do there and not much originality either. Overall, the background story and the story your avatar actively goes through (which I call foreground) is respecting the Cthulhu genre, but is quite lacking in the foreground. The reason I only give out a simple five out of ten is because the story your character actively goes through, that you personaly play through is lame and is nothing else than a dumb shooter with World War I epoch weaponry.

Idea 5/5
A great idea to make a game based on a roleplaying game and Mr. Lovecraft's world. Even though the company did not even scratched the surface of the potential of the idea, it still remains one of the best ideas out there.

Non-linearity 0/10
There is absolutely NO ALTERNATIVE PATHS OR ENDINGS! What a shame! This could have been a really nice role-playing game, but they made it into a dumb shooter whic has nothing to do with the Cthulhu world. In the Cthulhu world and Mr. Lovecraft's novels, it is really rare that someone actually fights with something directly, they usually use indirect methods to defeat their foes with wisdom, cunning and intelligence rather than brawn, knives, guns and crowbars.

Interpretation 4/15
I give it a four out of fifteen because the background story is a story that can be happening in the Cthulhu world. That some things found in the game are well interpreted. The idea though is not interpreted well and even I could have come up with a better interpretation of a Cthulhu genre game, no wonder the company went bankrupt. Like 3DO, they screwed up something that you should not screw up (like Heroes of Might & Magic series), whic resulted in their death. The game should have been a role-playing game not a dumb shooter, okay, there is a whole hour without any kind of weapons, but there is nothing to do in that hour, you just take the hand of the game conceptor that guides you through corridors of buildings to this place or that place with little to do except to pick up items. You do not even have to THINK to play this game except for maybe two ot three places in the ENTIRE game which is NOT what Cthulhu novels are about. It is flagrant that the people who did this game never read more than one book of Mr. Lovecraft, otherwise, this game would not have been a shooter game but a role playing game that would have revolutionized the industry instead. How lame one can be, they really hit a big thick wall! The wall of misinterpretation, which resulted in their bankruptcy. The fact that you do not have any kind of alternatives in the game makes it very boring, also the fact that you only have one ending sucks making this game a simply Final Fantasy shooter where you have nothing to say in the game's story evolution... disgusting.

Completion 5/5
Although, the game might be lame, it has little or no bugs. No wonder. Bethesda and the other bankrupt company would have been really lame to have a three and a half hours game be full of bugs. *Laughs out loud* It's like writing a one page text, revising it and you find out that you have errors every thrre words, that IS lame. This is the only second perfect rating the game has, but it changes little in the game itself. Whether the game is bug free or filled with bugs, it did not improve the game much. At least, if it were filled with bugs, we could have said this game is very lame and should not even be discussed, not even thought about and forgotten like an old dirty newspaper, but it does have some positive elements.

43/100 Very unreplayable game... a rent AT MOST. NEVER BUY this game, it is both short and linear, which makes it very short lived and boring. The only fun you'll ever have from it is the first time you have played it IF you are a fan of Mr. Lovecraft's story about Innsmouth and Dagon, other than that, it is very lame and short (between three and a half hours to ten hours of game play, very lame.). So DO NOT BUY!