 |
 |
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 | ||||||||||||||
|
Thursday, December 1, 2005.
by Davilis
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is a first person horror genre game based on the mythos created by American author H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft\'s horror and fantasy works have influenced such writers as Stephen King (IT, Salem\'s Lot et al) and Anne Rice (Dragonriders of Pern, Interview With The Vampire et al). Published by Bethesda Softworks, and developed by Headfirst Productions, Call of Cthulhu is set during the 1920\'s and features a good deal of period-specific items and goods which you will come across during normal gameplay. It should be noted that Headfirst Productions chose well to collborate with Chaosium Inc., the developers of the award-winning pen & paper RPG \"Call of Cthulhu\" to preserve the integrity of the final work. Unlike the typical \"reality horror\" genre, CofC-Dark Corners doesn\'t rely so much on ample health packs lying about, but rather incorporates a detailed damage and healing system breaking one\'s overall health down into conditions and treatments. There is also no HUD whatsoever; adding well to feeling of being immersed in the game...and it\'s pretty !&%$@#* scary too! The game AI is a thing of beauty, as creatures pursuing you will actually open doors and tracks you, either alone or in groups! I can\'t tell you how many times I turned around during the course of my gameplay to find some creature or person \"sneaking\" up on you! Creepy man! In this game you assume the guise of one Jack Walters, a former police officer turned Private Investigator. After answering the call to a large suburban home where shots having been fired were reported, Walters becomes temporarily trapped inside this nightmare house, only to stumble upon some sort of other-worldly evil that breaks his fragile mind! When the police find Jack in the house later that night, he is immediately taken to a psychiatric institute, where he is diagnosed with severe amnesia and schizophrenia. Worse yet, Jack loses 6 years of his life trying to come to grips with what he saw in the house that night? The game is extremely well-crafted in the puzzle solving and exploration aspects. I must admit that I didn\'t make it far enough into the game to comment on actual combat, save my having gotten the boots laid to me by a bunch of irrate fisherman in the dismal port town of Innsmouth. The game environment is rich in detail, and you can go most anywhere in it. You would do well to remember that the least obvious route is probably the correct one in this kind of game! Special mention MUST be made of the games ingenious use of a \"Dynamic Sanity System\". Essentially, due to the still fragile state of Jack\'s mind, he must maintain a constant grip on his sanity or he will begin to suffer hallucinations, anxiety attacks, vertigo and paranoia. These conditions begin to manifest themselves after Jack witnesses anything visually disturbing...and in this game there\'s plenty! The game screen will become blurry and lethargic, and eventually, if left unchecked, Jack will need a shot of Morphine (which he carries with him) to quell the symptoms! Graphically, Call of Cthulhu-Dark Corners of the Earth is stunning! The level of detail put into virtually everything from a mundane article in a grocery, to the fixed death gaze of a hanging corpse (oh yes...there are LOTS of corpses) really bodes well for game designers. Facial expressions and mannerisms of the multitude of interactive characters you will come across in the game are extremely well done. Earlier in this review I mentioned that sometimes you\'ll turn around and have somebody right in your face...well, try to put THAT into perspective? Its dark...fog all over the place, you\'re in a creepy-ass town where everybody looks like a bloody zombie....and BOOM! The ignorant bus driver or some such is literally breathing down your neck! The game does a great job in re-creating the \"feeling\" that you\'re not alone...what was that? Behind you? Oh...sorry, just a shadow. lol From the scraping noise of a bookcase being dragged or pushed, to the wet slapping sound of a corpse hitting the ground...the sound effects for Call of Cthulhu-Dark Corners of the Earth are dead-to-rights. I found that the added effect of actually hearing Jack\'s pulse rise when he\'s having a \"spell\" was well done. It really helped add to that close feeling one has while in shock? The ambient music was just as foreboding as the utter despair one felt wandering about in the \"dark corners of the Earth\". In a nutshell-appropriately creepy tunes for a creepy game, that\'s sure to have you playing with your lights on!!! Suggestions: No specific suggestions for improvement here...they managed to take a very dark and ecclectic horror RPG and successfully port it to console! Brava guys! Definitely a \"should-be\" on the horror fan\'s Xmas list! Overall: 9.0 / 10 Gameplay: 9.0 / 10 Visuals: 9.0 / 10 Sound: 8.0 / 10 | ||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
