The Terrible Call

Or so we thought.

The atmosphere in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of The Earth (DCoTE) is-dare I say it?-perfect. It delivers a potent dose of creepiness and horror that will leave you gasping for breath at the end.

The game starts with police detective Jack Walters (you) investigating a disturbance caused by a cult called the Fellowship of Yith in a dilapidated old house in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the horrors he experiences in the house that day land him right into the Arkham Asylum, blabbering incoherently.

It is six years later now, and Jack Walters, a shadow of his former self, cannot remember what happened to him during his time in the asylum. As he tries to piece together the last few years of his life, a mysterious phone call finds him in the port of Innsmouth, investigating the disappearance of a young store manager. His simple investigation turns ugly as he finds himself fighting for his life against dark forces beyond his comprehension.

The game is loosely based on Lovecraft’s short story The Shadow over Innsmouth, which tells of unnamed horrors that befell the little port. Once you’ve been introduced to its initial chapters, it’s an ordeal to wrench yourself away from the game. Colours are dark and subdued, and the cutscenes are presented in an old-film grainy style, and fit in seamlessly with the game itself.

DCoTE is a mix of adventure and first-person shooter, though the bias is clearly on the adventure side-gather clues, speak to people, and solve puzzles. Thankfully, the puzzles involve some cranial activity rather than just running around picking up stuff to fit it here and there-the phrase “good old detective work” comes to mind. Just when the adventure part starts to get tedious and boring, you’re thrown into an adrenaline-draining situation that will instantly relocate your heart to the general vicinity of your throat. Something that deserves mention here is the escape sequences-scripted though they are, they’re still the most heart-pounding parts of the game, where you run like hell, bolting doors and using obstacles to delay enemies by just those critical few seconds that stand between you and your coffin. You don’t even have a gun in the first chase-a chilling “ohmygodIamgonnadie” feeling. The mix doesn’t work as well as an all-out FPS, but it’s still one of the better approaches we’ve seen.

            
It isn’t as straightforward as it sounds, though. You have to remember that even though Jack has been released from the asylum, his mind isn’t made of steel, and every disturbing scene he encounters will take a toll on his sanity-his heartbeat quickens, his breathing becomes heavier, his vision blurs-and as this worsens, he will start to mutter to himself, see things, and finally liberate himself with a shot from his pistol. To regain sanity, you must find the (very, very few) savepoints, which give him (and you) a few deserved moments of sanctuary. The idea could have been disastrous, but works in beautifully with the game’s extremely immersive atmosphere.

FPS junkies will find the lack of a Heads-Up Display a little disconcerting, but you’ll see that it’s all part of the experience. There’s no accurate auge of health on-screen, but you can listen to your heartbeat and breathing to decide whether you need to patch up with a few bandages, or if you need a shot of morphine. Of course, this assumes your heart isn’t thumping in real life. The health system is much more advanced than your average oh-now-I’m-hurt-but-everything-still-functions-properly. If you get shot in the arm, you won’t be able to aim your gun well, a wound to the leg and you’ll be limping, and an unattended bleeding wound will gradually drain you of life.

And if you’re feeling particularly brave, take the game’s challenge and play it with the lights off.

Finally, a fun multiplayer game that isn’t an FPS…
Crashday is a simple game. There are cars, there are guns, and there is some wanton destruction-three gaming ideas that have steadfastly braved the test of time. Though, rarely have all three been found in the same game.

If you are confused about what to do with these three, note this: the cars are to be driven, the guns (oh, and missiles as well) are to be used to inflict said wanton destruction on any other unfortunate car that comes your way.

All Alone
In its single player mode, Crashday offers you many game options-you can run around an open arena destroying other cars (and getting destroyed yourself) in a Wrecking Match, play a game of “Pass the Bomb”-like passing the parcel, only here the loser goes boom in the end-or a game of “Hold the Flag”, where you need to capture the flag and keep it for as long as you can. There’s also the Speed-like Bomb Run, where you get blown to bits for falling below a speed limit, the Stunt Show which gives you points for trying some of the craziest driving stunts (Ã la Carmageddon), and some simple, straightforward racing.

And then there’s the Career mode, where you have to do all the aforementioned to get ahead in the Crashday circuit. More than enough, you’d think, to keep the solitary player happy…

…For About A Day
All the game modes are a lot of fun, but they tend to get boring after the first few times. The cars are awfully tough to control, but the AI bots don’t seem to have a problem with them, so while you’re floundering about trying to discern your Londons from your Tokyos, someone has already come upon you from nowhere and turned you into scrap metal, or stolen your flag, or passed you the bomb-as the case may be.

The Career Mode is just a pathetic excuse to get you to play all the game modes-there’s even a voice narrative before each mission to fool you into believing there’s an actual story, but it takes a lot more than that awful German/American accented voice to convince you.

However, the Mini Games, notably the Long Jumps and Blast Jumps (jump the farthest you can before your car blows up), are tremendous fun, especially if you’re competing with someone for the longest distance record.

Party!
To turn around all the gripes with Crashday’s single player mode, you’ll need to switch to multiplayer. Human stupidity is much more entertaining than artificial intelligence-your opponents are faced with the same difficulties as you are, so the chances of your winning an event are more realistic. The Wrecking Match is the most fun here-especially for venting frustrations, caused mainly due to losing pathetically in Mini Games, on bald-headed colleagues (see Digit Diary)-we were playing it in the office till 1 AM two days in a row!

You will now notice that all the game modes that Crashday offers are geared more towards insanely fun LAN parties and online play than the single player. It supports up to eight players per event-quite respectable, and more than you’ll probably ever need for a good blow-up session anyway.

Pretty
Moon Byte Studios’ attention to the multiplayer mode is also apparent in the graphics of the game-they’re quite impressive, but still remain light enough to run on most half-decent graphics cards. The damage modelling is also quite well done, making all the crashes, booms and bangs very entertaining.

Every time you use the nitro boost when driving, the camera changes to wide-angle mode, and comes back to normal mode when you release it-giving the experience a weird rubber-band feel.

Insecta
Fun though it is, Crashday is still quite buggy-it would randomly crash on our ATI cards, but seemed to be happier on NVIDIAs. It’s also riddled with graphics bugs: there were numerous instances where the cars would go straight into the ground-with two wheels below the ground surface, I mean. It gets even more bizarre in online play-I’ve even seen cars moving around the map with only their roofs showing over the ground.

Overall, unless you get addicted to breaking Mini Game records like some of us here have, you’re not going to get much out of the game if you don’t intend to play it online or over a LAN. But once you do get into multiplayer, it’s hard to get out.