Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth: Difference between revisions

''[[Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth]]'' is a horror/adventure video game based on the [[Cthulhu Mythos]], specifically ''[[The Shadow Over Innsmouth]]'' and is the last title developed by the now-defunct Headfirst Productions. It was published by Bethesda Softworks in the year 2005.

Walters arrives, but a shootout occurs anyway. Taking cover, Walters accidentally locks himself inside the manor. What he finds inside is [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation|quite disturbing.]]. Skip ahead a few years, and Walters has lost his memory of what exactly happened inside, and the events afterwards. It turns out that whatever happened inside the manor gave him a [[Split Personality]], and his new identity had taken over his body for half a decade. Obviously, he's no longer fit to be in the police force, and is now trying to make a living as a private investigator, actually investigating what he did himself during his period of amnesia between cases for other clients.

Except for a few seconds at the start of the game, the entire experience takes place in first-person, from the viewpoint of Jack Walters. There is also no [[HUD]] at all, nor are any icons or prompts overlaid onto the [[Main Window]] at any time. Walters's health, and mental state, can be measured by the blurriness of his vision, whether or not he is limping, the shallowness of his breathing, the blood on his eyelids, and so forth. Objects that can be interacted with (usually) glow softly.

Not to be confused with the tabletop game ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]''. Now available for 9.99 USD on [[Steam]], so no need to [[Keep Circulating the Tapes]].

* [[All There in the Manual]]: You will have a much easier time understanding the plot, if you've read [[H.P. Lovecraft|H.P. Lovecraft's]]'s ''[[The Shadow Over Innsmouth]]'' and ''"The Shadow Out of Time."''. Then again, the sense of waking horror and discovery is far stronger for those who are less Lovecraft savvy. It works well on both levels.

* [[Artificial Stupidity]]: You can shoot [[Mooks]] with a shotgun and their friends across the street won't even notice. Indeed, at times you can shoot the [[Mooks]] themselves, and if they do not see Jack, they will ignore that they have been shot and carry on with whatever they were doing.

* [[Be as Unhelpful as Possible]]:* The Innsmouth townspeople, under orders from the Order of Dagon.

* [[BFG]]:* The naval destroyer's guns that serve to {{spoiler|put down Father Dagon and his priests}}.

** Also, an {{spoiler|[[Ragnarok Proofing|aeons-old]] electrical gun with an inexhaustible power source, courtesy of The Great Race of Yith. It's the only thing that can harm Flying Polyps, and clever use of it kills Mother Hydra}}.

* [[Book Ends]]: {{spoiler|The final cutscene is the same as the first. Only with the visions of the dead little girl added and Jack dying while doctors try to save him.}}.

* [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?]]: Almost literally. {{spoiler|Knocking out Dagon with the main gun of a United States Coast Guard cutter, and electrocuting Hydra to death with a Yithian Lightning Cannon.}}.

* [[Eleventh-Hour Superpower]]: The Yithian Electric Gun.

** {{spoiler|Also, Jack's ability to switch minds with a Deep One in order to access out-of-reach switches to help kill Hydra.}}.

* [[Evil Makes You Ugly]]: You can easily distinguish helpful Innsmouthians from others. Hint: [[Captain Obvious|the fish-faced ones are bad.]].

* [[The Fettered]]: Jack Walters won't steal gold from {{spoiler|the Marsh family's Vault}}, despite their many attempts on his life.

* [[Film Noir]]: Add one-part [[Cosmic Horror Story]] and two parts [[Cult]], stir well, and you've got ''Dark Corners.''.

* [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation]]: In this mythos, this sort of thing is pretty much required.

* [[Green Around the Gills]]: You may get this while on the navy boat, due to the [[Interface Screw|rolling sea]]. {{spoiler|Also a feature for the Spawn of Dagon, in the literal sense.}}.

* [[Human Mom, Nonhuman Dad]]: [[Inverted]]. Ramona's father is human and her mother is a deep one... [[Squick|don't think too much about it]]!

** Played straight by {{spoiler|Jack. His father's consciousness was taken over by a Yith while his mother was normal. Ultimately, he is neither human nor Yith.}}.