| Write your own review of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. Click Here. |
|
||||||||||
|
Released Xbox 360 Titles: 414 Released Xbox Titles: 814 Registered Members: 39,222 Forum Posts: 707,427 Staff Reviews: 801 Member Reviews: 10,322 News Articles: 9,191 Screenshots: 19,562 Xbox 360 Achievements: 15,146 Xbox 360 Faceplates: 1,437 Cheat Codes: 1,706 |
||||||||||
|
1. Repo Man 360 - 103,070 2. Unreal - 91,610 3. CrazyCougar-XBA - 84,856 4. SkillfulMmd - 82,431 5. moltenluv - 60,735 6. SuperMonkeyHero - 60,245 7. Symmetric - 58,760 8. tacohead - 47,076 9. hellonearth159 - 46,867 10. Nato King-XBA - 46,834 11. Ohsay - 32,590 12. y2kash_14 - 32,536 13. Omen28 - 32,510 14. UNV Meeks - 31,764 15. Variation-XBA - 30,291 16. Enamelized420-XBA - 29,326 17. drunkentexan - 28,461 18. Silent-XBA - 27,540 19. Marcello - 27,270 20. RDJ - 24,115 21. ez054098 - 23,513 22. Kasumi'sHairbow - 23,279 23. Steeps5 - 21,505 24. wicked_d365 - 21,295 25. gameking28 - 21,115 26. kdub1982 - 18,074 27. XxBlackIcexX - 16,705 28. Kamshaft-XBA - 16,003 29. LeThAl REMiX - 15,655 30. NiNeBReaKeR - 14,887 31. thAshAdyOne - 13,330 32. Whisper - 13,272 33. Willy2.0-XBA - 13,248 34. KatamariKutie - 11,993 35. m4oH - 11,950 36. mattgame - 11,925 37. Air Effex - 11,855 38. JarkMan - 11,158 39. Reclaimer - 11,110 40. Ainokeatoo-XBA - 10,513 41. WynnFire - 10,475 42. Alex5101 - 10,405 43. SpaceGhost2K-XBA - 10,210 44. Bakeman - 9,252 45. mangobama619 - 8,919 46. BananaMan - 8,765 47. SPARTAN VI - 8,065 48. wasabi_ - 7,962 49. elliottcjackson - 7,810 50. Not Yellow - 7,715 |
||||||||||
| (Top 150) | ||||||||||
 | ||||||||||
 |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
 |
||||||||||
|
1. l Maximus l - 14,811 2. mattgame - 12,451 3. laughs - 11,626 4. Variation-XBA - 10,460 5. Whisper - 8,806 6. Reclaimer - 8,122 7. BananaMan - 4,654 8. Soda Jones - 4,118 9. m4oH - 4,107 10. Chaotic - 3,965 11. Sam-XBA - 3,848 12. Nato King-XBA - 3,842 13. Snoopy7548 - 3,580 14. SPARTAN VI - 3,138 15. Fargoth - 2,746 16. CrazyCougar-XBA - 2,744 17. Snake Eyez - 2,691 18. Silent-XBA - 2,672 19. Ainokeatoo-XBA - 2,610 20. Kraft - 2,516 21. SpaceGhost2K-XBA - 2,445 22. thAshAdyOne - 2,184 23. LINKINPARK8591 - 2,029 24. Nurb - 2,010 25. Rhiannon - 1,791 26. Bakeman - 1,646 27. y2kash_14 - 1,458 28. RDJ - 1,291 29. BlindSniper - 1,272 30. Not Yellow - 1,269 31. Kamshaft-XBA - 1,242 32. WynnFire - 1,236 33. J Dub - 1,201 34. wicked_d365 - 1,062 35. Unreal - 1,053 36. BigJosh359 - 966 37. Enamelized420-XBA - 901 38. wasabi_ - 819 39. Willy2.0-XBA - 789 40. MXracer721 - 650 41. gameking28 - 632 42. EMX - 614 43. thunderkiss2k1 - 590 44. moltenluv - 574 45. Symmetric - 503 46. Infraredragon - 489 47. JarkMan - 414 48. Omen28 - 385 49. hellonearth159 - 380 50. Steeps5 - 346 |
||||||||||
 |
||||||||||
|
1. Yellowlab - 121 2. mattgame - 95 3. Highlite23-XBA - 83 4. Young_Fledgling - 82 5. Sam-XBA - 80 6. The Jackal - 74 7. Megaherz *RAGE* - 74 8. xj74 - 73 9. Shadow20002 - 66 10. mrmp3 - 65 11. xdragon - 62 12. Silent-XBA - 59 13. oddworld20-3000 - 59 14. CrazyCougar-XBA - 57 15. (ScArab) - 56 16. natewebb - 56 17. BlindSniper - 55 18. Marc - 53 19. Whisper - 47 20. Kamshaft-XBA - 47 21. Xbox Masta 4 - 43 22. Y2D - 42 23. Sharky53 - 42 24. Lord Vivic - 41 25. JediMasterChief - 40 26. thunder0810 - 39 27. adzmullz1 - 39 28. Ninjermy - 38 29. MixMasta - 38 30. Blind-RazoR - 38 31. kenji - 37 32. JayMan36 - 36 33. DaGameBoy - 36 34. Liquid Gears - 35 35. mentat - 33 36. murken - 33 37. RichVGS - 32 38. wweomaniac - 31 39. asammw - 31 40. BillyDKid - 30 41. George89 - 30 42. pvsurfer03 - 29 43. colosso - 28 44. super_ryu - 28 45. CrazyKane - 28 46. BIGHARV - 28 47. Variation-XBA - 28 48. BunnyRabbit - 28 49. DocHoliday78 - 27 50. wbio - 27 |
|
© 2000-2009 XboxAddict.com - All rights reserved. All trademarks are properties of their respective owners. Xbox is a registered trademark of Microsoft. XboxAddict.com is not affiliated with Microsoft. |
