I first read Shadow Innsmouth by HP Lovecraft as a kid in high school. It was an intense and riveting tale of horror, and I finished it in one setting. Since then, I've been a huge fan of HP Lovecraft. He's one of my favorite authors of all time, and I'm not just talking about horror either. His enduring and legendary legacy, the Cthulhu mythos, has far reaching tentacles that spread across all the nethermost regions between time and space, making its unnameable, unspeakable, and horrific presence known in all sorts of pop culture settings. So when I saw the computer game, Call of Cthulhu, at the store, I bought it immediately on impulse. It was published by Bethesda, a company that makes numerous homages to Lovecraft in its games, so I figured it'd be a good purchase.
I was not disappointed. Words cannot describe how ecstatic I was when part way through the game, I realized I was reliving the motel escape sequence described in his short story, Shadow over Innsmouth. I was frantically trying to lock doors and bar them with furniture, all in order to buy time for my escape. Playing through the game, it was obvious that the developers knew their material quite well.
EDIT: This post was made years ago, and abandoned because I was trying to come up with the words to describe what an epic homage this game was. A decade later, I learned to lower expectations and just type whatever :)
Imagine waking up in the middle of the night in your crappy hotel. You are in a backwater town with weird degenerate looking humans that have pale fishlike skin and big bulbous eyes. You get dirty stares and it is made clear you are not welcome. You spend the night in the motel and wake up to hear someone trying to open the door to your room. Panicked, you silently walk over to make sure you aren't hearing things. Realizing there are multiple people outside, you slap the deadbolt on and then slide a book case over to block the entrance. Now your mystery assailants know you are up, and begin pounding down the door. You escape out the side doors, and you can hear them trying those doors as well. You slam some furniture onto the front door of the connecting side room as well. But you realize now that all the rooms are connected via side door, and they are all being broken down. Frantically you see your only hope of escape - out the window. Quickly you make it onto the windowsill and frantically try to find a way down.
This is the heartpounding scene in the short story, Shadow over Innsmouth, and the game version of this delivered. Also in this game are mother hydra, shoggoths, dagon (or one of his spawn), and other Cthulhu mythos monsters.
The best part of this horror game is that it sticks with the feel of a Lovecraft novel. Lovecraft was all about the hopelessness of humanity in an uncaring and insane universe. The bleak atmosphere is captured perfectly, and the frailty of the human mind unequipped to deal with these horrors is modeled via an insanity mechanic. Vision blurs, movement becomes like the slurred speech of a drunkard, and become insane enough and you commit suicide. This is all canon.
The only complaint I had is that I was not able to beat the game, it seemed glitched. There is a final escape sequence but not enough time to complete it. After googling I confirmed that it was buggy, and no patch was released, at least a decade ago. I guess this is a good excuse to replay the game.
EDIT: This post was made years ago, and abandoned because I was trying to come up with the words to describe what an epic homage this game was. A decade later, I learned to lower expectations and just type whatever :)
Imagine waking up in the middle of the night in your crappy hotel. You are in a backwater town with weird degenerate looking humans that have pale fishlike skin and big bulbous eyes. You get dirty stares and it is made clear you are not welcome. You spend the night in the motel and wake up to hear someone trying to open the door to your room. Panicked, you silently walk over to make sure you aren't hearing things. Realizing there are multiple people outside, you slap the deadbolt on and then slide a book case over to block the entrance. Now your mystery assailants know you are up, and begin pounding down the door. You escape out the side doors, and you can hear them trying those doors as well. You slam some furniture onto the front door of the connecting side room as well. But you realize now that all the rooms are connected via side door, and they are all being broken down. Frantically you see your only hope of escape - out the window. Quickly you make it onto the windowsill and frantically try to find a way down.
This is the heartpounding scene in the short story, Shadow over Innsmouth, and the game version of this delivered. Also in this game are mother hydra, shoggoths, dagon (or one of his spawn), and other Cthulhu mythos monsters.
The best part of this horror game is that it sticks with the feel of a Lovecraft novel. Lovecraft was all about the hopelessness of humanity in an uncaring and insane universe. The bleak atmosphere is captured perfectly, and the frailty of the human mind unequipped to deal with these horrors is modeled via an insanity mechanic. Vision blurs, movement becomes like the slurred speech of a drunkard, and become insane enough and you commit suicide. This is all canon.
The only complaint I had is that I was not able to beat the game, it seemed glitched. There is a final escape sequence but not enough time to complete it. After googling I confirmed that it was buggy, and no patch was released, at least a decade ago. I guess this is a good excuse to replay the game.
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