Call of Cthulhu Review
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 มิ.ย. 2024
- Déjà vu? This review isn't about Dark Corners of the Earth, it's about the 2018 version. Call of Cthulhu the Official Video Game. What a subtitle.
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00:00 - Intro
00:45 - Game Premise
1:56 - Visuals
5:18 - Music & Sound Design
7:15 - Gameplay Mechanics
14:12 - Story
14:56 - Story (SPOILERS)
22:07 - Conclusions
22:54 - Credits
23:55 - Brian?
#callofcthulhu #callofcthulhugameplay #lovecraft #lovecraftian - เกม
Call of Cthulhu on GOG - gog.la/SquidJank
THE LIST - docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_K3ziSxT9zcUUGCddS4sF1uNJTWHSbOwB1CQX2Rx4Uo
I'll get around to The Sinking City one of these days. I heard that one gets strange even for Lovecraft.
having watched the Zero Punctuation review of Sinking City it seems to go against everything Howard Phillips Lovecraft does with his stuff
Any plans for Apeiron's games (7,62 High Calibre, Marauder man of prey and Brigade E5) or you pass that to Sseth?
I saw his streams some time time and he got a blast with them.
See that Mysteries of the Druids are WIP reminds me of amazing restrupurae's Let's Play. What an awful game...
There are two options:
1. Ghost Master Next because spooking roll.
2. Ghost Master on Halloween because its THE perfect Halloween game.
It's a game never be done again(or before) and a unique experience.
And the Title Song kicks ASS!
The voice acting (in German at least) is really great.
Did i mention it's a absolutely unique concept that has never be done again?
Just a thought... Try lookin into Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones? Now there is a true RPG :D
@@SantaReaper ZP reviews are kinda tongue in cheek. Ive heard that SC is at least a bit more representative of HPL than COC is ever. Neither can beat DCOE however (that could be just nostalgia though)
"My eyeballs don't work like cameras." /me screams and points at Mandalore to notify the hive that he hasn't been processed yet.
This comment was more unsettling than most of the game.
Burn their meat
Sweep the streets
Bind their hands unto their feet and
Digitise
Cut the eyes
From the king and augment to the
Fourth cone
All is known
@@adenowirus the hell is this and why did Google tell me nothing?
@@Morec0 All is known by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.
@@Morec0 its mechanicus
The biggest problem with "Lovecraftian" games (as well as movies, books etc) is that when we hear "Lovecraftian" we already know what it will be about: there is going to be a small creepy town filled with creepy unfriendly people, there is going to be a lot of water, there are probably going to be either tentacle or fish monsters, there are going to be awkward mentions of Ctulhu (cause we all know that Lovecraft only ever wrote about Ctulhu), the protagonist is most likely going to be a detective and probably an alcoholic.
I think to really create the true "Lovecraftian" feel all tentaclefishymagickoldgods stuff must be hidden and only revealed as you progress (much like Bloodborne that hid lovecraftian story behind gothic horror).
They just need to leave the tentacle monsters to the Japanese and focus on his other works.
Not only that, but a lot of people seem to think lovecraftian horror = tentacle monster when it reality it's fear of the unknown. but they get so caught up in trying to make the game creepy that they reveal too much and do the opposite of what the game was meant to do. A real shame
@@a.parker7362 the unknowable, moreso than even the unknown. The fear if something that our rational mind is incapable of grasping, let alone defeating.
The theme of madness is a reaction from characters to their sense of reality being shattered by these impossible, yet clearly real beings
@@a.parker7362 Like look at this game's promo picture: you've got detective looking protagonist, dark greenish rainy sky, creepy buildings and of course tentacles. It just screams: "Ooooh look at me, I'm lovecraftian horror there are tentacles and water and something about CTULHU" even though most of Lovecraft's horrors had their protagonists slowly discover that something was actually wrong and only by the end culminating in unexpected, unnatural and maddening events.
@@delivererofdarknessshoguno1133 I think the idea lodged in their brain is: What character is better to discover things with other than a detective?
But they forget about the short stories like "Cool air" and others, where main characters are just average people. Perhaps they could use a journalist as an alternative to a detective?
OBJECTION! There IS a "good ending", which is hard to reach. Mostly because you need to ignore as much of the game as possible to keep your insanity low. If you get to the ending with high enough sanity (and did some other good-boy stuff) the MC basically realizes that simply walking away is a better option than choosing any side. I have no idea why the cultists lets him do that, but they do.
That...sounds dumb. Why would the best ending requiere the player to basically ignore everything?
@@loren5432 I never claimed it was a good game. Fully agree that it's silly to punish the player for exploring.
@@InTaco7 I never said you did. Anyway, it'd be great to know what was going through the dev's minds when they thought that a combination of the worst aspects in an RPG-story driven game would make for a good game.
@@loren5432 To play devil's advocate for the game, the idea might be that those who don't look into the horrors around them (the mystery you're there to solve) the more sane you stay.
In a good game it's supposed to be a trade off: how much do you want to sacrifice for your own sanity? How much can you get away with preserving your own mind in the process.
So you're left to make your own choice. Those choices might lead your character to a grizzly end, but you just had to know when they'd be better off being blissfully ignorant.
That's the concept anyway. This game doesn't do that.
@@loren5432 In Lovecraftian settings, the knowledge of the supernatural is the siren song that pulls people in and corrupts them; Because it allows them to see and understand the grander reality that a mundane person who never interacts with it just never feels. This, however, creates a craving in the people to experience this altered sense of reality more and more (that is how cultists actually end up as cultists), which will drive them further down the rabbit hole.
