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First impression
As I started Call of Cthulhu *checking spelling* I was woken up with amongst all the disgusting fish guts. My character was panicked and I needed to find my way out of there. Soon I discovered it was all just a dream and I woke up ro “reality”. I was a detective in my office. I had to chance to drink wisky so I did and then notification popped that ‘this action have affected my future’. I realized this game has butterfly effect and it has to have different endings.
Call of Cthulhu had good first impression and I couldn’t wait to continue my journey. I was just hoping everything is as good as it seems in the beginning with…
Copying Evil Within as well
Story
I’m a detective, a middle-aged man, who might have slight drinking problem. As he is finding his next big detective job the right man comes into my office and askes me to help to clear his dead daughter’s name as she was accused of starting a fire that killed herself and her son and husband. I took the case and that led me to their house that was in a island that also holds fishermen dock with fishery.
Everything starts very clear at the beginning but soon all starts to go crazy and weird and I saw vision after vision and then I was back in reality but it actually wasn’t then I saw a dream and then… you get the idea. The storytelling is very confusing and inconsistent and hard to put together what was really going on.
Hi, we all have the same face
Gameplay & Controls
Call of Cthulhu is first person investigation game that becomes really weird towards the end that I just laughed of. First the game was first person investigation, then I was introduced with rpg elements of having option to upgrade some of my skills which were knlowledge of medicine, occultism, eloquense, psychology, invesatigation, strength and spot hidden objects. I soon found out these talents are mostly useleless the whole gameplay, so I didn’t even bother to upgrade them anymore. The only usage is if you want to get certain ending/story which I was not interested after seeing how badly this game was done.
Call of Cthulhu has puzzle elements which I found boring and unimaginative and too easy. This game is completely out of ingenuity when it comes to gameplay and puzzles. It contains so many different styles that it feels like it was made of 5 different teams with no communication between and then they put all those 5 pieces together to form a game and call it a day. Even so, these type of first person walktrhough/story -driven/dreamlike/thriller are very popular now and seems like Call of Cthulhu tries to be the same but failing it miserably. If we take a example games like >observer_ which is absolutely geniously done with great art style, level design and overall execution and is the model example what these type games should be.
Controls were easy, thank god, and towards the end I even get to shoot people since this game suddenly chanced to first person shooter which was another completely weirdism of Call of Cthulhu that didn’t fit the game and was completely useless and awkward.
Skills with no use
Graphics
I first liked how the game looked even though the graphics were kinda rough around the edges. I like how they managed everything to look nasty and disgusting with dead fish and fish guts all over the place. The game had colour scheme of green hue that fit the game perfectly. All the oil lamps were glowing with the green ghostly-ocean-like colour that reminded me of some Scooby-Doo cartoon episode where they are in the docks finding a ghost.
What bothered the most with graphics was how they copy pasted the NPCs. They looked exaclty the same as if seamen comes from a one mold. Even some important characters were same looking and even my character that I was playing with was exactly same looking as one important NPC that made me even more confused when the cutscenes came as I didn’t know what person was it. All in all Call of Cthulhu was barely acceptable in graphics department. Art style was OK, but I would’ve wanted to see something new.
Copy-paste Evil Within continues
Sound
I loved my characters voice. It seems like he was the same voice actor who was in the Vampyr game and quess what; they even copied his looks and face from Vampyr game. No surprise at all as it seems to be easy to copy paste things now days.
The sound effects and overall audio world was OK, nothing special about it, but I have to say when the cutscenes came the volume dropped so much I barely heard what was happening.
This guy was cool as he wanted to kill everyone. Just like me
Difficulty
I literally ran through the game in the end as I wanted to get this done and over with. I was confused what was going on and it seemed like whatever I do it doesn’t matter. And as I sayed the game does not need to any usage of the skills (that can be upgraded) to complete the game. Call of Cthulhu had no difficulty settings in the beginning so at least it was made more easy to the players.
I didn’t find this to be difficult at all but the jumping from scene to scene and play style to the another it was difficult to adapt quickly and use the awkward controls. The puzzles were too easy and made without ingenuity, so there wasn’t even challenge with that.
What? Now you going to a chair and upgrade your skills, too?
Last impression
I say it now; I hate this game. I want my 55€ back. I honestly can’t recommend this to anyone. Please don’t waste your money on this. I could understand if this was 19.99€ game but whole AAA title prize for this shit!? I already inquired my refund from Sony and explained my frustration and my professionalistic opinion of this piece.
I was promised a review copy but somehow the publisher never replied to my emails or contacts. I’m sure they knew exactly how bad this game is and just wanted to collect the money from players to pay they bills to possibly make another awful game like this. This is downright robbery and I hate it in the gaming industry nowdays.
Call of Cthulhu is confusing in every aspect you can imagine of and nothing feels solid. There were good moments in it but they were so little and so scarce that it is pointless to even point them our. It’s literally just different things stitched together and there you have it; 55€ AAA title. I’m angry. Really angry that I have to use my money on something like this when the same money (at launch) can buy games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted 4, Witcher 3…
I know many people who have to save money so they can buy a new game and I can imagine their rage after buying Call of Cthulhu which horribleness can’t be sugar coated in any way. Whoever made this game should be ashamed of themselves.
One More Level 