The Call of Cthulhu Failure part 1 - The God that Failed
Originally published July 2015.It should come as no surprise that I'm a fan of HP Lovecraft's fiction; it's in our website's name and the band's, after all. H.P. Lovecraft, while certainly not a great man by any standard, due to his bizarre upbringing and distaste for ethnic groups, was one of the best horror writers that America has ever had. His work has inspired countless other artists, to the point that it's become rather common for an artist's work to have "Lovecraftian" elements. Whenever something happens that is horrific enough to drive a person to madness, or something occurs that seems like it's from another dimension altogether, it's considered "Lovecraftian." It's not officially a word, mind you, as even my spellcheck for this article marked it. Nonetheless, I see it in reviews for movies, video games, books, and TV shows, and I've even heard people use the term to describe a painting I saw in a modern art museum once.
It is most certainly a common term used when describing video games. Gamers and the people who make games tend to be well aware of who Lovecraft was and what he wrote, even if they didn't read his stories. I certainly haven't read all of his work-- not all of it is good--but of those I did read, I know two that were unparalleled in their quality and recognition.
The Shadow Over Innsmouth is probably my favorite Lovecraft story. It's relatively simple and straightforward, and it has a twist that is somewhat forced, but the pacing and the description that Lovecraft uses to tell the story are absolutely gripping, even with his particularly long-winded writing style. The story is simply about a man who goes to a town called Innsmouth to find out where some particularly odd and hypnotizing gold jewelry he saw originated. He meets some quirky characters and knows that there's some weird stuff about the place, he even knows that it's a bad idea to stay in town after dark, but he goes against his better judgment for the sake of curiosity. What he discovers and experiences was surely terrifying back in the 1920s when Lovecraft wrote it. I certainly thought it was pretty exciting when I read it in 2007.
The other story he wrote that is even more notable is, obviously, The Call of Cthulhu. While not the first story he wrote to take place in the so-called Cthulhu mythos, it is the one most people attribute as his best as well as the one responsible for creating the mythos in the first place. I remember reading it in its entirety throughout a couple of hours in a Barnes and Noble bookstore a few years ago as I waited for a friend to finish their appointment. I was completely captivated by the story and the very methodical pace that Lovecraft used to tell it. His protagonist does what much of his other main characters do and investigates something he'd be better off leaving alone. It's one of his longer stories and he takes plenty of time telling it, but that's part of what makes it so much fun to read. Very quickly he introduces the sense of dread and impending death that looms over the main character for the entirety of his story as he uncovers more and more clues about Cthulhu and who might be involved.
Other stories of his (like Rats in the Wall, Herbert West: Re-Animator, At the Mountains of Madness) are referenced from time to time in different works that I've seen, played, and read, but Call of Cthulhu is the one that people point to when they talk about Lovecraftian terror and how to make a terrifying horror story. It's surprising then, that no major publishers released a video game with Call of Cthulhu in the title somewhere until 2005. Sure, there were plenty of other horror games that had obvious Lovecraftian influences before then like Alone in the Dark, Silent Hill, and Eternal Darkness, for example. Yet, no one dared to use the name Call of Cthulhu in their video game's title until 2005, perhaps for fear of upsetting the Lovecraft loyals, should they not deliver the goods.
The Game
In 2005, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was released on the Xbox console and re-released on the PC in 2006. From the time of development to release, this game went through 3 different publishers: Bethesda was the primary publisher, while 2K Games did the Xbox distribution and Ubisoft worked on the PC distribution in Europe. For those who don't pay attention to games and their development, that's a bad sign. Any time a game changes hands--be it developer, distributor, or publisher--visions about how the game should function clash. Any time a game takes more than 3 years (this took 6) to develop is also typically a bad sign as it indicates that there are issues in development or changes that need to be made. It's not always a nail in the coffin, however, as Resident Evil 4, also a strong Lovecraftian entry, took a while to be made itself and is regarded as one of the best games ever.
Nonetheless, the cards were stacked against Dark Corners of the Earth, but if you were to go on Metacritic right now and look at the overall score for Call of Cthulhu: DCotE, you might think that this was another Resident Evil 4-type game that was able to escape the tribulations of game development. Well, much like Lovecraft, I've taken my time getting to the point of my essay, but I'm here to say: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is a bad game. Regardless of when it was released, what context you put it in, and the benefit of the doubt you might give it, Dark Corners of the Earth is deeply flawed and not fun enough to make up for it. Having put in a number of hours into that game for some YouTube videos, I feel I've done my time enough to make a judgment on the quality of the game.
Other games that were available at the time of DCotE's release had similar limitations, gameplay mechanics, and game design along with their own Lovecraftian themes, but they managed to pull it off well then and can still hold up in their own respects by today's standards. Silent Hill 1 and 2 were released well before Dark Corners of the Earth and I find both of them immensely more enjoyable.
Silent Hill 1
The first Silent Hill certainly hasn't aged well, but due to its sound design, Akira Kurosawa's amazing score, and eerie atmosphere, it manages to still be a creepy game, even with the poor writing and dated graphics. Silent Hill 2 holds up a lot better and can still be regarded as one of the greatest horror games of all time. It still has crappy controls, and the combat leaves a lot to be desired, yet it didn't feel broken in any way, nor did it feel like it was too difficult due to poor level or game design. Though a fair amount of the time was spent wandering lost and looking for clues in those games, and some of the puzzles were a little too abstract, the only time it ever felt overwhelming to play was when my nerves got to me and I got too creeped out from my experience. In DCotE's case, there are a few moments that delivered the unnerving tension of a good horror game, and there were certainly inklings of well-designed set-pieces, but it failed to live up to its intended design choices. It just ended up being a fucking mess of a game that isn't fun or interesting to play, despite it's material.
We will dive into why in my next post as we focus more on the game, what it does right, and what it does very wrong.