Cthulhu Review

Ted Puffer's Rating= 4 Stars
Game= Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners of the Earth

This game reaches a strange benchmark in being one of the creepiest horror games out there. There are lots of things this game does right which are worth mentioning, after putting a little bit of background down for the uninitiated.
First off, this is based off the Lovecraft novel Call of Cthulhu. If you haven't read this story, it won't affect your enjoyment of the game. If you have read the story, then you're obviously an intelligent and awesome person as you've no doubt surmised by your shear coolatude.
Lovecraft is an author who follows certain simple themes throughout his writing. Firstly, the monsters who populate his many stories are unnameable horrors older than time and mind bending in their malevolence, whose basic presence is enough to warp minds with the shrieking knowledge that such a universe exists which would allow their blasphemy to be.
In the game, you play an investigator who has landed in the small fishing village of Innsmouth. As you move around and talk with the local population while investigating the mysterious disappearance of a young shopkeeper, the nameless horrors start to make themselves known. In the process, your character does two things.
1) Runs away from said nameless horrors.
2) Tries pitifully to hold onto his sanity.

What is stunning is how unnerving this game is. Normally, designers would be content to show your character becoming a messy pile of red chewing gum when making a wrong move, or stumbling blindly down the wrong back alley of Innsmouth. Dark Corners of the Earth takes a different and more effective approach.

As your character struggles with sanity while running away, he experiences tunnel vision, blurred vision, audial hallucinations, visual impairments and chattering teeth. All of this is done so well that playing the game can actually be a frightening experience.
I should also mention that the game is dark. Physically dark. It's tempting to turn up the brightness just to more easily peer into the shadows, but this really isn't something that should be done or is necessary to play the game. The games control panel is helpfully optimized to show you what shadows should be inky black and not adjusted. Fear not, the important items you need to gather and enemies you need to flee will be obvious even in ill lit rooms.