So, within the setting, the ability to just walk away being tied to your character having less knowledge of the occult does make sense.
"Aid in Pierce's investigation"
"Aiden Pearce's investigation"
Oh god what game is this
I too thought he was referencing Watch_Dogs for a second there
I thought I was losing my mind because I kept hearing that name...
The Iconic™ Cthulhu Mythos
a mess
and a spaghetti monster in every aspect
I believe the reason why most Lovecraft games "fail" is because they try to cram in everything from the author's most popular stories without much thought or focus on the end product. This also may be the reason why Amnesia and Bloodborne, whilst heavily influenced by the Lovecraftian mythos, are successful because they try to do their own thing and not overdo it.
Those games have vision - the artists' works are precise, and meaningful. They do not attempt to emulate great works haphazardly, but rightly use them as *inspiration* .
To be fair though, what exactly can they do? While they used to be obscure in the past, the Lovecraftian Mythos has been adapted and iterated on so many times most people are already aware of the basics of it. Considering that the core of Lovecraftian horror is the unknown and the unknowable (something which is already a shaky proposition for modern audiences, as most of the things that gave people in the 20s existential dread, such as the vastness of space, creepy deep sea crawlies, and just not being the center of the universe, are not exactly prime horror material anymore), just the fact that you know that you are walking into a Lovecraftian narrative is spoiling the experience, and after that point, all that remains are the fish-people, the cultists, and Cthulhu as a name brand.
@@Horvath_Gabor You don't cram the Mythos, then. Lovecraft wrote much more than direct stories of his shared universe, and instead of just emulating his stories without understanding them, creators should make their own stuff while using Lovecraft as an influence and build upon his themes with different stories. There's a reason In the Mouth of Madness and Event Horizon are liked by Lovecraft fans, because they understand his works but also actually attempt to do their own thing rather than just copy and paste his more popular stories.
Amnesia and Bloodborne understood it was all about mystery and Subtlety - at first. By games end, some truly crazy shit was going down, also matching Lovecraft.
@@carcosian There's only one small issue here: Lovecraft's Mythos, at this point, is an IP. Some studios are willing to use it for inspiration only, but at the end of the day, it is much easier to take the already popular tropes and terms, from Innsmouth to Dagon, and just plaster them all over their works for "brand recognition". This is the modus operandi of modern entertainment media, and while we can point at it and analyze why it doesn't really work here, we can do very little to affect it.
"The more creepy people you investigate the more CP you find"
I see what you did there.
lol almost snuck by me, I did a double take
These damn creeps and their Club Penguin accounts...
"Hmm, he has a lot of copies of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate."
What's with all these creepy dudes and their love for chocolate pancakes?
@@MalfunctionWhocares I'd play smash with Epstein on his island, to be perfectly honest.
The closets making your vision go wobbly is because Pierce is claustrophobic. He's literally in no danger there, but he is terrified and I think hyperventilates while you're in them. Doesn't have any effect on the game, but they do justify it.
I still maintain that in order to make a truly memorable Lovecraft game, the game devs have to stop treating the player as a fan of Lovecraftian horror, but rather as a protagonist in a HP Lovecraft story. Marketing and branding the game as Lovecraftian feels like the first huge mistake these companies make. You're trading the effect of the story for hype. That's why Bloodborne worked so fucking well.
That or the execution and polish have to be pristine.
This is exactly it, attempting to emulate an author who was intentionally as vague as possible just can't work
Honourable mention goes to Mask of the Betrayer which had some great cosmic horror moments
That's sorta why the last half of [SPOILER] Night in the Woods works to be at least somewhat scary
@@Skullkan6 I've already played NITW so I don't care on a personal level, but a spoiler warning is really ineffective if people don't know beforehand what piece of media is being spoiled
@@Skullkan6 a typical spoiler warning isnt thrown in at the very last second and is usually made very clear what its talking about before and separated from the actual spoiler itself because you can still read things in your peripherals very easily
@@EmperorZ19 No I think it depends. For example, there is a game with very cutesy art but you see people talking about how creepy the last part is. Therefore you got spoiled a bit without even knowing the game, since it wanted you to be none the wiser, to surprise you. Knowing that something specific can happen in a certain game can count as a spoiler. Even if you don't know the game, it lets you know what to expect and it can diminish some of the mystery.
"It's more blurry and out of focus than gay characters in a Disney Star Wars product"
Mandalore you're going to lose social credit
nah they can stay out of focus
pasive progresive
@@lelop2770 Because they're shit characters.
@@lelop2770 Disney specifically makes gay characters minor parts of the story so they can be easily edited out for Chinese and Arabic audiences.
@@icedlenin8908 cuz it's funny and lol and kek to be edgy
The lead is voiced by Anthony Howell, the same actor who played the protagonist in Vampyr. He really deserves more work.
Side note: I'd love to know your thoughts on Vampyr if you ever get around to it. It's a vampire RPG published by the same company as this game.
I really liked vampyr even though it got so much shit
i also liked vampyr as well.. and i’m p sure the guy also voice acted someone in dragon age: inquisition? i might be misremembering doe
@@boxcarsleg6006 IMBD states that Howell voiced... The Augur from DA: Inquisition. So a minor side character.
He's a great actor, he was also Samuels in Alien Isolation and S.A.M in Observation.
Yeah and the games didn't come so much appart... it was kinda weird (even the models are lookalike)
"Seems like every Lovecraft game is gonna be something much bigger."
