Is this Lovecraft inspired horror worth a look?
Call of Cthulhu is a psychological horror based on the works of HP Lovecraft and the classic pen and paper RPG by Chaosium. You play as a detective who has to solve a case of a murder/suicide, only to get riled up in cults, rituals and monsters that want you dead.
The game itself is in first person, but it’s not an action horror like Resident Evil or Dead Space, but more of a mystery. Your character can reconstruct scenes using clues he finds, while giving you free will on your approach to characters and sometimes objectives, all the while balancing out your sanity and levelling up skills to give you the tools you need for the path you want to take. There are a number of paths you can take, one trophy asks that you don’t even drink any booze…a thing that is constantly waved under your nose and after seeing some of the trippy things in the game, you’ll probably need one yourself.
Despite the decent mystery solving and choices, there are some poorly executed stealth sections that will frustrate you, especially since you somehow can’t fight back if you are spotted. One even pits you against a monster who crawls out of a painting and you can’t even hide from it, nor use any of the daggers placed around to attack it directly. It took me a while to figure out the actual solution, but even then it wasn’t easy to avoid instant death.
Visually the game is a bit of a mixed bag. Cutscenes are in a lower quality to the rest of the game, while in-game models are hit and miss. The art style however, is superb and truly creepy throughout. While not relying too heavily on typical jump scares, Cthulhu is still quite a scary game at times. The voice-acting isn’t too shabby either, while the soundtrack is pretty creepy too.
The Verdict
Call of Cthulhu is a decent horror game that is a little rough around the edges and while the stealth sections do it no favours, the rest of the game is impressive horror throughout and worthy of the lore.