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Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth by Bethesda Softworks is a first person shooter based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft. You play as Jack Walters, a private investigator who has become wrapped up in a world of horror. After an investigation into a cult goes wrong and Jack finds some horrifying and unearthly things hidden beneath the cult's house, he loses his memory for years. He has no memory of these years, but he has been traveling the planet doing research. His first task after regaining his memory is to investigate a disappearance in the town of Innsmouth. Once there things again take a turn for the worse.

The first thing you have to do when playing Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is turn the brightness on your television way up. I understand that they were trying to make the game dark and ominous, but they took it way to far. Finding objects in a first person shooter is hard enough, but the environments are so dark that it's almost impossible to find the essential items you need to progress through the game. Even just walking around is hard to do unless you brighten things up.

Something that I thought was a very bold move was the complete lack of onscreen information. There is no heads up display, no life bar, no ammunition meters, nothing. The screen is completely open. It didn't take long for me to get used to this at all. All of this information is given to you through visual clues on screen. If you are injured, you limp; a double-barreled shotgun holds two rounds, and so on. This really helps to increase the feeling of being immersed in the game and puts you even closer in touch with the horror that's going on in the game.

For a game that's a first person shooter, it takes a long time for you to actually get to the shooting. It took me almost three hours of game time before I finally picked up a gun. I had spent a ridiculous amount of time running away from the tainted citizens of Innsmouth. A large part of this involved a lot of stealth like gameplay. Unfortunately, stealth games don't mix well with first person shooters that have no onscreen information. This made things ridiculously hard and frustrating. Once I got some guns the combat was pretty decent, but at that point I almost didn't care. And somehow, the same guards that I couldn't sneak past unarmed to save my life would allow me to walk right up next to them with a loaded shotgun and blow them away.

One thing I really liked about the combat was that you didn't have to switch over to another weapon when you were out of ammo. For example, when you've used both barrels in the shotgun you'll automatically start hitting enemies with the butt of the gun. This worked really well and is something I'd like to see added in to more shooters.

A world filled with such horrible abominations is bound to take its toll on the fragile human mind. This is represented in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth by the various effects of sanity loss. Whenever you run into something horrifying, like a dead body, a psychic flash, or some other unnatural occurrence your sanity will be damaged. This causes all sorts of debilitating effects. Your vision will become blurry, or your vision will start to warp and pulse. These effects are compounded by the injuries you receive. One time I took a head wound without realizing it. The color drained out of my vision, leaving everything in black and white. Everything slowed down as well, which made for some interesting effects as well.

Now, while all of these effects sound like they would make for a pretty interesting game, they just didn't work for me. In fact, not only did I not enjoy them, they actually caused me physical pain. The vision blurring effects ended up giving me a headache. I tried to keep playing, but it just got worse. Eventually it made me sick to my stomach too. And not in a cool, freaky horror game way. Just in a seasick sort of way. I really just couldn't play it for very long.

The injury system is one of the most interesting gameplay effects. Your body is divided into different areas: head, chest, both legs, and both arms. The different wound levels carry different effects. Bumps and small cuts can be healed with bandages. Broken bones will slow you down until you can fix them with a splint. Heavy bleeding will kill you if you don't take care of it quickly. In order to heal yourself you actually have to stop, open your first aid kit, and patch yourself up. Obviously if you're trying to run away from some degenerated half-humans on two broken legs you're not going to have time to fix yourself up. In an emergency like this you can inject yourself with a powerful narcotic. It allows you to ignore your injuries for a period of time, but the narcotics also have a similar vision warping effect like sanity loss. And just like your parents told you, drugs aren't good for you. Use the narcotics too often and the negative effects get worse.

While Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth has some interesting ideas and some interesting gameplay effect and some decent first person shooting action, unfortunately, there's just way too much else going on that drags the game down. I really wanted to like this game. A game based on some of my favorite horror stories sounds like a dream come true. Unfortunately, it ended up more like a Lovecraft nightmare.