ack Walters was a police detective, and had a talent for solving crimes even when the evidence wasn't sufficent. His 'hunches' were the talk of force. Some said he was psychic. One night in Boston, a fanatic cult was tracked down and holed up in a country house surrounded by the police. The cult asked that Jack be brought before them, personally.
That night, deep beneath the house, Jack went insane and spent the next six years of his life in an insane asylum. He was incoherent, rambling, changed. Six years later he's released - suddenly back to normal, but with no memory of those lost years. Attempting to get his life back on track he sets up a private detective agency and takes a missing persons case. Brian Burnham, a grocery store clerk in the fishing town of Innsmouth has gone missing, and the store chains owner wants Jack to track him down.
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You are Jack Walters, and begin the game during the police raid on the cult, the Fellowship of the Yith, in Boston - there, you witness the events that send you into madness. It's a great introduction to the game as you search through the cultists' hideout discovering clues to their intentions - ancient gods, dark rituals, and awful sacrifice.
The greatest influence on the story comes first from HP Lovecrafts tale The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Characters, locations, and many other elements are lifted from the short story to great effect - the chase scene from the hotel across the rooftops and balconies of Innsmouth is a fantastic gameplay scene, and was awarded best game level of the year by Gamespy. The second Lovecraft story to influence the games narrative is The Shadow Out of Time, which tells of the Great Race of Yith, who feature in the game.
Jack Walters, hard at work.
Med packs and bandages can be found and used to heal yourself. But Jack has to stop and apply the bandages to his wounds in a sort of mini cutscene. This means healing during a battle is almost out of the question unless you can run and hide for a few moments. It all adds to the immersion, this is no run, gun, and heal kind of game. You can also inject yourself with morphine for rapid pain relief if you need to make an immediate get away. Overuse of morphine however is dangerous...
Jack is caught up in a series of events he can't control - for half the game he's just trying to stay alive and get out of whatever situation he finds himself in. For me, this is the mark of a true Cthulhu game. You're not running and gunning down monsters - you're constantly aware or your own mortality, how tough the enemy is, and to survive you're going to need to be lucky and sneaky. All while trying to maintain your sanity.
Jack's sanity is always on a knife edge due to the events witnessed at the start of the game. Therefore there are a lot of things that affect him, from seeing dead bodies, heights, and things man was not meant to witness. When Jack's sanity reaches zero he'll kill himself with whatever weapon he has to hand. Even his own hands.
Empire: 7.9/10
Boomtown: 9/10
Cosmos Gaming: 8.5/10
GameOver: 85%
Gameplanet: 4/5
Gamespy: 3.5/5
Gamespot: 7.9/10
GIN: 4.5/5
Gaming Nexus: Grade B
VVGEN: 8/10
The game was originally going to feature environmental interaction such has picking up objects lying about to be used as weapons. Such as a brick, an iron bar, and even furniture.
Other types of weapons were also dropped, such as dynamite, hand grenades and certain other period firearms.
Gameplay is linier, but to the games credit. There's a story to be told and shocking moments to witness, and this can only be done by directing the player into certain situations. However, when you first arrive in Innsmouth, you have the run of the place to a degree. You explore the town talking to the bizarre denizens, gathering clues about Burnhams disappearance. Later on in the Marsh refinery, you again have a small number of choices to make for yourself about where to go first.
Thus beings the slow descent into madness yet again as Jack travels to Innsmouth to look for clues. But something is wrong in the dark town that reeks of fish. A taint seems to fester within the people - they don't like outsiders, and now he must face the terrifying truth behind the town, the people, and himself...
For the first quarter of the game, about four hours of play, you won't have any weapons, and no other way to defend yourself. When things get dangerous, you run, hide, and sneak your way past your eneimes. Once you're armed though, sneaking is still a viable option in a lot of cases. Enemies are tough, and your weapons fairly weak - so shooting your way out isn't always the best option, though sometimes it can be the only option.
The game is played first person, with no HUD. There's no information displayed on screen. Instead you get visual clues to sanity and health loss on screen as the screen blurs or swirls from vertigo, or far worse maladies, and the colour drains, breathing becomes heavy, and movement slows as you bleed to death. You can however enter the inventory screen and view your documents, items, and weapons, as well as a more detailed assessment of your current health.
The inventory and health screen.
Along the way you'll find various notes, anceint tomes, and other scraps of information which is logged into your diary. It would have been nice to see the pages of such tomes rendered rather than every note just being the same type-face font on a lined page though.
Which brings me to the graphics. They are nothing groundbreaking, even back in 2005, but regardless of this they do a great job of conveying a dark 1920's world. There's no dynamic lighting, but the static lighting is set up well giving the locations a dark gloomy feel. The Xbox version is about average for a game of that time, and the later PC version looks the same (though benefits from higher resolutions and anti-aliasing). Textures are mostly clear and of decent quality throughout. Cutscenes are told in a letterbox grainy film style (using the game engine), and are seen from the players perspective. Some nice elements persist throughout though, such as Jacks hands being visible on screen during cutscenes. (There's even a dropped feature where you see Jacks hand for all interactions during the game, picking up items, opening and closing doors etc. - this can be enabled through a user patch - see the Downloads page.)
Cthulhu-ness is seeping from every crevice of the game. From the way the gameplay is presented, to the look and feel of the situations you find yourself in. Some have criticised the game for becoming a first person shooter for the latter half of the game, but I don't think that is the case. Though there are many shooting elements to be found, it's not always a good option, and once you do get your weapons, there are still large pockets of gameplay scattered throughout where you will not be shooting anything. I would call it a first person action/stealth/survival game. It would not have been in the games interest to maintain the slow pace of the games beginnings even after you found the weapons.
If you've found your way to my site and have somehow not played this great game, then you owe it to yourself to try it. It can be found easily enough, and very cheap.
The sound is great throughout and helps round off the atmosphere of dread that surrounds your adventure through the game. The voice acting is very well done for the most part, especially the inhabitants of Innsmouth. Jacks voice is not quite as well delivered in places, but part of this is due to the voice work being done when no sense of the current game events is present. For example, when Jack is being pursued by a game of angry cultists, he might pick up an item and calmly say 'I found a key.' This also happens when insanity might be setting in, and for example you try to open a locked door and get the standard calm reply 'It won't open.'
At various points, the Elder signs can be used to save the game.
That's one ugly copper.
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