#149: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Cult classic is more like Heaven’s Gate than Scientology
This review was originally posted to Twitter on August 4, 2019.
Initial release: October 24, 2005
Platform: XBox/PC
Developer: Headfirst Productions
They tried. They really did. I’ll give them credit for that. Among the rather small list of games out there with Lovecraft’s name explicitly on the branding, this is a brave, ambitious horror title. But ambition only gets you so far.
Released in 2005 for the XBox, and a few months later for PC, Dark Corners of the Earth is Headfirst’s most successful title — not that that’s saying much, as their only other release was Simon the Sorcerer 3D, under Headfirst’s earlier moniker Adventure Soft. Their resume is otherwise a short list of canceled games. Nevertheless, with Dark Corners, Headfirst have crafted a first person survival horror game steeped in the Lovecraft mythos lore, giving a retelling of The Shadow over Innsmouth mixed with The Shadow out of Time. (Cthulhu does not appear.)
You play a private detective, struggling to make ends meet after returning to sanity after six years of an apparent possession of which he has no memory, hired to investigate the disappearance of a grocery store manager in Innsmouth, Massachusetts. WEhen he gets there, he finds the locals are unhelpful, hostile and honestly pretty darn ugly. Innsmouth has seen better days, with most of its shops closed. His investigation eventually turns into a shitshow as the locals realize he’s seen too much and try to kill him.
The first half of the game is where the game shines. You spend your time wandering around Innsmouth, trying to talk to people and investigating the crime scene. The game’s adventure game roots are at their strongest here as you try to uncover what happened to the store clerk. Eventually, true to the source material, the locals try to kill you, and you spend the rest of the early part of the game on the run. This is where the game’s stealth elements come into play, as you’re unarmed for most of it. It’s tense and frightening, and great fun. and then…
This game has been out for nearly two decades, and it took me until 2019 to be able to get past the halfway point. Multiple attempts over the years had always ended at an excruciatingly awful sequence where you must weather enemy fire in the back of a truck. I don’t know how I managed it this time; maybe it was luck, maybe it was just playing on an easier difficulty level. But the game is rife with issues — bugs, bad design decisions, clunky systems, and the truck ride exemplifies the problems plaguing this game.
Aside from several show-stopping bugs (most of which are only patched in the GOG version — Steam users are screwed) there’s also an over-reliance on trial and error, a clunky health system, convoluted, opaque puzzles, and a truly mind-numbingly awful final level.
Oh, I did say most bugs were patched out in the GOG version. But not all. A big one is in the gold refinery where you are unable to board the ore bucket because of an invisible wall. You have to basically go back to the machinery and examine it before you can board. The other big one, and this is about where I lost my patience with the game, is the very final escape sequence, where everything is collapsing around you and you have to run back to the entrance. Unfortunately, you cannot make it there before you die.
It’s not even a matter of timing (and the game is plagued with timing issues on modern hardware, though most are patched) — the game kills you if you try to set foot in the tunnel that leads to the exit regardless of how fast you got there. The only solution is to use the noclip cheat.
It’s the final insult on top of a long, boring climactic level that has none of the charm of the rest of the game, after a final boss that’s basically an incredibly obtuse puzzle. In short: bring a guide, and the unofficial tool by, ahem, “sucklead.”
Even aside from these issues, the back half of the game is where it’s obvious the studio ran out of money, as the mission design starts to simplify and the game transforms from a flawed but ambitious immersive sim into a middling Half-Life clone. Frankly, given how clunky and nonfunctional stealth can be, this is a blessing.
It’s hard not to feel bad for Headfirst Productions though. They spent six years on this game; the passion for this project showed as employees stayed on even without pay, and even continued to work on the PC version after Headfirst filed for bankruptcy. There are a lot of ideas in this game that are ahead of their time. You can see how amnesia would expand on the stealth sections, for example. The investigative stuff, while not as in-depth as Condemned: Criminal Origins (also 2005) really tries to put you in the shoes of a PI. Certain segments of the game quite are memorable, like the hotel escape sequence, or fighting Dagon with a ship gun. The problem is so much of it is based on trial-and-error that after you’ve died for the 5th time at the hotel it stops being scary and starts being frustrating.
That this is a passion project is obvious at every level. A lot of work went into this game to make it the best possible Lovecraftian survival horror game they could make at the time. I just don’t think that it was enough.
