Buy Call of Cthulhu®: Dark Corners of the Earth

I love just about everything Lovecraft, but this game is an exception. Not only is it a hassle to run on modern OS's, but its not even worth trying to fix. While the first two hours of the game start off really well and emulate The Shadow Over Innsmouth with slow observational gameplay, it turns into a shallow shooter with repetitive gameplay. The game's FOV is also very zoomed in and the only way to fix it is to install a new non-steam executable and then patch it, only to have texture problems pop up everywhere.

Complete buggy garbage.
Why cant i get my money back
Holy ♥♥♥♥ this ♥♥♥♥ing sucks

With this game you'll have unforgettable experience. It seccessfully creates the atmosphere of H.P.Lovecraft's stories with its creep, horror, doom and madness. Whatever difficulty you choose, this game will be hardcore anyway :) Together with your character you will experience all possible feelings and states (physical and of mind) and feel how it affects your abilities and the game process. And it's very very atmospheric, taken the setting, locations, soundtracks and sound effects. I absolutely adored the visual effects that 100% simulate stress and damage suffered.

Yes, many guys here are right - there're some bugs, BUT they are easy to solve. There are patches, advice and discussions all over the Internet (you are not banned from Google, are you?). And I can say that for the first time in my life I didn't care about those bugs and didn't care about time I spent to fix them. It was worth it. They didn't spoil my impression of the game and even with all those bugs I fell in love with the game and now it's among my TOP favorite games ever.

It has other means to capture your mind and heart. Ways that modern VR games with "superb realistic graphics" will never understand and achieve. I personally enjoyed the whole playing process from the moment I first launched it till the moment I saw final credits. And I want to thank, thank and once again thank all the developers. This game deserves to be named a legendary one.

First things first:

ENABLE VSYNC!!!!
I didnt experience a single bug (except blue light) or crash with vsync enabled! Remember to enable vsync on all your older games if you encounter problems, it is common knowledge, really. Thats one of the reasons I dont understand all the complaints here. Checking the internet or the steam forums would have cost less time than all this complaining. However, now the game:

What this game is:
It is a great investigation and horror game, especially without any issues!
It is no FPS, you will be exploring, solving puzzles or simply escaping a lot. If you look for a FPS with smooth controls and combat-centered gameplay, look somewhere else.
It is no platformer, there are some parts where jumping is essential, but they are few.
It has time-relevant puzzles, it will put you under pressure!

Performance:
I will not comment graphics, the game was released 2006, what do you expect?
I really cant remember any soundtrack, was there any? It is the environmental sounds and noises you will be listening to... they are not only supporting the experience, they are often an essential part of succeeding
I already addressed the bugs and crashes, I can only add that I didnt even encounter clipping issues as others reported.

Pros and Cons:
+ excellent Lovecraft lore, reading "call of cthulhu", "shadow over innsmouth" and "dagon" before playing the game is highly recommended (no worries, they are all short stories). You will understand the plot and certain design choices a lot better. And you will FEAR certain infamous scenes beforehand... MUHAHAHAHA

+ new features during the entire game. It will never get boring or repetitive

+ sanity mechanic. a very nice mechanic that makes easy tasks difficult. i think this game was the first using it.

+ price/content ratio. 5 bucks or 2,50 during sale offers you a lot of content and nice ideas

- The FPS parts are bearable, at best. Weird hit boxes and clunky animations make hitting enemies a game of roulette. So shooting or stabbing unaware enemies is your best choice. Again, I do not understand people complaining about bad aiming and arms-sway. Your avatar Jack Walters is a professional private investigator and not a special forces soldier.


Target audience:
All in all, a MUST HAVE for Lovecraft fans, a NO GO for FPS players.
Horror fans should take a closer look.

Final comments:
There is an unofficial patch, get it if you encounter the "blue light bug" (most will)
http://www.moddb.com/games/call-of-cthulhu-dark-corners-of-the-earth/downloads/dcote-unofficial-patch-v15

Very good game for people who are interested in myths or the cthulhu cult.
The game contains many action, horror scenes and puzzles.
Maybe its not a game for the impatient, but you should give it a try.
Especially with the SweetFX and ENB effects.

As others have said this game is a huge mess. It has game breaking bugs that force you to restart the game. I hit one after 2 hours of playing and being about 25% of the way into the story. When I decided to go online and check how I might possibly fix it everything I read said one thing. Start a new game and hopefully it won't happen again. Well when you're that far in it just isn't worth it. Things were only just starting to pick up. I only hit one of the apparently several game breaking bugs.

I was actually really looking forward to playing this game. It looked like a good time to have. However I didn't listen to all the warnings. PLEASE LISTEN TO THE WARNINGS. This is a bug filled mess that felt as if it wasn't tested for bugs. I plan on watching a play through of the rest. I suggest you do the same. 3/10

I know it's an old game, but the doors and gameplay seems to keep ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ me off. You can't just open/ close he door properly, you have to fully enter or else it pushes you back, which got me killed tons of times.

