Call of Cthulhu (

2018

) ½

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

-H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

The core of Lovecraft's cosmic horror is the tenet that everything we know and love is not only insignificant but so small and so pointless it might as well not exist at all. Light, love, and humanity are common enough here on earth, but compared to the endless void of space, they are but a mote of dust in a football stadium. Earth and all that we know is just a sputtering candle in an ocean of darkness, and lurking just beyond that pale light are monstrosities that, were we to even attempt to understand them, would drive us driven mad.

It was a compelling idea, but one that was decidedly ahead of its time. While Lovecraft would publish stories throughout the 20s and 30s, his work would be relegated to relative obscurity for the entirety of his life. However, his work enjoyed quite the afterlife, having a significant influence on genre writings from Joyce Carol Oats to Steven King. His ideas and stories began to worm their way into cinema as early as the 1960s with films like The Haunted Palace (1963) and Die, Monster, Die (1965). The work even spread abroad inspiring horror manga like the work of Junji Ito. Indeed, with the Cthulhu mythos more than 100 years old, it enjoys a mainstream success that would have been unthinkable in Lovecraft's own lifetime. Horror games based on or inspired by Lovecraft's work, like the subject of today's review, are a dime a dozen. From very loose inspirations like Darkest Dungeon [2016] and Bloodborne [2015] to faithful adaptations such as Call Of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth [2005].

Yet with success comes resentment, even for those so long dead that they could not possibly enjoy the fruits of their labor. Lovecraft hatred has become a cottage industry that rivals Lovecraft-inspired media. Whenever a new Lovecraft inspired-game or film is released there is a wave of articles that swoop in and demand things like the DLC for Borderlands 3 [2019] acknowledge and wrestle with the author's racism. In the most extreme case, they will call for the outright banning of all things Lovecraft, even things that really aren't racist on their own. To borrow from Eurogamer's article “It's time to let go of Lovecraft. No more tentacled multi-eyed monstrosities, no foggy fishing towns or ancient aliens posing as gods.” Does the staff at Eurogamer really think any of those things are evidence of Lovecraft's racism? Or are they just churning out poorly thought out clickbait? What's more is this article is ostensibly praising Soma [2015], a horror game that takes place on the bottom of the ocean and has icythoid monsters that it would hardly be a stretch to describe as Lovecraftian, though obviously, it is far from a direct adaptation.

To be fair, these critics do at least have a point in calling Lovecraft a virulent racist. He certainly was, and his work reflects that (though if we're being completely fair, which Lovecraft's critics almost never are, he also recanted many of these racist views later in life). Indeed, you can't even claim that Lovecraft's racism was merely a product of his time as you can with many other historic authors, because Lovecraft was unusually racist even by the turn of the century American standards! He was the kind of guy that would probably recoil in horror if he saw a black person on the street. Yet, the appealing part of Lovecraft's work is not the racism, and indeed it is usually stripped out of even the most faithful adaptation of his work. The part that resonates with modern audiences is the impression of a vast and uncaring universe, filled with monsters and horrors beyond human comprehension. Everyone knows the man was racist to an almost comical degree, but normal people do not allow that to keep them from enjoying some good genre fiction based on his work, particularly when that work is rendered unobjectionable by adaptation.

Still, I can at least understand the critics of Lovecraft-inspired media, they are misguided ideological zealots who view racism as an infectious disease that spreads through unrelated ideas. The ones who really confuse me are the ones who profit off of Lovecraft's work while simultaneously denigrating the author. Things like the tabletop game company Evil Hat who made a Lovecraft inspired board-game, denounced Lovecraft's work, and then called anyone who pointed out the blatant hypocrisy of despising Lovecraft while simultaneously profiting from his works as “subhuman” (irony, what's that?). Then there are all the progressive re-imaginings of Lovecraft's work, like Lovecraft Country and The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe which are invariably worthless cash-grabs instead of fully fleshed out artistic endeavors. They exist to scold a long-dead man and assert their own author's righteousness rather than tell compelling stories. To me, these works are the equivalent of an angst-ridden teenager scrawling graffiti on the foot of the Lincoln memorial. Their tantrums are unable to diminish the stature of the great man they irrationally despise and instead all they can do is signal their own worthlessness. They would be pitiful if they had not amassed so much influence in the media and were so effective at forcing other artists to kowtow to their delusions.

Fortunately, Call of Cthulhu is not one of these works that flips off Lovecraft with one hand while rifling through his pockets with the other. Indeed if anything it may be a little too enthusiastic about Lovecraft's work because it doesn't confine itself to the story that it is ostensibly based on and instead borrows freely from across Lovecraft's oeuvre regardless of whether these pieces fit together into a coherent whole. So we have a cult of Cthulhu worshipers seeking to awaken their dark God from Call of Cthulhu, a mysterious remote New England fishing village with a dark past from The Shadow Over Insmouth, and an artist who paints horrible images with occult significance from Pickman's Model. At times, this becomes something of a burden, as the different elements fail to connect and work together effectively, but for the most part, they gel together rather nicely, aided by the fact that this is ostensibly a mystery story so parts that don't really make sense can be simply concealed from the player.

