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0 Lovecraftian horror, who is insane enough not to love the mythos. That is why I am checking out Big Bad Wolves’ new narrative, cosmic horror game, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss. I watched the trailer a while back, and that caught my attention, but now I will finally get the chance to try it out on Steam.
When he calls, maybe it’s best not to answer.
Gameplay
We will be playing an Ancile Agent named Noah, who is tasked with investigating an underwater facility. This soon leads him rather quickly to the ancient city of R’lyeh. But he won’t investigate alone thanks to his A.I. companion Key, who helps him stay focused and talks through his findings.
Each chapter acts as its own little investigation, and most of them offer two ways to proceed. As one will cause Noah’s brain to suffer with corruption (Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss’s version of insanity). This won’t do a lot for him, but this will affect the useful perks he can obtain if you accumulate too much corruption. Beyond making a bad choice in an investigation and the odd story moment, there aren’t many ways to actually be corrupted. However, there aren’t many ways to actually cure it either. So far, I have only found two perks that partially heal you, but they don’t heal a lot.
For the investigation side itself, as you interact and examine your surroundings, everything will be logged in Noah’s mind vault. Here the player can organise and connect thoughts to make sure the correct info is placed. Some items you examine will offer up a question for you to solve. This is done by dragging another item in your mind vault to the purple zone. You don’t need to worry if you get it wrong, as there isn’t any consequence for the incorrect answer.
The Sonar And Perks
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is a visually dark game, more so under the sea. But thanks to the sonar, the game gives the impression that this isn’t a problem, and that’s not all it does. It serves a vital purpose in finding the items we need. By picking up objects and analysing them, Noah will obtain the material they are made of. The player then uses this information to highlight other objects with similar textures. Which helps amazingly when it comes to collecting information. With the most common one you will use being documents. To actually analyse anything, the player will need energy, which they can get from a mushroom-type thing that glows orange. Or if you are desperate, pay a tiny amount of corruption.
Now, onto those aforementioned perks. They can offer some small but great assistance, like gaining energy whenever you examine something. Or later on, healing your corruption for every deduction you complete. Perks themselves are found hidden throughout the levels, and are easily located when switching the sonar to find Elder Glyphs.
Graphics & Audio
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, while not the most polished in textures, has well-designed areas and grotesque abominations. No area felt barren or lacklustre, with every area chock-full of details and life (or death in some areas’ cases). The voice acting is also great, with the character player Noah doing a particularly excellent job.
Only small, awkward things to mention were that a character model, much later in the game, completely freaked out and started flipping and spinning. It was funny, but it ruined the seriousness of the scene it happened in. Then there’s also a character named Marsh, who has uncanny valley vibes out of the Yazoo. His eyes rolled around, and his skin flexed and stretched in weird ways as he spoke in cut-scenes, as if his face was alive and going to leap off his skull and run away.
Longevity
I haven’t finished the game due to issues that I will mention in my final thoughts. But right now, my playtime has hit close to 12 hours. Since each section gives to ways to beat them, there might be different endings, giving reason for another play-through. Cthulhu: the Cosmic Abyss has 27 achievements for players to obtain. Some focus on collecting things, and one for beating the game without going over the corruption threshold.
Final Thoughts
The investigation side of Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is interesting and engaging, with making the player look around the environments thoroughly. Also, offering two paths per section adds great reason to do another go around. It was a shame I couldn’t finish the game due to chapter five becoming a major headache of problems. Some of these were items that spawned back in areas upon reloading the game. Not being able to move further due to damage, and lastly, placing key items in the correct places and not yielding any results.
My computer also suffered hard frame drops when doing a sonar pulse in chapter 5. To the point, I would have to wait a few minutes for things to settle, even when my character was standing still. For the story so far, I wouldn’t say the story is all that interesting and kinda feels told around chapter 3, which makes playing later chapters a bit of a slog.
So as the game is, I will be giving Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, the Thumb Culture Silver Award. It was okay, just not overly filling they Lovecraftian theme for me.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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