I am a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos that was created by writer H.P. Lovecraft. I am especially interested in it’s history in the realm of video games. I have been playing through Alone in the Dark recently and like the eldritch themes that are present in that game. I have always wanted to play the Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, a game that came out for the “original” Xbox and PC. I have never gotten around to it but I have heard good things about the game. There are countless other games that have taken themes from Lovecraft’s works, most recently the Amnesia games have been extremely popular with the worshippers of Cthulhu.
During E3 this year, Cyanide Studio announced that it would be making a new Cthulhu game called Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game. There was only a small teaser but contained in those few moments were some lush visuals that look like they could drum up some pretty horrific feelings of terror in the player.
I found that the main title screen for the trailer is reminiscent of the Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare cover art. Both characters walking through a gate to the unknown. The Alone in the Dark 1 cover art has the character much more centered but it is difficult to see the gate in that picture.
The trailer looks fantastic. The setting is a creepy island called Darkwater Island. (I’m not sure that a more ominous name for a place has ever existed in the history of mankind.) The trailer has a couple glimpses at the evil creatures that reside on the island, the creatures look pretty horrific.
The camera pans around different areas inside a house or mansion, there seems to be a definite Amnesia or Soma vibe to the game – the former being another title in the Cthulhu video game mythos.
I didn’t know anything about Cyanide Studio so I checked out some of their past titles. The studio was founded by seven former Ubisoft employees. The studio has been in business since 2000, so it seems like there is some pedigree there but most of the games that the studio has developed don’t really appeal to me until now. As I scrolled through their game catalog it seems like they have mainly worked on sports simulation games – a healthy number being cycling games. They do have Styx: Master of Shadows in their catalog, which was a Games with Gold game on the Xbox One platform, and I did hear some pretty good things about that game but, once again, I haven’t played it so I can’t really comment on it.
The trailer for Call of Cthulhu looks really good but I am concerned with the studio’s catalog as a whole not being a good representation of what is needed for a good Cthulhu game. Of course, being just a teaser, we can’t take too much out of the short video as a representation of the final product. Fans of Cthulhu games will just have to hope that this game turns out as good as it looks.
