Call of Cthulhu - Lovecraftian Lollygagging

I have always had a bit of a liking for HP Lovecraft's work. Not really his writing style, which can be verbose and turgid, but the ideas and the mythology that he created and has been built up since then. I even have a copy of his complete works that I am slowly making my way through. Not only have his works inspired others to write similar tales, but there have also been numerous films, board games and video games that both directly and indirectly follow his path.

Call of Cthulhu is one such game and was released on X-Box One, PlayStation 4 and PC last October. A survival horror game (come on, a Cthulhu title is never going to be a cuddly platformer, is it???), Call of Cthulhu puts you in the shoes of Great War veteran Edward Pierce. Now a struggling private detective in 1924 Boston, he is tasked to find out what happened to the Hawkins family, who passed away in a suspicious house fire on the little known island of Darkwater, just off the coast of Boston. That's the set up and what follows is a decent role playing title, heavy on the horror and psychological terror. Add some decent, is slightly annoying stealth sequences and what you have is a solid stab at the genre. The story does get a little confusing but is engrossing, and Edward's descent in to madness (or is it) is handled well.

Not a triple-A title by any means, Call of Cthulhu looks ok, though everything seems to have been given a filmic grain that works in some chapters but not in others, sometimes hiding key details that the plot relies upon. The facial animations on some of the secondary characters is a bit rough and you are definitely in the uncanny valley as far as their eyes go. At times, that's creepier than the game itself. The voice acting is decent and I have certainly heard much worse, though the UK-based actors does sometimes veer back to their own accents rather than the New England one they are trying to master. All in all though, it's atmospheric and even I fell for a couple of the jump scares.

It's not a long game, by any means, and your first play through should last about eight hours. I say first, as there are four endings and at to see at least two of them, you'll need to change your style of play considerably. As a full priced title, it's just about worth it, but if you can get it for about £20 to £30 and you're a fan of the genre or the Cthulhu mythology, you could do far worse than this game.