And there's the problem. Developers are trying to make Lovecraft The GameTM, and just shove all his popular stories into one narrative without trying to understand the strengths and ideas of each story. Instead of using Lovecraft as an influence and using their own ideas to build upon the themes of his works, they grab the popular stuff and hope it works somehow. This is why some of the more interesting Lovecraftian games and movies aren't adaptations of his works, but rather their own unique ideas. This is when you get games like Sunless Sea with its unique world building and top notch atmosphere, or movies like Event Horizon which became a cult classic despite its flaws. Hell, look at in The Mouth of Madness, it doesn't hide the fact that it's Carpenter's take at a Lovecraft-esque story, but he doesn't just copy his stuff and instead works off his own ideas into this Borgesian, semi-meta narrative that is a great mix of themes that make for an unique story.
There's no Lovecraft checklist you need to fill to make a Lovecraftian story. He had no mold and wrote about many different ideas.
i think that's something Bloodborne did quite well, creating its own world inspired by - rather than shoehorning in - lovecraftian themes/characters
For what it's worth, I think that Darkest Dungeon did a decent job of it as well.
This is probably the most intelligent reasoning I have read when applied to the problem of "The Lovecraft Game". The idea that "Shadow over Innesmouth" and "Call of Cthullu" are the absolute base for any Lovecraftian game seems to have percolated into game designers psyches so much that nothing else of HPs considerable work is ever considered.
There is for instance the whole of the Dreamlands which could be used and which to my mind would make an absolutely wonderful dark fantasy setting.
The last problem, especially in Cthullu is of course ( And yes I am a SJW, I've been fighting racists since the 1980s thanks) is that Lovecrafts concept of "the other" applied to not just alien beings but other peoples, even someone like The Quivering would struggle (I hope) with the awful racism of Lovecraft if it was put into a game and the developer claimed " it was a true reflection of Lovecrafts writing".
Mithril I play Arkham Horror: The Cardgame, which is like an rpg campaign in card game form. One thing I appreciate, is they managed for 4 years to avoid Cthulhu and Innsmouth (the next upcoming campaign is finally Innsmouth, but even then, they’re going with Father Dagon and Mother Hydra instead of Cthulhu), and did stories based on other GOOs of the mythos.
The most recent campaign was inspired by The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and other Randolph Carter stories, and as you might imagine, those only familar with Cthulhu and Innsmouth got very thrown off when talking magical dream cats came into the picture. And even have them jumping to the dark side of the moon to come to your rescue.
@@Para2normal Lovecraft's racism was his best feature, change my mind. I name all my pets after his cat.
17:06 What?! So you are telling me giant scratches in my house are not normal occurences?! They are all over my house, on the walls, the doors, on my face, around the haunted statue of Nyarlathotep I keep under my bed etc, etc. and more appear after every night.
pff Nyarlathotep is so yesteryear
nowadays it's the Lurker from the Threshold from the entirety of time and space of all continua.
his children are so soft at night. oh and he would prefer to stay nameless.
Thought I recognised Edward Pierce Voice actor Its Vampyr's Jonathan Reid his Voice definitely helped.
I mean he does a good job playing short-hair bearded white dudes in long jackets during the 1920's in games published by Focus Home Interactive
Not just that, the dialogue wheel is incredibly similar to the one in vampyr. But vampyr was made by the people who created life is strange. Weird, seems like the publisher just shoved concepts/projects between its different development studios?
@@meinnase its possible the publisher is contracting the developers with the games rather than the developers looking for the publisher. They just get studios to make the games they want to publish.
@@southofheck I really like his voiceacting so I didn't mind
Vampyr is another game Mandalore should review
"The more creepy people you investigate, the more CP you find out" - Nice
I knew I wasn't the only one who did a double take at that part.
Thanks for commenting so I don't have to have this in my history ^^
pmdelclaro1337 i don‘t get it.
@@michimatsch5862 Well, how should we explain it without writing it out and putting me and mandalores comment section on some kind of list. The c is for what you call a human in his earlier stage of life, and the p, well, the p stands for when people carry out the act of creating the wonder that human life is, only on camera, mostly without actually creating human life. I guess if you don't get it now, you probably shouldn't/don't want to.
@@nicoEmt187 still don't get it , please explain
I think the worst part about these Lovecraftian horror games is the OIGHHHGGH IM GOING INSANNEEEEEEE MY MIND IS ALTERINNGGGGG stuff they do. Insanity is a lot creepier if what you're physically seeing is different and offputting rather than just a bunch of wild camera effects. To effectively portray insanity, you need to have much subtler methods of portraying that than shaking the camera around, fucking with the FOV, and putting tentacles everywhere. Cthulu doesnt even have tentacles! We just think he does because that's what our small mortal minds grasp when we view him!
Cultist Sim did this the best because the card descriptions change and what you can physically do alters over time. You see the world differently- imagination and passion become ingredients to pierce the veil rather than merely resources to expend in survival. We need more things like that in gaming, real unnerving experiences.
Yes exactly! Or how Bloodborne just has you gaining insight into things and slowly becoming more conscious of the weird things that are happening around you that were always happening but you didn't notice.
@@Goliath5100 Portraying insanity needs to be about subversion of expectations, because that's what is truly unsettling about going insane. Applying camera effects isn't very surprising. I think Bloodborne and Eternal Darkness are two of the only games that get this right. The first time I walked to the same area I was at before and thought to myself "... Wait, were those giant monsters on the walls of those buildings always there?" I knew they were doing something interesting that really set it apart from the Souls games. Similarly I played Eternal Darkness when I was much younger, as a rental, and losing insanity in that game was too unsettling for me to continue playing it as a young teen. I noped the fuck out after the first fake console reset.
