Call of Cthulhu: The (way too) Dark Corners of the Earth
There are a lot of flaws I have come across in games, but a game being so dark that you can not make out anything more than five feet in front of your face has only been something I have encountered in Doom 3. The difference between Doom 3 and it's forbodding blackness and Dark Corners of the Earth's is that in Doom your character had the sense to use a flash light (even if it means you can't duct tape it to your gun or even shoot a weapon at the sametime its out). There are many flaws with Dark Corners, but the first one that smacks you in the face is the lumming darkness as it hampers every aspect of the game until you adjust your T.V. and game to brighter settings; which then reveals just how dated this game really is graphically. The character models and stages in this one are well constructed, but they lack a realism that is demanded by the genre, giving it a very cardboard feel. There are two exceptions to this dated feel and those are two of the later boss battles that are true highlights of the game as they look good enough and are scripted well enough to stand up to any game on the Xbox or PS2.
Let me talk about basics for a moment. If there is one thing every game developer should have at the top of their priority list it should be the word basics, this meaning controls, camera, script (atmosphere and characters), sound, AI, and hit detection:
-First, I can not stress controls enough. Over the years there have been a number of games with shaky loose control schemes that many of us have dredged through, Dark Corners if you so choose to will be one of them. Shouldn’t someone by now have designed a third party control scheme for FPS games that you can license and fit to your design? If nothing else Halo should be the benchmark by which all controls are graded, its responsive, accurate, and never lets you down. Maybe I’m spoiled or just a little jaded, but why can’t anyone else get the formula right. Dark Corners tricks you into dismissing how shaky the controls can be for user error as you play through your first escape sequence over and over and over again and the jump button fails during crucial moments, though it’s really just the unresponsive control scheme. Later when you receive your first shiny firearm you will be gun down multiple times in fire fights until you get the hang of the shoddy aiming/targeting when you really need to headshot your enemies to put them down and the fact that if you are holding the aim function you may neither reload or change weapons. You also get a stealth function by clicking in the right analog stick, this should allow you to creep about and also peek around corners or over boxes, keyword “should”. When I started using the stealth function to try and get a glimpse around a corner I found myself more times than not, standing out in the open by the time I could see around the corner. The lean function has a bad tendency to let you drift slowly when holding it in and for the most part makes it useless. The controls in this game can be as loose as Jack Thompson’s lips and like his theories, they are very underdeveloped.
-Second, and hand in hand with controls is hit detection. Whether it is with picking up items, pushing buttons, bolting latches, opening doors, or shooting at enemies Dark Corners hit detection is unforgivably erratic. You will suffer the fate of a continue screen many times at the unforgiving hands of this game’s hit detection system. I found that during the first escape sequence that not only were the inhabitants of Innsmouth and the controls my enemy, but the hit detection also. As I tried to bolt doors to by myself precious time while I searched for a way out I repeatedly ran into the problem of opening the same door to warmly invite one of my antagonists to come stab me to death before I can bet to the next door. There are times when the hit detection means death, but there are far more when it’s just downright annoying. Picking up items can be a serious chore, as you’ll have to duck and then stay at just the right distance for some to register. The greatest frustration with the hit detection comes at a late point in the game when you are given nothing but a knife to do battle in a boss fight, don’t be expecting any kind of Resident Evil 4 Krauser and Leon knife fight either. As you try and stab the boss in during the battle you will repeatedly swing through him only to be killed in most cases by your enemies return attack. I don’t mind having to do a boss battle multiple times, but when I have to repeat a none exciting battle multiple times do to design flaws I get that throw the controller at the screen pissed. I also had a clipping incident when one of the enemies walked through a closed door to catch me sneaking and force me to restart a mission.
-Third, the AI. It has become such a shame that developers seem to be stuck writing and rewriting the same mediocre AI routines. In Dark Corners you will start to notice AI that has bright points during chase sequences with its unrelenting pursuit, but at other times falls into the same simple routines common in other FPS or stealth games. If there is one thing that bothers me about patterned AI, it’s when the pattern makes no sense; the stealth parts of this game become so boring and ridiculous you start groaning about half way through. There is are big differences between AI searching for someone and AI guarding an area, when a riled up lynch mob of AI fishmen are after you I would think they would be a little more frantic instead of walk to this box then walk back to that other box. Even if the enemies you encountered were supposed to be just guarding the areas, why do they pick some of the worst spots? I never once saw a guard actually watching an unlocked door to an area. Most of the stealth sequences in this one involve you avoiding patterned AI guards as you search for a way into the next area (why does every game try to clone Metal Gear/Splinter Cells stealth aspects), take my advice and once you have a gun just start blasting your way to the next area. I can’t say much for the allied AI except that it is about as good as the enemy AI, there was one awesome part when a group of Deep Ones (large creature from the black lagoon type monsters) and armed sailors were dancing around in a room together with me being the only person actually attacking or being attacked; I love when AI single out the player, it’s fan-fucking-tastic.
