It was a long time since the stars aligned like this. To say that Lovecraft's mythos should translate well into video games, but somehow never really does it right is an understatement. And yet it makes perfect sense as most such games want to put you head to head with things there is no way in hell a mere mortal human should even understand, much less take down.
Now that is not to say there have not been good or fun games with this theme. From the darkly funny and goofy Cthulhu Saves the World to the extremely tense, challenging, and (at least till the end) perfectly fitting the hopelessness of cosmic horror Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, there is a lot of fun stuff in the genre. But its been over a decade since that last title, and nothing since has really captured the essence of these tales so well, at least that I've played... until now.
You are Edward Pierce, a down-on-his-luck hard boiled detective who hasn't been taking a lot of cases lately. Part of the reason is lack of clients, but part of it would also be your condition. You've been having nightmares lately keeping you from sleeping, and the booze and sleeping pills are not helping as much as you would like. Still, today your fortunes change as a professor type comes to your office to show you a bizarre painting and ask you to take up the now cold case of the fate of it's creator: Sarah Hawkins. It is believed she died in the fire that burned out her estate, but things are not always what they seem. You take the case and head for the island she resided on: Darkwater.
And it is evident right away that this sleepy little town on an offshore island is not as peaceful as it seems. On one hand, you have the sailors who traditionally go whaling, but have found less and less to catch and bring home, straining life on the island. And on the other side a gang of bootleggers who have made Darkwater their base of operations. Amid that tension, you quickly need to get into one of the warehouses the bootleggers call their own. Consider these encounters a tutorial as you learn how to read and interact with the people of this little town.
But this is a horror game, so where's the horror in that? Well, there isn't much as this game actually get's the pacing right for a Lovecraftian tale as well! Don't expect anything more dangerous then other humans until right away. Rather this game takes a much slower burn, letting you discover disturbing but likely human things... right up until you are exploring the burned out mansion, but... to explain anymore is to do a huge disservice to this game. After all, you are a detective. Go find the truth!
And the world you will do this in really stands out as something special. This is not a game that uses much in the way of music, choosing instead to use the ambience to enhance what you are dealing with. Be it whispers of the insane in their cells, conversations whispered around you or even the yelling voices in your head (and the main menu). And this noise is backing up some amazing environments which vary from your office to a ruined mansion to hidden tunnels where cults worship things that should not be and beyond. These environments are all highly detailed and clearly had a ton of effort put into them to make them all just right for their point. And while it makes the game moody and fitting right from the start, the truly wild stuff will show itself slowly as the game progresses... also helping set the pace as things slowly get more and more steeped in the underlying reality driving everything forward. As noted in the beginning of the review, rarely does a game capture the feel of one of these stories as well as here.
But that is not to say this game looks perfect either... for where the world looks absolutely phenomenal, the people are not so great. It is a real uncanny valley effect as many of them look dated. They fit well enough and you will get used to their look in the game, but they just don't look half as real as the world itself.
And the game itself is also not going the action-packed style many try because "monster! Shoot it! Action!" Instead, it too goes for a slower route of an interactive world where most of the time you will be wandering around your environment looking for clues about the world and the events that have occurred (and are now occurring) within it. These could be objects with added detail of the world or you need to complete a puzzle, or talk to people in your investigations or more. These interactions are marked for you so there is no 3D version of pixel hunting to find what you need, but at the same time what you can find may be different then what I or anyone else could due to underlying systems the game uses to behave more like an RPG.
As you play, you will earn points you can put in several stats which will change things both obvious, and not so obvious. Character interactions, for example, will be effected by what level you are at in your psychology skills, or investigation skills will improve your ability to review what you see and use it in those interactions. But a less obvious change might be something like "spot hidden" which will actively change what things you can find along the way and what useful knowledge will be available to you due to this. It is subtle and if you didn't read it in the skill description, you would never know you were being held back/potentially shown something extra because the mechanics around it are so well molded into the whole experience. And really, the only reason the interaction choices are more obvious is because the game points them out, either telling you in the text you can choose why it's available (or not) or as a highlight when you place the mouse over it. There is a very real effect on the game, but it is incredibly meshed in.
And for those of you who only see this effect as important if it changes how the game ends, don't worry. You get something out of this too. True, everything will always culminate to the same final scene, but what you did (and had available to do based on your stats) will ultimately change what you have available to do at the end. Yes it is ultimately a "pick your ending" ending, but the choices you get will vary based on what you did along the way. If you want to know what you need to get each possible ending, there are guides for that out there, but I recommend not using them since, as I have said before, finding these things for yourself is a huge part of the game.
In addition to this, the game also includes some stealth gameplay, and this is where the game runs into some trouble. These are rare (in fact, you can count them on one hand, probably not using your thumb), but the system can be a bit wonky at times. The most famous of which is your first encounter with something without even a human origin story. In this moment, you will be trapped in a wing of a mansion with this creature and tasked with a way to get rid of it so you can escape. The problem here is that how it tracks you never becomes clear and the few "hiding spots" can't be used for nearly long enough as Edward has serious issues of claustrophobia. Further complicating this particular encounter, you need to know both that it's coming (which is obvious) as well as what you will have to do to survive it (which is very obscure) so you can scout out where what you need is before you begin. This proves very poor design when combined into one moment which can be finished in under a minute, but will likely take much longer due to how many times this monster will kill you. Add to this the fact that the save-point is as you start the encounter and this game and the game only keeps your latest so you will never be able to go back and look again if you did not, and this is likely the point in the game where many people will just call it a day and quit.
Bugs: This game ran almost perfectly, but I have to say almost due to an odd issue with the controls. Every once in a while the menus begin to ignore the mouse buttons, requiring you to resort to the keyboard action key to select your interaction options or to navigate the menus of the game. Since none of these are time-based this will not hurt your game in the least, but it can be confusing for a moment or two.
Overall: As I say in a lot of games I review this is far from a perfect game. However, it is a damn good one with a couple rough spots (one particularly brutal one that will get a lot of people to stop playing). If you can stick with it through those, however there is a truly awesome Lovecratian horror experience here that many fans of cosmic horror will absolutely love and have been waiting a long time for.
Score:
8/10
System Requirements:
- Intel i5-3450 (3.1 Ghz) or AMD FX 6300 (3.5 Ghz)
- 8 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870 (2GB VRAM minimum)
- Windows 7, 8, or 10 (64 bit only)
- 13 GB hard drive space
- Ryzen 7 (2700) 3.2 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 1660 (6GB VRAM)
- Windows 10 (64 Bit)
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