The story begins with the mysterious death of famed painter Sarah Hawkins, in a bizarre fire that breaks out in her home on Darkwater Isle, a fictional island off the coast of New England. The local authorities are tight-lipped about just what happened that night at the Hawkins residence and the reports coming back to the mainland are muddled and self-contradictory. For instance, it's the reports say that the entire family died in an accidental fire but then the reports also stress Sarah's mental frailty as if to imply that she started the blaze. Sarah's father, Steven Webster is not happy about it, so he hires alcoholic private investigator Edward Pierce to look into the matter further.

The game takes the form of a modern spin on the 1990s adventure games, with most of the action being a mix of investigation and simple inventory puzzles. Naturally, since we don't live in the 1990s anymore, the challenge of these puzzles has been dumbed-down considerably, though never to the point where it is outright insulting. Hell, I even had to look up how to do something in a guide once during my play-through, so at least we've surpassed the level of puzzle challenge set by Skyrim [2011].

At times it seems like Call of Cthulhu is somewhat ashamed of being an adventure game because it pads itself out considerably with elements lifted from other genres. Every few levels will see the core gameplay switch to light stealth, where you need to evade guards or monsters. However, when I say these are light stealth I'm selling it a bit short, they have all the wight and substance of a spec of dust. In the first of these levels, I managed the entire thing without even raising a single alarm. Had I done so, I would have quickly discovered that any alarms I raised were inconsequential, as guards can be quickly evaded and will almost immediately return to their patrol routes. Later in the game, Call of Cthulhu becomes, for one level anyway, the most basic FPS I've ever played. You are given one gun with a limited amount of ammunition (though the number is not displayed anywhere in the UI) and blast a couple of zombies. Hitting them in any portion of their anatomy seems to down them so don't bother going for head-shots. There's no aiming down the sights, no reloading, no melee attacks. It plays as if the developers were trying to do the absolute minimum for their game to be considered an FPS.

The attempts at Stealth and FPS gameplay are amusing, if extremely basic, diversions from the main plot, but the other genres that the game embraces seem less like asides and more like attempts to actively deceive the player. Your character has a sanity meter al la Amnesia: The Dark Descent [2010], and as you encounter the game's various horrific monstrosities it will gradually tick down. However, almost all of these encounters are unavoidable, and even if you reach all the optional ones your decreased sanity will have little effect on the game. More significant than the sanity meter, but still ultimately cosmetic, are the stats bonuses that you can assign to your character, enhancing his abilities to persuade NPCs with speech, pick locks, or comprehend the mysteries of the occult. However, these have little to no effect on the game's plot, only locking you out of certain routes through each level or denying you certain dialogue options if you don't have enough points. At times this is extremely trivial, like the moment where I unlocked a door with my max-out out investigation skill and discovered a small crawlspace I could have gone through instead right next to the gate. The game also flirts with being a Telltale styles choose your own adventure story, where certain choices can alter your destiny. However, this is an open ruse, as the game will continue almost exactly the same until you get the ending where you simply select one of the choices for ending you've unlocked by all these destiny altering decisions.

All things considered, Call of Cthulhu is practically a Potemkin Village, a simple adventure game with a linear plot masquerading as a complex RPG with a branching storyline. However, credit should be given where credit is due. The illusion that Call of Cthulhu presents is unusually convincing. Indeed, it's only on attempting a second play-through that the game's true nature becomes obvious. This may not be ideal, as I would greatly prefer an actual branching storyline where the player choice was significant in influencing the plot to a simulacrum like Call of Cthulhu. However, if the illusion is convincing enough it doesn't matter much. At no point during the game did I feel like I was being railroaded through the plot, even as the plot actively railroaded me. This alone constitutes something of an accomplishment.

The greatest strength that Call of Cthulhu has is its visual design. The character models, except for the eternally out of place Cat Baker, are all haggard and wizened with bloodshot eyes and thousand-yard stares. Everyone looks, to a certain degree anyway, sleep-deprived and slightly sick. The backgrounds and settings are simply gorgeous, littered with little touches and details to accentuate the setting and the characters that live there. Sure, Darkwater island looks more like the Causeway of Giants in North Ireland than any New England island that I've ever seen, but I expect a certain amount of artistic liberties to be taken with a horror game. Indeed, the game is so gorgeous that you'd be tempted t think this was a big-budget game, well at least until you start talking to characters and realize that their lips are not even remotely synced and that they are waving their hands about in a frenzied attempt to distract you from just that fact.