Crazy Eyes I completely agree. Insanity, even as dramatically as it’s usually portrayed in Lovecraft, should be super subtle and gradual to the point where you don’t notice anything has happened or when you do notice it it’s real and believable like in Eternal Darkness. No extraneous sound effects or anything, no jump scares, nothing like that. Love your line of thinking
>to effectively portray insanity, you need to have much subtler methods
Literally anything and everything Eternal Darkness does.
I think pathologic did the whole insanity thing good as well. Having a world just feel innately unsettling by design will always hit you harder than seeing some bad hentai and your eyes going wobbly
For a game that's so focused around it's aesthetic and art style. It's strange that the cut scenes weren't just still frames stylised to look like paintings or sketches. Would have cured a lot of that uncanny valley sickness.
Ironically that would cost more. You'd need an artist. And what style do you use?
It's actually quite easy to make an FMV in the modern era because you don't want it to be like Final Fantasy where the cutscenes are Advant Children quality and then the game itself is more Final Fantasy 7.... That is too jarring. And this isn't mocapped expensive FMVs like Last of Us.
Still frames also don't work. They would have to be animated in some way. Then that needs an art style that matches the aesthetic of the game which would be hard.
There is no art style... What art style is it focused on? It's realism... That isn't an art style....
And maybe they just wanted to try. What's wrong with that? Gamers really are the most entitled of all the chubby cheeked basement dwellers. It's pathetic. You have to make mistakes to learn. Nobody can draw a human straight away - it takes doing it over and over. We get it! You're a fucking loser nerd so don't aim high! Not all of us are fucking pathetic shit-stained f*****t nerds though.
And sorry if this is harsh but until you've been a designer/artist and had death threats from gamers you wont understand. It's getting worse. Instead of bitching and being a whiney little f**I***t just accept things and stop thinking yourselves to be the centre of all existence!
@@razerow3391 wow just looked at your channel. Holy extra chromosome batman. Youre in the "eventual school shooter" category of aspy
@@razerow3391 Wow.
Everything you said was wrong.
Impressive!
Realism is an art style though lmao, read up on your art history. Also this game is in no way a good example of realism or naturalism
Feel like the only good Lovecraftian games are the ones that hide the fact they're Lovecraftian. Bloodborne, Cultist Simulator, the great ones build up to the cosmic stuff.
All the "official" Lovecraft games have zero pacing, and end up trying to include everything there was in the mythos.
I would argue that cultist Sim is only tangentially Lovecraftian. The Hours take more interest in the real world then any eldritch being in lovecrafts stories.
Darkest Dungeon and Sunless Sea do the same thing.
@@villefere6968
Uh... don't really know about that one chief.
it fit with the themes too, Lovecraftian horror is about things that should be left unknown and/or shouldn't be at all
it's ironic games known for being Lovecraft-adaptations aren't that good,
while games that end-up being Lovecraftian-games at the surprise of the player are good
@@villefere6968 Did... did played it from the beginning to the end?
Mandalore you have some of the most peculiarly rewatchable reviews. I repeatedly rewatch many if not most of your reviews & I dont fully understand why. So every time you upload I get excited because it means there's 4 more hours of content to watch
I think it's the speed and tone of voice. I put longer reviews as background sound when I do other things and I think I've listened to the Limbo of the lost more than 10 times by now.
Hear hear I second this. Curious case of rewatchability of Mandalore's videos
I do that with Accursed Farms.
I put them as sound to sleep to. He's voice is soothing and relaxing. Very rer-watchable.
@@planescaped damm you hit me right with this one.. for was always accursed farms then i got into seth, then into mandalore
“The more creepy characters you investigate, the more cp you find”
Didn’t realize this was an FBI role play game
Mandalore’s subconscious is sending us secret messages.
i was just about to comment this
What is Comet Pizza hiding?
If only you knew how true that quote is. The only time where I agree with Lovecraft's theme of "some things are better left unknown"
'Fade to black and a gunshot. There is nothing more film school than that!'
- Redlettermedia
The booze mechanic needed to be more fleshed out: yes, make it so it affects your ending, but also give it some gameplay benefit to tempt the player into drinking it. Don't just tell me "if you drink this, it will affect your ending" and that's it.
Treat it more like Joy in the Lisa games, an extremely powerful buff item that has ramifications on how the game ends
@@TheGankingGeek Exactly, or like the little sisters in Bioshock, or like bloodsucking in Vampyr. Anything but what they ended up doing in the actual game.
@Ed Carone IIIThere are other times when you can drink booze and apparently it unlocks a different ending option, but guess what: it's not worth it.
Disco elysium actually does that
I can't believe this story you're telling me, it's macabre.
What a muh-car-bruh souvenir.
Steve would be proud
xd
Okay, throw some numbers at me.
Oh shit I'm sorry
One thing you missed with the multiple ending is that they have a different after the credits moments. For instance, in the suicide ending, a painting gets mailed to your office depicting pierce killing himself. Kind of implying that your suicide was predicted like everything else. It's not much more, but it's definitely more than just fade to black.
13:12 This reminds me of Miraak cultists in Whiterun trying to start a dialogue with me way too much
>Mandy reviews game
>3 hours later it appears on this month's humble bundle
THEY'VE FOUND YOU MANDY, RUN!
