Call of cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

[kal]

Hey guys, I found a mod/patch/crack that opened up the hand movements for this game, I can't for the love of me find it again though.

Anyone know where I can look/has a copy of it? and yes I've tried google with no luck.

[vysethebold]

Sorry I have no news on the patch but I heard this game was pretty good. What are your thoughts on it, kal? Also which version do you recommend: Xbox or PC?

[kyouki]

I know you asked for Kal's opinion, but it can't hurt to mention what I thought about the game.

First off, I'm a huge Lovecraft fan... I've read all of his stories, I've seen most movies based on his work (didn't like many of them), and even played through that Shadow of the Comet game (which was alright). I even used to play the Call of Cthulhu paper RPG.

CoC: DCotE was really cool at first. I had the Xbox version. The first few hours of the game are very slow... almost like a first-person point and click adventure. There is no combat during the first few hours, so you basically go around exploring, collecting items, talking to people, etc. The graphics engine is strange... sometimes that game would look really great, and other times it would look terrible. The sound is fantastic!

However, after the first few hours you hit a section where you are being chased by enemies and have to escape throughout the town using a very specific route that is not immediately apparent. It's like a multistep timed puzzle where if you hesitate or don't know exactly what to do you will die immediately. When you die, you have to reload which forces you to watch a cinema and do everything all over again. It's like playing the laserdisc game, Dragon's Lair, but with total control of the player.

So anyway, I never got past that part. It's certainly doable, but I died maybe 10 times and gave up. I have this thing with games... if I am spending $50 to be entertained, I have little patience for poor game design.

[vysethebold]

Well the price of both versions is now $20 or below so I don't think I will be as disappointed as you were. Thanks for the advice, I may check it out next time I have a couple extra bucks.

[savagepencil]

Does the patch not make the game completely suck?

[kal]

I'd suggest the PC version Vysethebold, simply because if I manage to dig up this patch (unofficial btw) then it'll have a cooler feature.

Basically what Kyouki said was true the creators were sooooo into Lovecraft that they wanted to try and make the game have as many set pieces as possible for horror and coolness. The downside of this is of course you have to figure them out but their are FAQs that can tell you exactly what to do but these sections will remain frustrating.

Once you finally get your hands on a gun though you can finally kick the crap out of them..kinda. It does have great great atmosphere and is quite unnerving. You can also see your character commit suicide in first person (the game users sanity *effects* not as comical as ED far more subtle like blurring and distortion) you can also die of a heart attack if you go through too much trauma too rapidly.

Healing is done through medi boxes that you carry around though the cool thing is you have 4 different types of damage to different body sections so if you throw yourself off a building and break your legs you'll be crawling etc (think Deus EX) and if your arms are injured you'll be less accurate etc.

Ironically the game probably gets better after Kyouki quit, I hated the stealth running segments mostly but the game was a little more tolerable and progessively better as it goes on.

The game wouldn't suck less for you Savagepencil, actually I'll assume it'll suck more because it'll take longer to do anything but for an immersion whore (possibly me?) I think watching your characters hands interact with the enviroment is great.

[kal]

Okays so I did some digging and communicating and I managed to get the patch/trainer I was after, it includes god mode, level select and a couple of other nice features other then the hand enabler so here for the maybe one of you interested.

www.sucklead.com/DCoTEPatch.exe

Grab it if you have the PC version, I'm going to test it now will ammend this later.

[dartagnan1803]

In my opinion. . .
Being able to fight 'Father Dagon' with a pistol [and win] is pretty much the equivlant of taking a big ol' dump on Lovecraft and everything he wrote.

[kal]

Actually from what I've read that's the main complaint from Lovecraft fans, that the *big guns* in his Mythos go down way to quickly and easily, but having now played and completed it I have to say that while the hand function I was interested in is too buggy to really use (picking up items is unbearable hard) the God mode, unlimited ammo and Fly mode will certainly help anyone who's hating the games various segements that seem too hard or too dull get through them.

I think it's a solid game now, regardless of whether it does Lovecraft justice the Ucranian boat level is excellent.

[necromaniac]

It's all Bethesda's fault: "Make it more action oriented, drop the co-op and the virtual hand it's too much work, still not done with the PC version? That's ok, your all fired, oh one guy wants to continue porting it without pay? That's kewl. We'll just released it without beta-testing and make some extra cash."

There are some awesome bits in there non the less, and it still managed to unsettle all my friends to the point of putting it down, just as Undying did

[kal]

Speaking of Undying I'm waiting for a copy of it to be sent to me, stupid freaking Australia, it's worth like $5 over there in America but here it's not even sold anymore.

[kyouki]

I was quite disappointed because I remember reading an interview with one of the developers early on, and he mentioned that the game was going to be nonlinear and somewhat random. You'd go through the same stages each game but each stage would have several objectives (some of which were random and some of which were optional) which you could attempt in any order. But they cut that out.

[kal]

A a lot of things got cut out apparently and even more apparently it was Bethusala that did the cutting..if that's true it's interesting.