If I remember correctly, my main complaint about ‘Resident Evil 4’ was that while the gameplay and action components were brilliant, the game would have been better if it had focused more on storyline.

Remind me to keep my big yap shut.

The comparisons between this game and ‘RE4 ’ are as myriad as they are obvious. Trapped in a remote community, you must fight (yeah, right) and sneak (fat luck) your way past hordes of psychotic villagers as well as tentacled monstrosities. In ‘Call’ that town is Innsmouth, a decrepit, depressing and grungy little craphole on the south coast of Massachusetts. All the shops are closed up, and no one in his right mind wants to go there. It constantly stinks of rotting fish and is filled with mongoloid idiots who want to kill you. Except for the presence of a thriving gold foundry, it sounds just like my hometown of New Bedford!

‘Call of Cthulhu’ has spent years in development, and by anyone’s measure should have been a brilliant work. Unfortunately, it’s turned out as more of a laundry list of what not to do in a video game.

Talk about eldritch dread.

We’ll start off with production values. The graphics are a mixed bag. While they do a fair job of portraying the dreary crumbling façade of Lovecraft’s Innsmouth, they are decidedly bland and dated. The gaping look on the faces of the inn-bred cultists is well done, but objects such as weapons and the player’s own hands are smooth and low-res, almost looking as if they are crafted out of plastic. You’ll notice the same two or three character models being repeated endlessly. (To be fair, this was the case in ’RE4’ as well, but those graphics were so top notch that they had a proper excuse.) Mouth movements and accompanying speech are embarrassingly out of sync. Think of one of those old ‘Godzilla’ movies and you’ll get the picture. (And no, I’m not exaggerating.) The voice acting itself is mixed. Some characters, such as the gurgling Innsmouth fishmen are well realized, while others are just cheesy as hell. (The old drunk Zadok is purely awful.) Overall however, the sound design is pretty nice. Creepy sting cords and ambient music add the appropriate chill-factor, and weapon reports, screams, and other secondary sounds are satisfying. There are a few audio flub-ups from time to time, but that’s the least of this game’s problems. A variety of glitches, freeze-ups and other annoying bugs haunt (tee-hee!) the production. In a budget game rushed to market in a few months, this is a sign of poor development. In a full-priced game which took an inordinate number of years to develop, it is simply unforgivable.

But I’ll not beat the game up any further for its lousy production values. No! Now I’m going to smack it upside the head for its ass-horrible play control! But oh lordy, where should I start? The plot of the game is that you are a sanity-challenged private eye butting heads with the unknown. Think Dagon vs. Phillip Marlowe. That is if Philip Marlowe was an acrophobic pansy who didn’t think it was a good idea to carry a gun and didn’t know how to use one when he found it. Lacking any type of weapon (and apparently being too dim to just break off a chair leg, or throw a good left-hook for that matter) your character is forced to start out the game in stealth mode. However, and here’s the rub, your avatar is no damn good at sneaking around! The stealth controls are just awful; it’s all but impossible to turn a corner and you can’t crouch and move at the same time. Even when you’re silently huddling in shadows, enemies can plainly see and hear you. When you eventually get your hands on a weapon (assuming you’re willing to suffer through the game to this point) you’ll learn just how pointless your sneaky tribulations have been. Fighting is spastic and frustrating. While your enemies all seem to be crack shots, you’ll struggle to get off a single clean hit. A lack of auto reloading ability and the game’s odd fixation on stowing your weapon away after any healing/interaction means that you’ll often find yourself staring down a hulking brute completely unarmed. Aiming is terrible, but it’s also irrelevant. The game decides whether or not you’ve hit an enemy (I assume using some form of divination involving a hamster and some levers) even as you see your crowbar whiff harmlessly straight through his polygonal noggin.

In fact, I could write an entire section concerning the game’s awful collision detection and object interaction. So I will! A pentacle based glyph called the elder sign supposedly offers your character protection, but whether enemies avert their eyes in its presence or take careful aim at you and fire is a flip of the coin. Climbing ladders is hideously complicated. Pushing objects is oddly wonky. To pick something up or bolt a door, you often have to be staring at it about an inch away from your pseudo-eyeball. And I wont even start on trying to get into that bucket at the Marsh refinery.

Puzzles are a mix of the ridiculous and the awkward. What you’re supposed to do is usually so simple that a three year old could figure it out. How you’re supposed to go about doing it given the game’s crummy interface is the only real puzzle. Other times the solutions are so esoteric and counterintuitive (for example, gaining entry to a cell by picking up a dead rat from the sewers and dangling it in front of the occupant) that the game seems designed to sell player’s guides, pure and simple. In fact ’Call’ takes turns in leading you by the hand and abandoning you without a clue. The sanity feature, which involves you freaking out when things get too hairy sounds like a good idea before you play, but all it really amounts to is the screen getting blurry just when you need a fine level of play control.

Hastur only knows why there’s a skip button for cut scenes, as it mostly just butts you into an equally long loading screen, and the repetitive in-game visions are inescapable, making constant replays of the game’s sticky moments all the more tedious. There’s no doubt that ‘Call’ is original, but somewhere along the line Bethesda Games just forgot to make it fun to play. The game alternates between boring and frustrating. I came to this expecting creeping horror, and I got 'Siren’ junior. The thing that sticks in my craw is that is that like that aforementioned mess, ‘Call’ is receiving rave reviews and any attempt to criticize the game on message boards will be met by a cadre of apologist ninnies who claim that if you expect some minimum level of quality in a game it’s just because you’re a whiny baby who can’t play it.

Gahhhh! Idiots!

Ok, calm down Boggy.

(“Realism” is the standard-issue excuse cited by those who adore games with garbage interfaces. First, in real life, a shotgun hits what you point it at. Secondly, don’t even talk to me about the realism of a game where weapons dropped by your opponents evaporate like morning dew in order to keep you helpless for a wee bit longer.)

The story. Ah, the story! Now I can relax. You see, the story is pretty damn good! Then again, the story had already been written for the development team by the master himself, but they did a nice job of not screwing it up. (Like they did every other aspect of the game.) The game’s adaptation of the panicky hotel chase scene is especially nicely done. When the plot begins to branch out and add its own spin on things, it doesn’t fare nearly as well. Someone thought it would be a good idea to have J. Edgar Hoover himself show up for the Innsmouth raid. This whole section of the story is just cheesy as hell. And I might note, that as big a dick as he might have been, he probably could have sued these developers for defamation of character. (A mental patient being bitch slapped by a transvestite is not something I consider especially Lovecraftian. Though it is very disturbing, I’ll admit.)
While I did find a bit of the character development and dialogue to be pretty weak, to be fair Lovecraft himself stank at these two aspects of writing, and any stab taken at it is a vast improvement.

I hate to end any review on a sour note, even when dealing with a product as incompetently produced as this one. ‘Call’ actually does a very nice job of adapting the aura of Lovecraft’s work into a videogame. Then again, so did the ‘Alone in the Dark’ series, ‘Blood’, ‘Doom’, ‘Quake‘, ‘Silent Hill’ and a couple of dozen other games. (I swear, I meant this to be the good part of the review!) But there’s no arguing that the ambience here is just lovely. Decrepit New England domiciles, charnel pits filled with rotting remains, and cyclopean temples of doom all await you as you try desperately to retain your sanity. And even I’ll admit that as big a pain in the ass the whole sneaking around in the shadows/ trying to keep from developing a blinding panic attack thang’ is in terms of gameplay, it does make the game all the creepier. There, see! The ambience is excellent! The game isn’t a total loss!
Too bad you actually have to drag yourself through this limping mess in order to get to the good stuff.