@733Rafael I wouldn't say shitty. There are some interesting parts in it. More like disappointing.
3:27 - Preach. Eyes aren't cameras. Shame on devs that force these awful features. CA, DoF, Motion Blur, and Lens Flares should always be optional!
I feel that this stupid trend in videogames comes from the fact that game developers want so badly to emulate Cinema. Hence why we get increasing focus on realistic muddy graphics, horrible camera effects, long boring cutscenes, etc.
@@AndreLuis-gw5ox Don't forget shaky cams, medicals do notice seizure chance so there's all sort of disclaimers at start nowadays.
Your eyes have lenses, and you see these things with your eyes, too. It's hard to picture it for someone who never goes outside, though, isn't it?
@@sujimayne Motion blur and dof don't work the way they do on a monitor screen though and I don't remember seeing lens flare, even though I spend about 20 hours a day outside.
@@AndreLuis-gw5ox
No.
It's because:
A) post processes are part of the visual design, thus are supposedly artistic expression.
B) most devs do not want to debug and code post processes selections, also because they are heavily used in the scripted events...
C) they are loved by the vocal minority who keep prising frankly shitty games, and any criticism is just "hate" anyway.
D) many criticism are double standard anyway.
Again, I'm astounded at how Mandalore's Reviews and Ross's Game Dungeon seem to be converging into a single entity. Particularly after the post-processing rant.
Hey, hey people... (in the distance)
Ha, glad it is not just me who has noticed!
Ross and Mandalore are some great youtubers, I agree.
At least, their channels are STILL NOT DEAD!
Isn’t that just down to them being logical people? Post processing effects are super annoying sometimes, people just love to be suck ups and never complain in my experience.
holy shit that sneaky neverhood OST, I need to get that
oh also yeah this game... kinda not good and also half a second of cthulhu
Get back to work!
Go back to Africa!
More wifus lol
If you are complaining about a very small glimpse of Cthulhu you have probably never read any of Lovecraft's work
@@Toripusutashi You mean works like, say, "At the Mountains of Madness" where there's a fucking FULL-BLOWN SHOGGOTH CHASE SCENE? Lovecraft is not an excuse for the lack of action, giant monster-gods and fun, especially if most of the psychological stuff that is supposed to replace all the pulp sucks major balls like in this game. Have you seen Re-animator? Dagon? Necronomicon? All Lovecraft, all entertainment. Cyanide, uninspired hacks as they are, have chosen the dullest way to show off his legacy. But at least now people like you can say such stupid elitist shit as if they know something others don't, lol.
I feel like the best adaptations of Lovecraft are those that incorporate elements from his mythology rather than trying to trasnlate his stories into another medium whole cloth.
I think disco elysium did a great job at using dice rolls in a non-combat rpg. some dice rolls can be repreated if you improve the skill, and when you get a skill high enough you'll have a 100% chance for easier things
The scariest part of a game for me was in Condemned where you had to investigate a creepy abandoned house and you had a light showing where these footprints were going and they ran up walls and every second brought you closer to the source, scared the shit out of me
"How barely is barley".. Every. Single. Time.
Oh shit, earliest I've been to this. Glad to see you've gotten this one out.
Wouldn't be a Lovecraft game without some really serious variations in quality, I've heard both extremes of opinion for this, seems weird that developers can't seem to really nail down a properly good adaptation, there's always something that seems to rub people the wrong way. Curious to see if there's any dev history about it; especially the character designs (they really are offputting, and the cutscene models just look like rubber dolls).
Because Yahtzee is right, and Lovecraft's brand of horror straight up doesn't work with modern attitudes, and even mentioning Lovecraft in any way completely ruins the point of "unknowable madness". At least Sinking City is a good detective game, nyeeh see. And also a sequel to the Dark Corners of the Earth? And I swear the protagonist has the same voice actor.
yeah I think games that just take influence from Lovecraft's ideas rather than trying to emulate them tend to do better
Imo the best game to do Lovecraftian themes in recent memory has been Bloodborne, because it doesn't advertise it in the slightest. The unknowable horror doesn't work when you know it's there right off the bat. If this game was a detective game about a woman who's gone missing and played it straight and narrow, then BANG squid cult, it would be pretty good.
@Eriko. Oy Yeah Bloodborne is just about the only good example I can think of, although I was thinking more in terms of more direct adaptations of Lovecraft's work. Thinking on it more I feel like games inspired by it, rather than direct adaptations, will just generally be better and it avoids some of the more unpleasant aspects that he would put into his work.
I really wanna play Bloodborne again now.
Speaking of Yahtzee, has anyone played The Life of Erich Zann that he made? I want to play it for myself but my PC has no sound rn
JUST THE INTRO, and I am already dead of laughing.
Oh shit, I'm sorry!
Wouldn't be mandalore without gachi references
Based Boy Band Catalina references
@@caifora837 Sorry for what?
That is not dead which can eternal lie, in strange aeons even death may die
"The more creepy people you investigate the more CP you find"
Hah! Indeed. It always makes me do a double take when I see that abbreviation used in a game.
To be fair to CoC's skill trees, the actual Call of Cthulhu board game is a dice roll. I deliberately restrain my players from maxing out any stats because even if they have a 95% chance of succeeding, there's no real guarantee of success. I think that's the kind of system they were trying to go for.
There's games where this format can work, but, honestly, I don't think this is one of them. It just encourages save scumming. Hard checks are superior for this type of game.
