Call Of Cthulhu Investigate The Manor

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Developer(s)	Headfirst Productions
Publisher(southward)	Bethesda Softworks 2K Games
Game engine	Headfirst's custom engine
Relese Appointment	October 24, 2005 (Xbox) March 27, 2006 (Windows)
Genre	action-adventure
Modes	Single Actor (first person)
Rating(s)	BBFC: fifteen ESRB: 1000 PEGI: 18+
Platform(due south)	PC Xbox

is a Lovecraftian horror beginning-person activeness-adventure game developed by Headfirst Productions and published by The game is based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, writer of The Call of Cthulhu and progenitor of the Cthulhu Mythos. It is a re-imagining of Lovecraft'due south novella "The Shadow over Innsmouth", too containing elements from the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game campaign "Escape from Innsmouth". Although the story diverges in several places and features a different protagonist, several levels in the game mirror passages from the novella. A major sub-plot of the game is likewise inspired by Lovecraft'south novella The Shadow Out of Time.At least two and possibly iii additional Cthulhu Mythos games were planned by Headfirst Productions, including the direct sequel to Dark Corners titled Call of Cthulhu: Destiny's End. However, due to the defalcation and liquidation of Headfirst in 2006, these games were finer canceled

Plot [ ]

On September 6, 1915, Detective Jack Walters is called to investigate a decrepit manor house located in Boston, Massachusetts. The estate is inhabited by a small cult called the Fellowship of the Yith, led by one Victor Holt. Taking encompass from an ensuing firefight, Jack finds himself separated from the police and trapped within the mansion, with no option but to investigate. When the residual of the police finally break in, they discover the cultists dead by mass suicide and Walters apparently insane. He is committed to Arkham Aviary, where he stays for several years.

More 6 years later, Walters is released and returns to life as a individual detective. He takes up a missing person case at Innsmouth, a strange and xenophobic coastal town. After asking the rude locals about the disappearance of Brian Burnham, he stays a nighttime at the local hotel, where he barely escapes an attempt to murder him. From that indicate frontwards, he is forced to sneak through the boondocks, avoiding the murderous patrols of the townsfolk. He meets secret agent Lucas Mackey, who tells him that the town is under government investigation.

Cthulhu Mythos elements [ ]

Persons

Zadok Allen provides the protagonist with a detailed contempo history of the town, just is killed and thrown to the sewers to be fed to a Shoggoth. Obed Marsh's descendants play a big and prominent function in the story.A few fictional members of the Waite family ("The Thing on the Doorstep") are function of the story.One of the jailhouse inmates, Henry, complains of rats in the walls, equally taken from Lovecraft'southward short story The Rats in the Walls.A direct reference to the short story The Whisperer in Darkness can be seen in the first level, where a cultist is found bound to a surgical table, his organs dissected from his body, yet still functioning in containers attached by tubes to his trunk.Although not related to the Mythos, the character of Agent Mackey has a notable physical resemblance to H.P. Lovecraft himself.

Literature

The game is a combined retelling of The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Shadow Out of Time, with the latter used every bit a framing device for the erstwhile.The Greek copy of the Pnakotic Manuscripts, known equally the Pnakotica, appears in the game.On a shelf in the protagonist'due south office, a re-create of Unaussprechlichen Kulten and the Book of Eibon tin be seen.Most of the texts are directly tied to Dagon, such as his Book, Oaths, Tablets, and prayers."The Music of Erich Zann" is alluded to in a paper clipping.

Entities

The Great Race of Yith plays a major part in the plot, even though they are not physically present except for the very beginning and terminate of the game.The Deep Ones and their related one-half-homo citizens of Innsmouth are primal to the plot and contain the master opposition to the actor throughout virtually of the game. Father Dagon and Mother Hydra are the game's bosses.The Innsmouth sewer system hints at the presence of a Shoggoth through numerous human remains and foreign residue that is highly-corrosive to organic material. The fauna itself is confronted directly during the refinery raid.The flying polyps are encountered in an ancient chasm near the end of the game, and are the field of study of a dream that Jack Walters has while globe-trotting to Devil's Reef.A star-spawn of Cthulhu appears as an enemy.While not present, the Mi-go are mentioned in passing during the epilogue.Despite the title, Cthulhu himself does not announced, though statues in his likeness can exist constitute too every bit documents about him. In one room, Cthulhu exerts a cosmic influence through his statue: if Jack does non escape the room rapidly enough, he is driven insane and kills himself.The Elder Things are mentioned in a sermon constitute upon a podium during the prologue level.