Still, as nice as Darkwater Island looks, the scale feels decidedly off. When I first stepped off the boat I got the impression that the isle was little more than a spit of land with a sparse population of madmen, criminals, and secretive cultists. An insular place where outsiders are treated with open suspicion in the best of times and murderous rage if they start asking too many questions. Where all the institutions of power are hopelessly enthralled by a small handful of insane alien-worshiping deviants. I had no idea who I could trust, indeed, I was fairly certain that I couldn't trust anyone at all. In short, I saw it as Innsmouth, only with heightened geographical isolation.

Yet as the game progressed, this vision started to fall apart as I discovered, much to my surprise, that this desolate little island had a museum, an art collector, and a massive multi-story hospital. Gradually I came to realize that I was dealing with an island the size of Nantucket, not the size of Bellingsgate. At the same time, the influence and the power of the cult proved to be significantly less far-reaching than I had initially supposed. Sure, the most powerful citizens of Darkwater are hopelessly devoted to their twisted gods, but the vast majority of the town is unaware of their corruption, and if they intend to succeed they will have to keep it that way. Even one of the cult's leaders has to hide his activities from his own family, lest they discover his terrible secrets. As the plot progressed, I discovered no shortage of characters who I could trust implicitly, from the doctor who springs the player character from the hospital to a gruff cop who only needs a bit of nudging to agree that there's something fishy about the whole affair. By the midway point, I'd collected a veritable scooby gang of assistants and helpers, which went a considerable way towards diminishing the atmosphere of dread and suspicion.

Then there is the way that the game completely flies in the face of the primary appeal of Lovecraft's fiction, by making your character a “chosen one” destined to wake the sleeping octopus god. This makes no sense in the context of cosmic horror, indeed the whole idea of cosmic horror is that people are ephemeral nothings living fake dream-lives on the cosmic spec that is earth. We are all utterly ignorant of the truth of the universe, and if anyone is unlucky enough to discover a sliver of that truth, then they will probably spend the rest of their days in a loony bin. Cthulhu does not have chosen humans, hell it's doubtful that he's even aware that people exist. Having Cthulhu have a human being as a chosen one would be like the Messiah of Jewish religion being an ant or a flea.

Still, nothing damages the game's atmosphere as much as Cat Baker, the leader of Darkwater's criminal gang and smuggler ring. She is, without doubt, the worst example of a “Strong female character” that I've ever seen. She is a slim, college-aged girl that can inexplicably out drink and outfight every man on the island, player character included (well, unless you max out your strength attribute early on). She's a thuggish brute whose first instinct in any given situation is to beat the object of her ire to a bloody pulp. Moreover, since she is the strongest she's impossibly arrogant treating everyone she encounters and the player character, especially with utter contempt. In short, she's a woman written like a one-dimensional male villain. This alone would be bad, but then the game goes on to never give her the comeuppance she rightly deserves.

A female gang-leader, even in a game set in the 1920s, could be made to work with relative ease. Instead of having her intimidate the significantly larger men of the island have her hold sway with blackmail and manipulation. If the developers wanted to keep her the same and have her be believable, they would just need to make her into a genetic freak like Abby from The Last of Us Part 2 [2020]. At least then I could understand why she was able to keep so many hardened criminals inline through physical intimidation alone. However, this would not make her fit in any better with the setting. This is a world of deranged scholars who glimpsed an unimaginable truth between the lines of an ancient text. Where secret societies plumb the depths of forgotten ruins in search of the mysteries of antiquity. Where all reality is a gossamer-thin delusion which can be torn asunder at any moment. In short, it is not a setting that benefits from the addition of a character whose motivations and personality are essentially the same as Zangief. What's more, she doesn't even play an important role in the plot, you could cut her entire character from the game and lose nothing more than a few tiresome cutscenes.

The world of Lovecraft's literature is not a place for tough-talking dames and hard-boiled detectives. The developers were able to remember this when creating Edward Pierce, as despite being an alcoholic private investigator, he's far closer to a Lovecraft hero than a Hammett one thanks to his psychic scars and tendency to be reduced to spasmodic fear at the prospect of spending more than ten seconds in an enclosed space. However, with Cat all that went out the window. I suspect that it's due to the increased pressure game developers have when designing a female character, knowing that any deviation from the extremely rigid criteria set by Western liberals in the gaming press will result in a shit-storm of hit pieces. To pass the muster, the character must be a boring “badass” woman who takes no shit and suffers no consequences. Giving her a personality complete with character flaws and complex motivations might confuse one of these brainlets, so why risk it? Especially when you're a mid-range developer that lacks the ability to weather controversy like the bigger studios. This might also explain why Cat is so completely inconsequential to the plot. She's there to tick a box, not be an actual character.