The fight with Dagon and a vast majority of the plot points in Innsmouth itself are basically the old pen and paper rpg campaign. The sub, the ship, and shooting Dagon and his wife to death with cannons are all in the old adventure. It's much fairer I think to look at the video game as a 3d version of the pen and paper campaign but instead of suddenly stopping with the player's characters and handing them premade marines to play for the assault they combined the storylines with the same character and had to think of a reason for it to occur.
Talking about needlessly overcomplicating your video game experience because you had a dumb moment and did not realized something obvious. On my first playthrough of Metro 2033 i did not realized that you could destroy glowing orb spawners in D6, so i tried countless times to just run through that one portion of the level while simultaniously trying to shoot all the orbs that kept respawning, i even managed to do it eventually. On my second playthrough it was shamefully easy when i realized that i need to kill spawners.
Dagon isn't a God. He's just the high priest of the Cult of Cthulhu and leader of the Deep Ones. Granted he's immensely powerful as are his followers, but he doesn't really get a whole lot of backing from Cthulhu. Cthulhu is just asleep in a sunken city halfway across the planet, completely unaware of anything that's going around. Mainly because he's an elder god and it's all so beneath him.
The question as to why the PC port is so janky has been answered by coder Gareth Clarke, it was pushed out basically by just him, unpaid, as the company slowly went under: "The PC version very nearly didn’t happen, as I was practically the only person left in the building, and hadn’t been paid for months. But we couldn’t stand it not coming out after years of work." He's done a couple of interviews about the game's development that are worth looking up!
A flawed masterpiece. One of my favourite horror games. Great atmosphere. Fantastic story. For those who can get past the flaws, it's an unforgettable experience.
@@athan336 But it's not. I've played broken games. The fan patches fixed the major issues with this game. I finished it for the second time only a few months ago, and had no problems.
@@anthonyhiggins9799 I'm taking without patches if I could name all the bugs and game breaking bugs id be here till Christmas and this was the gog version, I've clocked 20 hours in it because It dosent work, its a good game if it didn't have game breaking glitches like the boat canons, you shouldn't have to download 50 mods/patches just to finish the game its not right, a remaster or a remake would be magnificent
I played this game on stream. The lack of a run button was absolutely infuriating. And the lack of a clear safe point after the final boss fight (there was one, but it didn't look like any that had come before, so it threw me off) led to me getting sent back to before it after I suddenly died without warning in the sequence afterwards. I just ragequit at that point. Couldn't bring myself to finish it. I wanted to like this game, but I just couldn't.
Maybe, it would have helped to use that save point, after you had noticed it? Or, done a casual playthrough, before streaming it? The game already established that the save points would'nt always be in your direct path. Getting through the ending can take some trial-and-error, if you try to brute-force it and/or have your attention divided by a chat.
In the vanilla version of the PC release it actually WAS possible to make it through the collapsing tunnel sequence...you just couldn't make a single mistake. Seriously you had to know the path flawlessly...even an extra sidestep would mean your doom. I bought this game the day it came out and even unpatched I loved it, though the fan patch made the more annoying aspects so much easier it feels wrong to play without it now.
