CALL OF CTHULHU
Can you play with madness?
Scared of spiders? Pah, that’s nothing. Edward Pierce wouldn’t get out of a glass of whisky for that kind of fright. This is a private detective who’s survived the trenches of World War 1, and can fight off a world-ending cult in hock to an unspeakable beast from another dimension. Or is he? That latter one is down to you… This choice-based adventure mixes walking sim exploration and the kind of investigative puzzling Arkham’s caped crusader would love to get his fangs into. It’s all wrapped in Lovecraftian lore, based on the tabletop RPG of the same name, and encourages you to lose Ed’s mind – the darker the nightmarish events you put him through, the more you uncover of the story.
It’s a narrative that doesn’t hold back, either. If Ed wanted to keep his sanity in check he shouldn’t have accepted the job of finding the arsonist who set ablaze a house on a haunted hill, or looked into why a dead painter is sending messages from her grave. In fact, he should have turned tail the moment he set foot on the permanently fog-shrouded island of Darkwater.
Everything you do, or don’t do, in Call Of Cthulhu is designed to send Ed loopy. Effectively the game is a sanity simulator, plying you with moral moments and occult mythology to blur the line between reality and… something, somewhere, else. Your everyday phobias are covered too. If Ed is in darkness he gets the jitters; cram him into a small dark space and the screen pulsates, filling an ‘Insanity Gauge’.
Your state of mind feeds into the decisions you’re able to make when questioning the cast of oddball characters. Choices you make affect dialogue options, or lead to new branching retorts and lines of enquiry. Read occult books or choose to go along with the Cthulhu plotters and you’ll go insane, but you’ll also speak their language and discover more than any sane person could. Likewise, keeping characters onside by flattering them, or uncovering their secrets during investigations, unlocks more avenues of choice and plot twists.
LET’S TALK
Everything is governed by Call Of Cthulhu’s upgrade system that enables you to spend ‘CP’ on aspects of Ed’s personality. For example, Eloquence helps you charm people, Psychology enables you to understand a character’s motives, and increasing Strength means you can force doors or occasionally overpower some characters, verbally or physically.
In fact, there’s very little traditional action in the game, which helps sell the psychological horror. In the last third you do unholster your pistol and can shoot your way out of a tricky situation, but
“EVERYTHING YOU DO, OR DON’T DO, IS DESIGNED TO SEND EDWARD LOOPY.”
there are rewards for escaping peacefully, just as there are advantages to blowing holes in the crazed fishermen.
This is the nub of the game: no matter what you do, or don’t do, or which choices you make, there will always be a gameaffecting consequence. These can be small and incremental, altering your sanity and route through conversation branches, or dramatic end-of-game moments. The game can take eight hours to finish, but of course this is one story. Replays reveal new endings, uncover hidden plot points, and spin the narrative down alternative foggy avenues.
WATER-LOGGED
However, as the game lacks a percentage complete stat, or a chapter recap as in Detroit: Become Human, you’re left to stumble into new conversations and outcomes. Also, while Cthulhu is a pulpy – and more fun – experience than Quantic’s humdrum yarn, there aren’t as many divergent paths. The twists, too, are less dramatic than in other choicedriven games, as only select characters can be affected.
In places Cthulhu shows its modest budget, too. Characters animate like wooden puppets in the manner of a PS3 game, which can dampen the mood.
These are small blemishes on an otherwise frothy adventure that treats Lovecraft with care, and you on your toes. Every chapter is awash with more twists than a net of squirming octopuses, including body-swapping silliness and predictive, monstrous paintings. You’d be crazy to miss out.