@@spookmeyer970 I think that's probably true, but I would still love to see a game that fully realizes the dice roll mechanic. What made the TTRPG so fun for me personally was the fact that my character might not find something of value, while also understanding that behind the scenes there was a ticking clock. Each action had consequences and depending on how you allocated your stats, you could end up finding valuable information or finding nothing. Along with combat. I feel like this might have been a good FIRST iteration of that concept. However, since it's a video game they have to design a world in which you get to explore for yourself without word of mouth. It's tough to balance all of the possible ways a person could choose to interact with the world in the tabletop and with what you can realistically program into a video game. Thus, this game was a solid first attempt at something like that, even if the game overall fell flat.
@@Khefingt0n I think in a video game dice rolls are kinda of a bad idea because save scumming. New Vegas did it better with simple skill requirements. If you meet the requirement you can do the thing, if you don't you can't. You can lock the save to a specific seed, but it's still kind not good.
"More out of focus than gay characters in a disney star wars property" omg, dead.
4:24 Is that a FnaF joke I see there crawling from beneath a gibbous moon, drenched in a eldritch colour and unnatural geometry?
So Mandalore was 6 years old in 1987?
Is that a darkest dungeon reference in your comment?
@@matthew1882 Nah, just Lovecraft's writing style in general.
"I wonder if Mandalore will put any gachi in thi-"
>macabre
Kino
My favourite 'lovecraftian' game I've seen yet is Cultist Simulator. Spooky, tense and surreal, yet with no jumpscares whatsoever. Also blends gameplay and story quite well, imo.
6:35 - Very subtle joke. I love it.
Subtle??
@@Ainsley_the_meat_rubber I think this is sarcasm, idk the internet is hard sometimes.
@@Ainsley_the_meat_rubber It was. I can see alot of people not catching that.
Lol I’m glad there’s at least one comment about it, it made me chuckle.
4:44 -- King of Limbo flashbacks. "Jeeves, bring my forgetting juice. All of it."
"I would have been agravated if I bought it at that price."
You described me.
For real. I bought it and Lost in Vivo on the same night. Played some of Lost in Vivo while I waited for Call of Cthulhu to install, then beat all of Call of Cthulhu in that night. The 10-15 minutes I played of Lost in Vivo that night were endlessly more intriguing and terrifying than all of Call of Cthulhu.
I really like the graphics in this game. I'm not sure if it's unusual to be attracted to graphics that strive towards some kind of realism but fall short of the mark. My favourite graphics in games are often those that look artificial without going for a stylised version of artificiality such as that of a cartoon or an outwardly intentional aesthetic. Perhaps it's something like a nostalgia for that 'in-between' era of video game visual design before anything like realism was technically obtainable but designers were still striving to push the medium further towards it, so you end up with this really strange visual aesthetic which as far as I can think is completely exclusive to the medium.
I'm curious if anyone feels similar to this or understands what I'm trying to get at. Let me know!
I think I know what you're talking about, I'm really drawn to that kind of look too. It might partly be nostalgia, but I've been obsessed with this look even as a kid so I think there's just something about it that's really appealing to me. Soundstage musical sets that are meant to be outdoor locations give me the same sort of feeling of striving for realism/a natural look but still looking obviously artificial. Doesn't have the "technology just wasn't there" charm that the inbetween era graphics do though.
4:26
IS THAT THE BITE OF '87?
I remember watching the superbestfriends play through of this and being kinda impressed... until the combat started
I dropped their playthrough right after the stealth section at the asylum. I couldn't get invested enough with the story or characters.
they played dark corners of the earth
Rusty Shackleford they also played this one towards the end of their career, it was one of the end of shitstorm games they turned into an LP
Gunshot, fade to black? Gunshot, fade to black... Fucking art-HOUSE BRILLIANCE!
i was honestly looking forward to this review for quite a bit THANKS MANDALORE
Sounds more like you are playing as a man, who is named Jonathan Reid, a traumatized WW1 veteran, who became a vampire, who plays a man who is named William Pierce, a traumatized WW1 veteran.
i'm really, REALLY looking forward to your video on The Sinking City!!!
I saw that reference to aslan. Podcast bois know what I'm talking about
hell yeah, made my food in time!
NOW WE SHALL FEAST!!!
Lovecraft's cat
Feasting On The Human Bones
what if this is a good time to take a look at Disco Elysium?
+1
I immediately thought of disco Elysium when he talked about the skills system; I think the dice rolls work well in elysium. They're fairly transparent.
Overrated commie trash
@@TrueCarthaginian Ha! No.
@@maximeteppe7627 The whole game is designed around failing checks so you go and explore other leads which tie back around into the thing you failed, giving you another shot and a bonus. Way better than this game. It's not perfect though, sometimes you get roadblocked by really absurd choices on skill checks like needing reaction time (half-light) to bluff your way through a conversation, and the only way to get past it is by spamming skill points at it.
"How barely is barely"
See, what I usually do in horror games, or games in general when they promt me to adjust the brightness according to the logo, is that I go all the way down until it's black, and then slide the bar ever so gently until the logo shows up, as faint as it may be it's visible. In other words, the lowest you can go and still see the logo. Works every time.
Your reviews remind me of the old Gametrailers reviews. I could watch those for hours! Nostalgia...
"In particular the one at Chuck E. Cheese that definitely bit me when I was six"
Was that the bite of 87?
"The more creepy people you investigate, the more cp you find." 🤣
I laughed out loud at this part
"I was researching for a book."