-Fourth, camera. Now normally you only have camera problems in third person or fixed view games, but in a FPS it is almost unheard of, so what’s the deal? Well as part of the effects sanity has on your character your vision is the biggest factor. I suffered through quite a few headaches playing this game as Jack’s vision went from grainy, to blurry, to swirling. There seems be no way to actually play through this game without loosing major amounts of sanity as it should be in the Mythos world, but the swirling vision that you get so many times is a little over the top and literally game me and my girlfriend who was watching me play sinus headaches. There should have been a warning on the box that says may induces visual trauma or something. I will say that Bethesda/Headfirst did a good job of eliminating things like the HUDs and health meters, but at they really didn't get the effect I think they were going for.
-Fifth, sound. Well this is one area where I only had a couple small complaints about the sound one being the fact that as the game progresses and you gradually lose more and more sanity your demeanor in conversations never seems to change, second that there was definitely not enough screaming and hysteria when you and your allies faced the horrors of the Mythos universe, and third that everything seems to have the same footstep sound. Besides these things the sound holds up nicely with bone crunching, flesh ripping, loud guns, the whispers of insanity, teeth chattering, and growls from beyond.
-Sixth and last on the list is the script encompassing the general tones of the game. The atmosphere in this game is just a tad off from what a journey through a maddening encounter with “The Old Ones” should feel like in my opinion. There wasn’t a single time in the game where I was fearful of opening a door or journeying further into the darkness; instead of a “god what horrors await me?” I was left with a “Let me guess, I have to sneak around until I can find my guns again?” reaction too many times, after which I would take out my aggressions by blasting everything in my sights. If you want to make people afraid of something don’t let them kill it, as I single handedly dealt out hot leaded death to various monstrosities I was left with that feeling of invincibility you achieve in FPS when you enter “killing spree” bliss and it was positively reinforced by Jack’s smugness in later parts. Never in a tale of the Mythos should any monster as terrible as those in this game be so easily defeated or out smarted, most of the tales end with the main characters death or some kind of near fatal escape. Continuing to the characters, there was only a few times in the game when the dialogue actually matched the situation, the rest of the game everyone is pretty monotone and emotionless; like I said before, more screaming and hysteria would have been a nice change. I HAVE HEARD BETTER DIALOGUE IN SOME OF THE FIRST THREE RESIDENT EVIL GAMES!
Another annoying part of this game is the health and healing gimmick Bethesda/Headfirst tried to use instead of a physical health meter. Jack, the protaganist takes damage according to the area in which he is struck and this damage is viewable in the items menu as a full body display of Jack stands under a panic/sanity/heartbeat meter. When you incur damage you get everything from, a blood splattered screen, bone crunching noises as Jack tries to run on compound fractured leg, to vision that has lost all color. Healing this damage is by use of various medical supplies that come in the med-kits you find throughout the game. At first it will seems as though you are going to have to watch your supply of certain things and maybe push on with some injuries at times, at first. Once you get to the point in the game when they give you means to fire back at you enemies you'll be ducking into a dark area behind cover to use the quick heal button while the sketchy AI fumbles about trying to figure out where you went and not even caring where you had been injured. The whole premises of being able to pick and chose how to heal your character is lost when it takes about the same amount of time to heal all your wounds as it does one specific wound. A nice concept, but as with a lot of things in this game it needs a good bit of work.
In all honesty I have probably spent more time bitching about this game, its various problems, and convincing my friends not to waste time on it then I did trudging through the mucky insanity screens, shoddy controls, and horrid dialogue just to be let down yet again by someone’s halfcocked attempt at recreating the Lovecraft atmosphere. We all make sacrifices, this was mine to make! Before you go dropping 30 bones on this title destine for the bargain bin give the Resident Evil series, the Silent Hill series, Eternal Darkness, and the Fatal Frames series a go first; if those don’t sooth your lust for a horror game, then wait a couple months for this one to drop to under twenty bucks before buying it. If you like playing Betas or games that feel unfinished, this one may be okay for you, but I expect to get the finished product when I throw down some cash or at least a warning that what I am buying is NOT and this game to me felt like an unfinished product. There are too many flaws that make this game more of a fustration than a enjoyable experience and considering the amount of development this one went through, I would say it's unexcusable that these flaws were not address more thoroughly.
Since this is one of those few games that people have been really looking forward to for a very long time, me included, I think that it should be said that FPS action game probably was not the best way to do a Lovecraft game. I'm not saying you can't do a First Person View for a Lovecraft game, but I am saying that mixing Lovecraft and Action is like mixing petrol and palmitic acid, a molotov cocktail thrown into the Mythos that just burns away at the basic structure of a Lovecraftian tale.
Game Rankings
There are some reviews at this link that you can also look at, but I feel that most of these reviews are just too generous by turning a blind eye to serious game mechanics issues and contain bloated ratings.