Gameplay [ ]

The game features no HUD interface. The player character's status is relayed through the audio cues of his heartbeat and breathing, which become more pronounced when wounded, and color draining from the screen with loss of blood and strength. Specific injuries are also indicated visually and aurally. For example, a broken leg causes Jack to limp while making appropriate noises, and a broken arm makes aiming more than difficult. The health system was designed as a more realistic take on grapheme injury than other games of its genre in that different

wounds and injuries require different remedies, such as a splint for a cleaved leg.Jack loses sanity when he looks direct at upsetting aspects of the game globe, such as mutilated bodies or sharp drops, similar to the Nintendo Gamecube game Eternal Darkness: Sanity'due south Requiem. Sanity loss tin can lead to hallucinations and visions, which manifest as graphical anomalies, audio distortion, and changes in

control sensitivity. Jack also begins to suffer from schizophrenia, hearing voices from diverse sources, such as his inner child pleading for him to go back to darker personalities. If he becomes too unsettled, permanent insanity or suicide cause a Game Over.Initially, the gameplay mostly comprises unarmed escape and evasion, together with investigative exploration, although weapons and combat are introduced later on. Every bit with most survival horror action/gamble games, armament is limited and must be conserved carefully for situations when it will really be indispensable, occasionally requiring the player to avoid gainsay even when armed. The game equally a whole is heavily scripted and very linear, with merely one path through the chapters from start to stop, in contrast with some earlier survival horror games such as the original Lone in the Dark (which is likewise based on the Mythos). The areas marked with the Elder Signs serve every bit sanctuaries against the enemies and as save points.Most of the weapons in the game have existent-life counterparts, including a Smith & Wesson M1917, a Colt 1911, a double-barreled shotgun, an M1903 Springfield and an M1921 Thompson. The only exception is a Yithian directed-energy weapon. The game does not have an bogus on-screen targeting reticle. Instead, the actor must aim through the iron sights on the weapons themselves. Sustained aiming tires the character and drops accurateness. The role player character tin can melee attack with a gun if all ammunition for it has been used up. The shooting arrangement is unique in that fired rounds go exactly where the butt is pointing. For example, if the player readies a weapon and pulls the trigger earlier the character animation has finished, the round may fly towards the heaven if that'due south where the barrel was pointing when the shot was fired.The game contains a number of bugs, which have never been officially patched. For example, during one mission the player needs to fire a cannon at enemy wizards. On some Windows systems the enemies are not rendered by the game at all, making it very difficult for the histrion to hitting them. There is an unofficial patch bachelor that fixes some bugs and lowers the game'south overall difficulty level. The bugs are mostly intermittent, and restoring from an before saved game can be enough to go past them.

Development [ ]

The game has been in development for at least six years, and the development can be traced back to Baronial 1999 and this Usenet discussion where the Mythos fans contributed ideas for the game to Headfirst'southward artist designer Andrew Brazier. This and other feedback was after used to create the game.The starting time screenshots were shown in December 1999, and the game, originally planned for the PC and PlayStation 2, was scheduled for release in the third quarter of 2001. Before E3 2001 the game was stated to exist "seventy percent consummate", but information technology ended up existence repeatedly delayed. In late 2002 the game's original publisher Fishtank Interactive was taken over by JoWood, which had no interest in the title. The developers then signed a deal with Bethesda to release the game for the PC and Xbox, and the development of the PS2 version was cancelled.Headfirst Productions originally intended for a much larger, not-linear RPG-type storyline to be fitted within the game, including more than characters and locations, too as a co-op arrangement for up to iv players, which would take enabled players to pick one of four characters and acquit out their ain investigation independently or team up with the others. A multiplayer version of the game would have allowed for online deathmatch battles in specifically designed levels. A lot of other features, such as high environment interactivity, were also scrapped due to budget and time constraints and problems with the level design.Role player weapons originally conceived but ultimately removed from the game include a wooden club with a blast protruding from one cease, a wooden police baton, a meat cleaver (the cleaver tin still exist seen in the Gilman hotel, yet Jack refuses to touch it as information technology is covered in blood), a angling harpoon, a tomahawk axe, a metal bar (the bar survived to be used as an item in the game), a poison-tipped Deep One spear, dynamite sticks, hand grenades, a flamethrower (which does appear as a non-acquirable weapon in the final game), a Luger P-08 pistol, a Mauser C96 broomhandle pistol (removed because it was too similar to the 2 handguns that fabricated it into the game), a unmarried-barrel Winchester Model 1912 12-gauge pump action shotgun (some enemies carry this shotgun, simply the player cannot utilize it), a 4" Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver, and a stationary M2 Browning machine gun (it is seen in the Marsh Refinery level simply cannot be used). The Springfield rifle was originally going to be equipped with a scope and bayonet.Headfirst initially used the game engine NDL NetImmerse for rendering graphics combined with the Havok physics engine but later adult its own engine. The game's protagonist Jack Walters went through up to eight different phases before a last look was designed by Tim Appleton. The title was eventually released in October 2005 for Xbox and in March 2006 for the PC.

Reception [ ]

The game was generally well received, including outright praise by some. On Metacritic, the PC version of the game has an average critic score of 76/100 ("More often than not favorable reviews"), with 9 positive and 8 mixed reviews. GameRankings averages the review scores of the Xbox version to 78%.Information technology was one of the five games nominated past GameSpot for the title of Nearly Surprisingly Practiced Game of 2005, with a annotate: "After a development bicycle that was nearing infinity, information technology'due south hard to imagine a globe where this H.P. Lovecraft-based horror game turned out all right. Luckily for usa, we don't have to imagine it.In 2010, 1UP.com featured information technology on the list of Top 5 Game Worlds Where Insanity Is The Unabridged Bespeak. In 2011, PC Gamer ranked it as 87th on the list of the 100 best PC games of all time.

Source: https://callofcthulhu.fandom.com/wiki/Call_of_Cthulhu:_Dark_Corners_of_the_Earth

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