* [[Hyperspace Arsenal]]: Jack is capable of toting -- at once -- six guns, a knife, a crowbar, and a large eldritch tome, among other things, without any sort of visible container. None of it affects his move speed, although movement speed ''is'' affected by what weapon you have readied -- even if that weapon is currently holstered -- leading to realizing that you move more slowly with a put-away Thompson SMG than you do with a put-away pistol.

* [[I Am Your Father]]: {{spoiler|A Yith is Jack's father. Well, sort of.}}.

* [[Immune to Bullets]]: The Bosses, as well as one of the Beloved of Cthulhu that appears briefly at the beginning of "The Esoteric Order Of Dagon". It can be killed with a conveniently placed [[Kill It with Fire|flamethrower]], while the bosses (such as Dagon and Hydra) usually require some unique level specific thing (like a ships main gun or {{spoiler|the Yithian Lightning Gun}}).

* [[Improvised Weapon]]: The crowbar. Inverted when Jack takes {{spoiler|control of the mind of a Deep One, and for a limited time, it does his bidding}}.

* [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique]] -: Used by {{spoiler|J. Edgar Hoover}} on Jack to force him to "cooperate".

* [[Jerkass]]: Hoover;: he's got a mission to clean out Innsmouth, and he doesn't care how many people get hurt as long as the job gets done. Of course, you're more expendable than he is...

* [[Kill'Em All]]: {{spoiler|The only non-historical character to survive the events of the game is Agent Mackey. Everyone else, including Jack himself, die horribly at some point}}. Attempting to kill or letting {{spoiler|Hoover}} die doesn't work either. {{spoiler|Jacob Marsh}} is arrested, and Dr. Eric Hardstrom, the doctor at the asylum, survives as well.

* [[Madwoman in the Attic]]: The {{spoiler|Waite's house.}}.

* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: ''Waite''. Anyone who's read Lovecraft's ''The Thing on the Doorstep'' is going to be running twice as fast as everyone else.

* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: Jack investigates the door to {{spoiler|Mrs. Waite's 'room' in the attic, causing 'her' to break down the door and run downstairs to rip her little daughter to shreds. Mr. Waites eventually slits his own throat from grief the day before he's about to be hanged for being framed as his daughter's murderer. Good one, Jack.}}.

* [[Non-Mammal Mammaries]]: * {{spoiler|Hydra, queen and "Mother" of the Deep Ones, has two pairs of breasts. Could be justified, as Deep Ones can interbreed with humans, and therefore must presumably share some genetic material.}}.

** {{spoiler|Some of the standard Deep Ones appear to have them as well.}}.

* [[Precision F-Strike]]: Upon regaining consciousness in the bottom of a factory, Jack sees the formless brown acidic mass of the dreaded shoggoth flowing into the room and pretty much taking up the entire (very large) area. His response is a whispered, quavering "Oh...''fuck''...".

* [[Psychic Powers]]:* Jack is hinted to have these throughout the game, and has [[Shaky POV Cam|visions]] of monsters following him. {{spoiler|It's explained that Jack's father was mind-switched with a Yithian moments before Jack was conceived, giving him a bit of the alien's mind-projection abilities. These are used at the end of the game to take control of Hydra's Deep Ones}}.

** The Deep Ones priests and a few of the cultists also have powers, including Robert Marsh, who has telekinesis, telepathy, the power to shoot energy balls, and some sort of attack that resembles a [[Star Wars|force push]]. Hydra also uses hers to shield Y'ha-nthlei from {{spoiler|an attacking sub}}.

* [[Puzzle Boss]]: You can't directly hurt the shoggoth. It's the size of a small house, and it's a [[Nigh Invulnerable]], formless, no-organs-or-weak-points blob monster made out of acid, so a pistol would be useless. Fortunately, both times you face it, it's in an area full of industrial machines that you can use to hurt it. (Notenote that "Hurt" does not mean "kill.").

* [[StandardSplit FPS GunsPersonality]]:

** {{spoiler|The Lightning Gun / [[BFG]]: The Yithian Lightning Cannon}}.

* [[Stealth -Based Mission]]: The Attack Of The Fishmen and Jailbreak chapters, since Jack is unarmed, and [[Everything Is Trying to Kill You|everyone in town is trying to kill you]].

