Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth takes his mythos and the FPS genre to brand new dimensions. Featuring a sanity system that actually makes your character go crazy if you let his actions fall to the wayside as well as an innovative health and ammo system, Call of Cthulu is an innovative shooter that has some truly cool, original elements to it.

In Call of Cthulu, you play as a recovering amnesiac/schizophrenic who has just recently gotten out of an insane asylum. The reason that you went crazy is unclear, but it did have something to do with a weird coven of witches and the Cthulu Mythos. After getting out, you start up your past detective agency, still a little loopy and wanting some answers for what you went through. Six months later, you receive a phone call from someone needing to find a missing person in the town of Innsmouth (Lovecraft readers will know that name). Therefore, you go to the town to find some answers and hopefully solve some of your own problems along the way.

The coolest aspect of the gameplay in Call of Cthulu is the sanity system. Your character is schizophrenic, meaning that the things that he does can affect his mental health. For example, if you stare at a corpse for too long, then your vision will get blurry and you may get vertigo. In more serious cases, you will begin to heavily hallucinate and see monsters that aren’t there, which may cause you to waste precious bullets shooting at nothing.

Another great fact in the game is that there is no HUD. For those that haven’t really given it much thought, the HUD (heads-up display) is a little display in the corner of most games that tells you how many bullets and how much health your character currently has. Without these, you must use more innovative ways of discovering how much damage your character has taken, by checking your body for wounds. Also, the wound placement will have affects on how your character can play the game. For example, if your character has a huge, nasty gash on his leg, then he might not be able to run very fast or if he has a cut on his arm, then he might not be able to correctly aim his gun, and so on.

Call of the Cthulu has come along way, and after a hefty time in development, the game should impress both fans of the Cthulu Mythos as well as FPS fans in general when it releases this fall.

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