You're my favorite video game critic , you have the best humor , I'm miserably depressed , I've lost everything I hold dear in my life and even so , your videos squeeze a chuckle from me even when I rewatch an old episode , keep up the amazing work
Hope things are better man.
Gotta love that Neverhood soundtrack rocking out in the background. Thanks, Mr Mandalore!
6:22 that is not how lamps work. A pool of light at your feet when the base of the lamp is solid?
The light structure they have mapped onto the game can work but make it a different model. The same light pattern makes sense with the cigarette lighter. If they only wanted to program the one structure make the lantern model make sense. E.g. a twisted shell of a hooded lantern with the guts ripped out, and nought but a candle in it to cast light.
@@stevereddy3547 we
I really like your vids mandalore. They're always so high quality, classy and without tons of filler but still being lengthy enough for an in depth review.
New favorite channel. The reductionist process that you use to break these games up really gets me to agree with almost each critique. Very thorough as well. I come here to check out your take on most of my favorite games. I thought I was the only one who thought $40 at launch was crap, but I got suckered in by Dark Corners nostalgia and figured it would be another Shadow over innsmouth. Still a good detective game a times and the stressful encounters are memorable, but I totally agree with the diagnosis.
6:33 Was very well done editing. Loved how you transitioned into the "another day or another room" part of your sentence literally to another day or another room lol
I was looking for someone else who noticed, hilarious edits in each video if you're paying attention
10:30
The logic behind having everything be a dice roll is that this game is based on a table top RPG and thus it follows the rules of that RPG to a greater or lesser degree. And in TTRPGs its always just a better roll, not a guarantee or threshold. Works for Table top games which have literally limitless possibilities, not so much for video games.
The game needs to at least tell you that instead of vaguely imply it. Probably what I love most about Call of Cthulhu is once you learn to read your character sheet it becomes very easy to judge whether a roll is likely to go in your favor. Skills range from 1-100, on a check roll percentile dice with the goal to roll under your rating. Your skills literally show your odds of success. This game never gives your odds
then you got "trail of cthulhu" in which you never roll for clue collection because they realized that not getting a clue that's actually there because you failed a roll is not funny.
Typically in a ttrpg you either have teammates or several other ways to solve a problem if you roll like shit (or maybe you fail and you'll have to look around harder for a backdoor or something). In a limited game, rolls and passfail instead of levels or success just feels like shit for little reason
@@ArchiveTheMyth Yeah, basically what I meant when I said that TTRPGs have limitless possibilities. If you fail a strength check you could find another way, or maybe even just do it again. There's no limitation other than the GM and player's creativity in terms of how you can solve the problem. When done via the limited medium of video games, the "Sometimes pass, sometimes not" system of random chance feels quite shitty.
@@Audiodump The problem is that when it comes to plot set pieces like hidden clues. No GM would EVER scrap set pieces they put significant effort into because of one bad roll, unless it's hilarious and greentext-friendly enough.
I find it annoying, how all C'thulhu portrayals in media, are of this giant, with a squid face and demonic wings.
In the bloody book, he was described as a blob of green, that kind of resembled its figures... in which it was a humanoid dragon with squid-like deformations (and in the figures, it had a bloated stomach and thin limbs).
Like... Bloodborne, is the closest we got to the description of C'thulhu, with Ebrietas.
@733Rafael His form comes from not being a physical creature.
He is a weird green blob, because he is here, but not. He is beyond this dimension and other than any physical state of matter in our reality.
He is a condensed energy, a being of pure power.
Lovecraftian mythos also isn't just the ancient beings with knowledge beyond our minds.
It's civilisations far beyond our understanding, that also were, are and will be more savage and primitive than we would like to admit we are.
When Lovecraft describes eldritch music, I always think of club-techno. Science beyond the understanding of Lovecraft and his contemporaries, used to beat simple rhythms for the sake of a sexual tension.
That Neverhood soundtrack just awakened some nostalgia in me
Mandalore is sliding ever so closely to the ‘Ross’s Game Dungeon’ side of reviews. I am not complaining.
Who
Given your reaction to the game's skill system, I'm thinking you might be into the way The Council does things. Having the skill lets you use it, having the skill improved eases off the skill's cost on the resource management aspect, but there's no RNG involved.
It also helps that The Council is a pretty good game in general.
Im so Happy to catch this literally seconds after the upload, makes me feels like a hot-rigged decker from shadowrun.
You'll get a like from me for the Shadowrun reference.
Mentioning the fact you're "first" makes me think you're a loser. Who likes Shadowrun.
I love how he even put the green filter over the gatchi intro.
This is the.. best..bad game i have ever played if that makes sense? If you are a lovecraftian lover like me ,you will find something to enjoy here...under the rubble.
"Call of Cthulhu"? More like "Call the FBI cuz this guys got hoards of CP"
"then the next sounds like it was recorded on a different day in a different room" LOL what a genius gag!
0:45 That accidental name drop. Too good.
How much I've missed your content!
Wow the axe steal thing killed all my interest in playing instantly. Thats honestly terrible.
I feel like a game like this would benefit from first being played out as a tabletop game. Like, one or more of the devs would DM an approximation of the story they want to tell, and they would use the behavior of the players to adjust how it gets adapted into the video game. It'd be like beta testing for storytelling. It would have told them that players would consider the groundskeeper more worthy of attention than just 'guy who spooks you and then opens door.' It would have told them that, if you mention claw marks on walls, then players are going to want to investigate them. Stuff like that. And, since it's a human DM running the show, they can improvise when necessary, take notes, and then use those notes to affect the final product.
