Dark Corners of the Analog Stick | Chris's Survival Horror Quest

I felt like this guy while playing this game.

This evening I finished Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and posted a review. Basically, this is an extremely well-made game that has one major problem: the game play isn’t fun. I was really disappointed by this one, as so much opportunity is wasted. Oh well, see the full review for angst-filled details.

6 thoughts on “Dark Corners of the Analog Stick”

I think the first action scene of this game was one of the most entertaining and thrilling I had in recent game history. The tension was peaking at the moment, and they release it in a burst. I don’t remember actually being scared/entertained by a game since Alone in the Dark (and I was just a kid back then).

But then they give you a gun and everything goes downhill. They shouldn’t have turn the game into a fps.

I agree 100% with your review, except for that scene (and some other things you mentioned that were very nicely done)

Like you’ve mentioned many a time before, this is a game that you *want* to like, but the core mechanics are just plain too flawed to make up for the wonderful atmosphere and storytelling.

In addition to the problems you’ve mentioned, I also found it extremely annoying and unrealistic than firearm-wielding adversaries magically lost any ammunition they were carrying. Perhaps it was because I was playing an unpatched PC version, but in my experience not one enemy dropped ammunition when slain. I don’t know about you, but when I drop a guy carrying a firearm before he has a chance to even know I’m there, I’m expecting to have at least the rounds chambered in his weapon.

I guess I was just more forgiving of its flaws as I loved the game, problems and all. The thing is, that with the exception of RE4 and to a lesser extent, Siren 2, pretty much every survival horror game has some sort of annoying quirk about the gameplay and I guess I’ve just gotten used to expecting it.

People who played the game on PC seemed to have a better time with it. For me, the broken game play was almost enough to make me quit the game a few hours in–it was much more broken than most other games I’ve played (exception is, of course, Rule of Rose).

Maybe that’s the reason… I did play this game in my PC. And I didn’t notice anything “broken” except for some puzzles that were too hard and made me think I had found some bug (escaping from the underwater cave collapse was extremely complicated too me, I got to think I didn’t have to “just run” and there was something else I had to do instead)

Yeah, the problems I am talking about are much more fundamental. Like, you sneak up behind a guy, get right up behind them, aim the shotgun at his head, fire… and, somehow, impossibly, miss. Then he turns around and kills you in two hits while you try to reload. This is the opposite of fun.

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