* [[Stupidity Is the Only Option]]: Sure, take a nap in Innsmouth's hotel, which is managed by a man who you know butchered at least one previous customer, and who you can hear plotting to murder you immediately before and after you check in. [[Tempting Fate|What could possibly go wrong?]]?

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]:* Half of the marines assigned to help you infiltrate the Esoteric Order of Dagon die because they stopped to beat up a group of cowering hostiles, while on ''breaking ice.''.

** {{spoiler|TheWhen lastthe crewmanwaves youstart see alive onhitting the Urania, locksOfficer youWinter calls out onfor the deckcrew andto weldstake thecover. doorThe shut.player You,is the oneonly whoother person to do so; everyone else on deck is killed. What's foughtmore, throughmore countlesscrewmen Deepwill Onesoccasionally spawn and run out to the deck only oneto with weapons.die}}.

* [[Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth]]: {{spoiler|At one point, you must recover a hammer from a room containing a Beloved that won't let you in alive. You have to put a special blue flower in its food bucket in order to kill it and access the room.}}.

* [[The Unfought]]: Cthulhu. You do ''hear'' his [[Title Drop|calls]], though, and it's easily one of the creepiest moments in the game.

* [[Unusable Enemy Equipment]]: Enemies drop neither ammunition nor weaponry, not even when it would be ''really'' helpful, such as taking a weapon when you have nothing but a crowbar, or {{spoiler|maybe taking Sebastian Marsh's revolver in the battle against Robert Marsh.}}.

* [[Unwinnable by Design]]: A few times near the end, which is especially unpredictable since in most of the game, it's impossible to do a mistake during the riddles. But it isn't as frustrating as it seems, because at these moments it is impossible to reach a savepoint.

** {{spoiler|On the ship, launching again the engine needs to find a blowtorch, turn a specific wheel, fix a pipe with the blowtorch, turn another specific wheel. [[Nonstandard Game Over|Not turning the right wheel while cause the boat to explode and kills the player]].}}.

** {{spoiler|On the Devil's Reef, a door near of the exit of the level must be reached within a timer. To launch it, you have to put a jewel in a mechanism, run to the other door and put a red crystal in the opened claw in front of the door; when timer expires, the claws close; if the red crystal is put in the claws, the door opens, if not nothing happens. The first difficulty is that the timer can only be triggered one time. The second is that near the launching mechanism there is claws like the ones you have to reach; the ones near the launching mechanism hold a green crystal and opens too when you put the jewel in the timer's mechanism. The green crystal can be picked up by the player but if it isn't in the claws when the timer expires the door won't open.}}.

* [[Unwinnable By Mistake]]:* The final timed escaped sequence is almost impossible to complete on the PC version without using a trainer, as a programming oversight results in your movement speed being slower on the PC version. This is actually a bug related to the screen resolution you are using. The higher your resolution is set to, the slower Jack moves. If you have a large monitor and try putting the game to something like 1400x900 so the screen is not stretched and blurry, you will move about as fast as chilled honey. This is fixable though, if you choose something like 800x600. The bug doesn't exist in the [[Steam]] version.

** A rather infamous glitch exists in the PC version where during the {{spoiler|attack on the Coast Guard cutter}}, some mages that you have to shoot with a cannon and the reef they stand on fail to generate. There is no real indication as to why this occurs, and it only occurs on some copies of the PC game. Unfortunately, the only way around it is to download the save game file of a person who does not have this glitch.

* [[Walk It Off]]/[[Heal Thyself]]: Both, at once. Various parts of Jack's body can be injured and can be treated with medical supplies. He will slowly heal over time, but it's not safe to try this if you're in the middle of a firefight.

* [[Wolverine Publicity]]: Cthulhu himself does not appear in the game, despite it being called ''Call of Cthulhu''. Several statues of him are featured, he is referenced numerous times, and one of his "chosen" is even fought, but Cthulhu himself is never seen in the flesh. Some thought that it made it [[Nothing Is Scarier|scarier]] and gave the lesser known Great Old Ones Dagon and Hydra some recognition, while others were very disappointed that he wasn't in the game. Of course, if Cthulhu deigned to show his big noodly face anywhere in the game, there wouldn't really be much of a game, as Jack's options would be ''INSTANT DEATH'' or ''GIBBERING INSANITY, FOLLOWED BY DEATH''.

[[Category:Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth{{PAGENAME}}]]