Call Of Cthulhu Released

[Maximius]

Sigh, its a shame what you have all been saying. Im going to wait and see what you guys think before dumping $$$ on this one. It looks great but then they almost all look good in screenshots. Are we witnessing the death of the high grade video game as a species? Will there be nothing but the work of Corporation, Inc. and a few hardy souls such as yourselves? Sad, sad, sad.

[Domarius]

Well the games you really want to play will hardly ever be the same as what the masses want. If you want anything done right, do it yourself. There is a lot of "amateur" games out there that rival commercial products, and even if they dont in quality, they make up for it in innovative gameplay.

 

Graphics takes too much of a priority in commercial games. Because most people judge a book by its cover. It raises target system requirements, lessens what is possible in the game, decreases budget and inflates development times.

 

What we really need is a game like Oblivion, but far less graphically spectacular so that we don't need those god damned load zones and can see all the way into the horizon and ride over the plains on horseback at 60fps. The effort otherwise spent on graphics (and dealing with the excess load) should then be spent on a cool combat system and interesting AI behaviour.

 

CPUs and graphics cards get more powerful, but instead of doing more interesting and complex things with them, or raising the scale things are on, they just throw more spectacular textures and polygons at them, bringing them back down again so we never get any drastic changes in gameplay.

[SneaksieDave]

Starforce alert for this one. I can't personally confirm; I read it on the forum at the glop.org boycott starforce site.

 

http://www.glop.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=397

 

Edit: hmm, not sure if this guy is right, so look into it further if you personally care. He states that Ubi told him so, but um, it's not an Ubi title. Or is it? His email is in German. Whatever, I'm lost.

[Vadrosaul]

The game was published in Europe by Ubisoft, but by Bethesda in North America.

 

I'll give you an update as to whether the NA version installed Starforce drivers.

[woah]

Decent game. It can be quite scary at times (especially if you have a nice surround sound system, and you play at the recommended brightness level in the options), and the puzzles require much more thought than the usual. I'm quite certain your average player would give up long before completing some of the puzzles in the game.

 

There are some obvious flaws, though. The narration is entirely unbelievable (and rather poor in general). This was one of the biggest mood destroyers for me. Likewise, the AI is quite horrible, lip-syncing is inexistent (another big mood destroyer; I can deal with semi-good graphics, but this just looks rediculous), and there are some areas in the game that are overbearingly difficult, in such a way that you often need to depend on pure luck to get through them. For instance, one time I found myself obligated to run past an armed enemy, in broad daylight and unarmed, down a 5ft wide corridor (it was on about the 10th time that I was lucky enough not to get shot twice and die). This is outright horrible game design--no idea what they were thinking there.

 

Other than those things, it's an awesome game. I don't think I've ever played a scarier game to be honest (I guess you could say it's a scary one if Doom 3 never scared me even one bit). For a large part of the game, you're entirely unarmed, without weapons, making it quite thrilling to hear the horrid, ever more audible growls of some sort of snarling monster gain on you as you run through a sewer, admidst experiencing visual and audio hallucinations. Sometimes you don't even know what is behind you, but you just start running, knowing that turning around will only mean death as Jack will go into a mental break down if he sets sight on whatever lay behind. Often, and if possible, it is a much better choice to avoid confrontation. There are many parts of the game that just tease your fear (for instance, in one part of the game, you're required to enter some sort of sewage pool, in which you cannot see into, and about 20 feet before entering the pool, you experience a vision of something looking up from below). In addition, cut scenes are integrated right into the first-person gameplay, and the storyline is top notch. The beginning is very unique and intriguing, too.

 

I haven't completed the game yet, not nearly, but I'd definitely recommend it if you're willing to devote some patience to the beginning of the game (starts off slow), and don't mind the few bugs/problems noted above.

Edited April 2, 2006 by woah

[sparhawk]

Sounds interesting. About this situaton you described (running in broad daylight with pure luck) it was also mentioned in Gamestar mag. I will give it definitely a try and if I like it a buy it. I was waiting for this game because I love that Lovecroft scenarios.

 

I also liked the Alone In The Dark series for that matter, but I foundonly the first part really good. It captured the mood quite good.