Slowly, the occult elements reveal themselves. The bulk of the game is presented in large, open areas to poke and prod around. There is a foreboding feeling for many of the first few hours, as you read through diary entries and newspaper clippings that signify a dreary town slipping into something much more sinister. Much of the dread is built in your moment-to-moment interactions. Efficiently structured into separate chapters, Call of Cthulhu builds tension over time and only relies on cutscenes when most effective. This is not an experience ripe with jump scares and cheap shocks. Likewise, any actual horror in the story is delivered with care and consideration. When you feel like Pierce, thanks to the act of executing his actions, the terrifying turns the game takes come across authentically. Much of the actual gameplay is intentionally languid, to better portray the player as an active participant in the proceedings. Having the character’s prowess as a detective directly tied to the player’s progression is a smart design choice that makes Edward Pierce’s world all the more tangible.Īn immersive quality is key to make a Lovecraft adaptation work, and Call of Cthulhu pulls it off quite well. What might seem like a throwaway dialogue exchange could be the key to a hidden puzzle that moves the story forward. Clues spoken by characters or written in text logs are essential, and the game doesn’t track them all for you. You’ll need to remember certain prompts to solve tough puzzles. Pierce wanders around these visions in search of clues that make use of the player’s intuition. Your search for answers comes through recreating crime scenes. Likewise, interacting with items in the environment deepens Pierce’s understanding of arcane secrets. Dumping points into your investigation prowess makes physical objects stand out more while searching for clues. A branching skill tree allows you to build out abilities used in interactive scenarios. As you set to work investigating Darkwater Island, Pierce’s talents can grow and diversify. Those roots in a traditional role-playing experience let you truly inhabit Call of Cthulhu’s grimy tenor. He doesn’t have to drink, though, and should you choose to make him, the game notes that this will affect his destiny. In the opening sequence, Pierce receives his latest assignment and ponders a bottle of whisky. And the turn of Prohibition has complicated his favorite pastime. Nightmares from his time in the Great War manifest themselves as palpable visions. Pierce is something of a blank slate, his attributes to be determined by the player, but he comes with some specific baggage.
Players follow Edward Pierce, a particularly hapless private investigator, working to unravel the disappearance of a local painter and her family. Its mystery comes across as a carefully crafted concoction of the most noxious and odious elements of several stories, and nails the tone of a slow descent into madness. Based on the tabletop role-playing game based on the short story from 1928, this game purposefully rides the reputation of Lovecraft’s work. It has almost become cliché to label anything as “ Lovecraftian.” While the specific elements of Lovecraft’s work are easy to identify, their influence has been distilled to describe any vaguely atmospheric horror.Ĭyanide Studios’ Call of Cthulhu is a more direct adaptation of the iconic author’s mythos. Lovecraft’s fiction are well-known at this point, and well-trodden at that.