But having the skill checks here based on RNG? That's...agh. That's such a terrible idea that it didn't even occur to me that that's what the "increases your chances of" terminology meant. I took that just to mean that the element of chance was whether or not you had invested the points to push your character over the necessary threshold to turn 'guaranteed failure' into 'guaranteed success.'
nice profile pic
This game is literally based on the Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPG.
@@GwynnMettbjoll but apparently noone there ever played it
but only in one world you have to skill check EVERY BREATH I TAKE
A new mandalore video. It's a good day
I don't believe this opening, it's macabre!
Well time to take my half hour break so I can watch this before the rest of my night shift
Pro tip, use YT's speed up function
Love the Turtles in Time soundtrack when you were talking about green.
I think having your skills and clues you find based on RNG to be awesome. It really gives you TTRPG type vibes and id argue makes it more enjoyable when every person's playthrough will usually yield some things that are different compared to other players
That’s ridiculous, you could play through the game 3 times and still have most of the same results, that’s such bullshit
Available in August's Humble Choice!
The skill system reminds me of Disco Elysium but that managed to do it well, for one thing most checks in that game can be repeated so random chance isn't too bad plus failing checks in Disco actually makes the game more fun and interesting and even sometimes being more beneficial in some ways
I thought the exact same thing!
I'm over half way through Disco Elysium rn and it's gotta be one of the best rpgs I've ever played. Truly impressive 👏
That Blade Runner Video Game music in the end...fond memories. Great review, to bad about the game but await your Sinking City one, hope it fares better.
I'll be honest i dont plan on playing most of the games you review but your videos are so enjoyable i watch anyway
Main characters name is Edward Pierce, William Pierce is a....different guy
Yeah, who knows what he's been watching? 😏
Least it's not James Pearce.
Damn, this game had me all the way up until dice rolls.
This reminded me of another game with scaringly similar concept being "The Sinking City".
It also has you playing as a detective on a god-forsaken-island with a Cthulhu-like monster and cult with its inhabitants being insane or overwhelmingly British.
Edit I've seen the ending. I understand why now...
Given how Lovecraft mythos games tend to rely on big visuals to deliver their content. I wonder if a point-and-click game with pre-rendered backgrounds might make better games in the genre. You would save a lot of resources and the point-and-click might fit better for the investigation side of things. When you want to pull out big puzzles or scary cutscenes, you can dedicate those saved resources into making them look and feel better.
An on rails shooter was surprisingly decent for the dead space franchise. Maybe a point and click game would be good for lovecraft
I played this a couple of months ago! This might be the first time I've played a game that Mandalore's reviewed. I can't decide if it's a shame that it's a hilariously shit one instead of a hidden gem, but oh well.
Also, I played The Sinking City. It's decent. Much better than this for sure.
00:02
"oh im sorry"
"sorry for what"
The whole percentage thing is directly based on the TTRPG call of Cthulhu/pulp Cthulhu, the difference is that in the TTRPG you have LUCK points that help you pass rolls.
God bless you put this out as the new humble bundle for vampyr and call of cthulu Comesbout
Its a shame this game had the problems it ended up having, because I want a Lovecraftian game to turn out well. Honestly I think the biggest problems most of these games face is similar to the issues Lovecraft movies face, they give definitive answers that don't leave the audience pondering on the nature of reality given the new information. What I mean is, you never get that sense of being less than a pawn in these games of cosmic chess going on. Bloodborne perfectly encapsylates it with its ending where you either embrace the cycle thats being going on without realizing you're just a small piece in a much grander picture, rebel against the cycle only to realize a much darker force has been responsible, or through maccob and cryptic means ascend to godhood through your culmination of forbidden knowledge.
In these games its usually, shoot and kill the spawn of these monsters, careful you don't take too much loss to your sanity. Or in this games case, heres some RNG to try and make it feel like the Pen and Paper game, but sorry we couldn't quite make it translate. Its a cool idea but executed poorly. Also, the painting monster could have worked as the crescendo of the story, as you have the player character confront it, and now you have that earth shattering revelation of where you are on the cosmic stage. It would be the climax to a Lovecraft story where now the protagonist is shook by this revelation and they're forever changed.
The last issue a lot of these games seem to have is you are always a detective. Now I am knit picking here but just hear me out. The assumption you have with a detective is they can handle themselves, they investigate, theyre rough and tough cigarette smoking alcohol drinkers who are there to solve a mystery. But a lot of Lovecraft stories are about normal people discovering esoteric knowledge by chance. For instance, if you were a reporter working on a story and accidentally uncover a conspiracy of the occult worshipping lets say Shub-Niggurath, now we are talking. In this case we have someone who you can perceive as powerless digging into things they shouldn't be, creating that sense of powerlessness in the cosmic scale that creates the spine tingling horror that is cosmic horror. Essentially a game like Outlast, except tackling eldritch themes.
The detective thing seems borowed from the character concepts of the tabletop rpg
It'd be interesting to see you review The Sinking City in comparison of this game since it came out shortly after this one. I feel like both have failings as a Lovecraft game but in significantly different ways.
Your releases are always a treat. I'd wholeheartedly enjoy listening to you playing whatever as a streamer, your voice is angelic.
That was the best opening to a video I’ve seen in a long time
19:50
"MandaloreGaming : So yeah, it's a very easy section.
Me, who had to retry this section a ton of times because I could not understand what I had to do : ... :( "