Cthulhu Sends His Regards

HP Lovecraft has often been considered impossible to adapt from the screen, even though Japan does it quite often and ably. But while Lovecraft is recognized as the greatest American horror writer of the pre-WWII age, his work is usually represented by tiny shout-outs or extremely obscure cult films. 2006’s Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is neither. Written by Christopher Gray, produced by the now-defunct Headfirst Studios and finally published by Bethesda on PC, it is a truly great tribute to the most influential horror writer in America.

 

Our hero is Jack Walters, a private detective who has had more than a few run-ins with the local board of mental health. He has visions and nightmares of a mysterious, hideously-angled city that seems so damned familiar. The incident that ended Jack’s extremely promising police career left him a gibbering mess for half a decade. After responding to a call to clear one of the many cults out of one of the plethora of abandoned mansions that dot the New England countryside, Jack became trapped inside the house and ‘saw’ something humanity wasn’t meant to. It’s very similar to The Horror At Red Hook, but without the (conventional) racism and islamophobia.

 

The rest of the story is a mash-up of Lovecraft’s more famous works The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time and The  Sha  Call of Cthulhu, though nicely interwoven and with sparingly used pulp fiction tropes. Jack is a burnt-out PI called to investigate a missing person in a creepy little sea-town called Innsmouth, circa 1922. While there, he finds the local ‘Masonic Order’ makes the early Mormons look like vegan co-ops and becomes embroiled in a small war between the US government and the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Along the way, he finds the meaning of what he saw in that mansion and why he had to see it.

 

CoC:DCotE shirks some first person shooter conventions in order to really get you immersed in the world and make the survival horror part more difficult. Guns must actually be aimed and apart from recoil, they tire one’s arms out after a while and can’t always be ready. There is no ‘heads-up display’ to let you know when you should be hiding more than usual or reloading, and many things in the game will make your character go insane. Also, healing is done in real time and is an involved process.

 

Instead of a HUD, blood splashes on the screen to signal damage. The color drains from the world to show you are bleeding to death. Enough damage to a body part and it may be permanently damaged and require medical assistance. Each limb requires a specific healing aid—sutures for heavy bleeding, splints for broken bones, antidotes for poisoning and bandages on top of everything else. A small cutscene is triggered upon attempting to heal, and it can be very long and interruptable. The inventory screen has a delightful scale model of our Hero in all of his glory, and it can get pretty gruesome after a nasty fight. Furthermore, broken limbs can slow you down even more than usual or make aiming guns difficult. The player is given an unlimited amount of morphine at the game’s start that can temporarily mitigate the effects of wounds. However, it greatly increases Jack’s susceptibility to insanity-inducing events.

 

Jack Walters is still insane, if not a gibbering lunatic. And—like Lovecraft’s world—just about everything will make him go crazy-er. Looking down from a high distance will cause the camera to ‘pulse’, simulating vertigo. Dead bodies and Cthulhu Mythos material can make the screen blur and Jack hear voices. If this goes on for too long, he’ll kill himself. Potentially with a crow bar.

 

There is also the potential for actual psychological damage to the player, as the gore is quite realistic (the medical bay on the ship level is not for a PG13 audience). You can hear the bones agonizingly grinding together as Jack walks with a broken leg. Though two broken arms just give one a greater sense of accomplishment when the bullets actually hit their intended mark.

 

The mainstay of Survival Horror games is often puzzles, and CoC:DCotE has many. They run from the mundane ‘fix the elevator’ to deciphering an ancient pre-human language. But some of the puzzles are simply confusing, and even with a guide they can make one want to go back to limping off rooftops for an hour. The safecracking mechanics are the best I’ve seen of all the five games I’ve seen safecracking in.

 

As a First-Person Shooter, it is necessary to have a multitude of firearms and sharp, pokey things to smack bitches with. Thankfully, this is one area in which COC:DCotE does not deviate from the norm (here’s looking at you Amnesia), even though you spend the first third of the game armed with nothing but dull one liners and moderate-to-severe psychoses. There is the standard Colt 1911 pistol; a Smith and Wesson 1917 revolver that is so much better than the pistol; a double-barreled shotgun that often seems too weak for its size; a satisfyingly loud Tommygun that unfortunately can’t be aimed properly; and a Springfield 1903 rifle, scope-less. You can reload all of these weapons regardless of how many bullets are left in the magazine, and needlessly reloading is a great way to break the monotonous shamble our hero uses as a means of transportation. Polio-induced leg braces were a real bitch back then.