I think I must be crazy, buying a game only to write something on it. I was discussing it with Jack, asking him whether it really was worth it to him buying it for old times' sake. Somehow the conversation ended up with us talking about $2 cheese burgers at McDonalds. I see like 13 Steam buddies that have bought this game. Not sure if you guys did it for old times' sake as well?

This game is quite old, it was released late 2005. The bottom line is this. Having played other old broken games on Steam, I agree with most of the reviewers that have thumbed down this game by saying things like it crashes every 5 mins nowadays. If that's the case, you may want to avoid it. Heck I would! But to keep things fair, I figure I would like to explain the magic of this game when it was released for anyone that kinda wanted to know what you missed out on without crashes?

STAY TUNNED FOR MORE AFTER THE QUICK BREAK...

phoenix: I hate Unreal ...

AND NOW FOR THE CONCLUSION. WARNING ... LONG WALL OF TEXT COMMING UP ;P

I remember vividly, a long time friend hired this game from a game rental store. This was probably late 2006 after we had finished exams. He said he really didn't like the game. The controls were crap and were making him dizzy. lol. So he was like, "Here you go, may as well make the most out of it." Or something like that ...

Indeed the sensitivity was way too high. But if you played on something like 400 DPI (which was easily switchable to on a Logitech G5 mouse), it was quite alright.

The game really throws you straight away into this fantasy world some time around the 1920's. Which not many games did back then. Most games depict as far back as World War II for the 20th century. But the era around World War I, personally I found more fascinating. They gave some great contrast by mixing some elements of the war into the story.

So the game starts off with you in town for a visit, I think trying to solve a murder case. This is where it got interesting. As you question around, the town folk are scared to give you answers. The atmosphere builds up with this feeling like as if there's some gang that runs the town. You know this because there are some NPC goons that walk in and stand in the corner just watching you weirdly.

One of the biggest hits to the game that you may have heard of was the infamous hotel? escape. Personally I thought this was crap. But it does get you to panic a bit, and that was probably the intention of the developers. This is the part where the goons are trying to bag you in your own hotel room! And you have to escape the hotel by doing things like pushing a shelf to block the door or pushing up on the latch lock. Seemingly hideous controls. But in all honesty it's not as annoying as QTE's these days imho.

It takes a little while, but the magic of this game is the slow twist. By the time you're sneaking around some docks, you realise that these typical goons ... may not even be human at all. But it's hard to tell. They look human ... but with odd mannerisms...

Now here's the part where I'm proud to say, I really disliked BioShock. That game was supposed to have some kind of feeling/atmosphere. But it was very bland compared to Call of Cthulhu! I don't exactly remember how, but once again with the journey actually making sense, you slowly end up in an underwater city. No quick elevator that takes you from some plane crash to some underwater city in less than 5 mins. You go through cement bunkers and caverns, till the point where you're like ... how the heck did I wind up down here? I guess, somewhat Half-Life 2'ish in some ways...

You know when some directors like Ridley Scott start sketching some scene that he envisions for his movie? This game has particular areas that look like concept art. Like I remember some kind of cavern/room with blue curvy glass, kinda like being in those large underwater aquariums at the zoo. I also remember some really weird crazy snake shaped mutation of some sort. It was just flying up from and around in the darkness. Whilst you're trying not to fall off some rock. There were some really interesting lighting effects for sure, like with that weird monster, I think the screen kind of flashed with blurry white light waves, giving you the impression of some kind of psychic or sonar thing hitting you.

The game ended as good as it could. It was more like an anti-climax. A return to a seemingly normal reality.

Lastly, despite people and the description saying that this is a horror game, personally I don't think it's shocking in the Alma Wade sense. In fact it's probably less scary than Condemded: Criminal Origins.

UPDATE: Played 30 mins of this game without a hitch. Running fairly standard Intel i5, 8GB RAM, SSD, Raedon HD6870, Win7. Played as well as I remembered back in 2006/2007.

Being a huge Lovecraft fan, seeing this on sale made me pick it up instantly. It's very good for the most part. The graphics have aged really well and the music and sound design is spectacular. What surprised me was the difficulty. It isn't Dark Souls level, but it's pretty tough for a first person horror. If I had one problem, it would be that a few of the enemies seem to clip through the walls when chasing you, especially during the third chapter. Also, the AI can be a bit spotty at times. I've avoided some enemies by just climbing up a ladder and dropping back down behind them. All in all, it's a great game.

Very fun. Very intense. Patches available online that fix nearly every issue this game likes to throw at you. Still a better inventory system than Skyrim.