 

There is also a hidden gun, but I won’t spoil the surprise. In terms of melee weapons, there is the crowbar you will use twice and then wish you could get rid of to free up your ‘1’ key, as well as a bloody Bowie Knife that is meant to be used to head-stab fishmen while they aren’t looking. Unfortunately for the knife, the level you are supposed to do this in is perfectly fortified for a fire-fight and it is so much easier to use the rifle you got just moments before than sneaking around, waiting for one of the guards to randomly notice you and break both of your arms in one shot. Also, you get to use a naval cannon on a Coast Guard Cutter during a hurricane. This level is arguably the funnest, if only because it is much more fast-paced than most and the NPC’s are actually capable of helping you.

 

The flaws in the game are many, and are especially apparent in more modern machines. Windows Vista can cause a number of problems, such the aforementioned cannon’s scope not working and the game crashing even more than usual for a Bethesda game. However, a quick look about the internet will quickly get you compatibility patches, high-definition graphics and even the ability to play through the game without dying once. That being said, there a more than a few problems than the glitches.

 

The graphics were kind of dated even when the game released in 2006. This is somewhat alleviated by (or attributed to) the off-kilter art style that makes everyone and everything more dirty and ugly than it should be. Also, the larger environments can get a bit bland at points. A word of advice: Keep a stiff upper lip until you reach the ‘The Esoteric Order of Dagon’ chapter, as that is when you will actually begin dying from combat rather than failing to be Indiana Jones at the third grail trial in ‘generic industrial interiors numbers 4, 10 and 17’.

 

The difficulty is going to be the biggest hurdle for a gamer. Jack simply saunters wherever he goes, whether walking to his hotel room or being chased by the stuff of a Japanese schoolgirl’s nightmares. This is especially apparent during ‘Attack of the Fishmen’ and ‘The Marshe Refinery’, where running and jumping are key to survival. You will spend up to an hour getting to the first ledge over and over, thinking you got a sufficient trotting start and even imagining for a second that you made it, only to see the other side of the rooftop falling upwards.

 

The game engine itself has a near-fatal flaw in it—when pressing the ‘lean’ button, it is possible to partially go through walls. This is most apparent during the ship level, as you can see the ship is really a conglomeration of metal rooms flying though a gray nothingness, ferrying its damned passengers to the Dark Corners of the Multiverse where not even God knows what gibbering abomination will befall them. Also, it’s possible to open doors you were meant to have to circumnavigate and unlock later. Which is more hellish to you?

 

Another complaint is Jack himself—he’s almost deadpan for most of the game, and when he does show some emotion (like falling into a vat of molten gold) he seems to be voiced by someone else. But when he speaks it is often to himself, so it could be his thoughts that the player hears. Still, it can really break immersion when you are trying to dodge the tendrils of a tentacled-monstrosity with broken legs and suddenly hear “a fresh fuse” coming from someone who sounds like they are smugly ordering dinner. The game also suffers from the 90’s limitless backpack: you can carry the entire game’s arsenal at once, if you are any good at stealth you will rarely need to rely on all of it. It simplifies things, but it is unbecoming of a Survival Horror game to allow the protagonist to be a walking Army and Navy shop.

 

Christopher Gray definitely knew his Lovecraft when he crafted the story, and he successfully managed to insert pulp elements without making everything so over the top. My only problem with it is that I am a bit of a Lovecraft purist, and so don’t understand why the Innsmouth Raid took place in early 1922, as opposed to late 1928. And I feel that some of the creatures were made more fierce and ‘conventionally monstrous’ than Lovecraft would have described. Deep Ones were frog men, not shark people. Lovecraft would have gone for misshapen and just different than simple fangs and claws. Though to be fair, Lovecraft hoped to evoke the (now) absurd horror of miscegenation in the Deep Ones, so it could be an effort to modernize Lovecraft’s often laughable race-based horror.

 

But still, the game is true-to-text Lovecraft. The environs are dark and dreary, while the denizens of it are very creepy. Headfirst truly captures Lovecraft’s feel of a doomed protagonist in a world with no hope, even if he is the only one that knows it. Lovecraft would probably have thought the game was a very loving effort to adapt his work, and then expect the largest royalties check he ever got.