I love this channel, please don't take my disagreement as something personal. I consider this game a masterpiece and below are some of the reasons why. It's really strange to me how people keep insisting that this game is making the mistake of "making eldritch monsters killable by guns". Do you fight Cthulhu in this game? Do you fight any of the Great Old Ones? Dagon and Hydra are small fries in the mythos. The Deep Ones are literally just fish people... why wouldn't they die from gunfire? But again - Cthulhu IS a Great Old One - he is the big time deity that is very much present in this game and this presence is one of the greatest things about it. You never see Cthulhu. You never fight him. But the closest you come to him is... his statue. There is a room with a puzzle that you have to solve to leave the room, there is no threat or danger in that room... except for that statue. It's eyes seem to follow you, the protagonist keeps feeling worse and worse until, if you take to long on a puzzle, he goes mad (game over). This statue is the only presence of Cthulhu in the game - it is not even the real monster, it's just an idol of his worship... yet even that is enough to drive the person (who is capable of defeating Dagon and Hydra by the way) absolutely insane. Imagine what would happen if he DID stumble upon Cthulhu if only his *statue* does that to his sanity? Imagine if he stumbled upon a god that Cthulhu bows down to? That sort of thing is briliant in my opinion and there is a lot of subtlety like this in this game... like the Polyps that you fight near the end... Notice how they are actually like, scary? Like to you, the player? None of the monsters are scary in this game (that is why the game is incentivizes not looking at them - it makes you scared FOR the protagonist becoming scared) except for them... that is because they are the only actually important cosmic figures you come across. The entire Deep Ones and human civilization is just a spec in-between the fight between the people of Yeeth (hope I typed it right) and those Polyps. To see them is to be reminded of the insignificance of not just our existance... but of the entirety of the events of this game. The entire life and struggle of the protagonist that goes INSANE from those events (also notice how the game starts sober and slowly spirals into disjointed narrative, making you feel like you are lost in a fever dream towards the end - it reflects the degradating state of the character).
Dagon and hydra are still way above anything 1 man on a boat with a gun can do. At the very least he would need to ram the hell out of em with the boat in order to do anything besides piss him off
@@reidbishop7965 Well ramming seemed to not just piss off Cthulhu in the book, but to actually hurt him (which is actually a plot point I'm not particularly fond of tbh). So, by comparison, killing Dagon with a ship canon seems fine by me (those canons are, like, *a lot* stronger than guns). Plus Hydra was killed via technology of the Deep Ones, not with guns, which don't hurt her, so I still feel like it all makes sense. Those bosses are only there to highlight the significance of Cthulhu and above.
@@GeorgGreat_GameReviews Oh dang, I don't remeber any cannons lol, my bad chief yeah a cannon ball would for sure knock him on his ass I still don't think it should kill dagon tho
@@reidbishop7965 Well... it's not like we can test this out in real life :D ...or can we? o_0 * *tries to summon Dagon while stationed on a war ship* *
the portacabin was -5c in winter first thing in the morning, by lunch it was getting ok, then with all the heat from the xboxes and pcs it would be +35c in the evening.
I never really saw the fight with Dagon to be that ridiculous. Plenty of people talk about it like you're killing a god, but mythos stories are pretty inconsistent about Dagon's exact nature so this version of Dagon just being a big fishman rather than any sort of godlike entity was pretty easy to swallow. Hell, in Lovecraft's works it was even implied that Dagon was just a name the Esoteric Order used for Cthulhu rather than the name of a giant Deep One.
lmao this is the only review I've EVER seen that claimed the guns handled well in this game. I actually love that, because it shows how Charlatan doesn't just base all his ideas on games on what the current hive mind consensus is. And to be honest, when I played it the first time around the guns didn't stick out to me as particularly bad either! Another excellent review, always looking forward to more content! Thank you
Bruh, I know it's a Civvie reference, but I love the Doom 3 shotguns. Love the design, audio, and just running right in front of their face and blasting their ass dead (especially since Doom 3 is claustrophobic).
I played and finished this game dozen of times throughout the years. I don't understand the "flaws" maybe i am from another generation so some old school elements dont get me. This game is the best cthulu game i played and i played a lot. I really really wish there will be something like this again. Amazing story, a portal to Cthulu Mythos for sure
Give cryostasis sleep of reason a try its intresting & kinda weird abandonware. It was made by Action forms which developed intresting games before this one (which was their last game on pc), its slow paced set on Russian nuclear ship that got stuck in Artic. Also before getting into it just note V-sync is on by defualt and it needs to be edited in . ini which can be a large performance boost. Another thing which cause performance issues is Nvidias PhysichX thing it uses it bit *too much* but makes game look actually pretty good
I agree with you, I wish the whole game was like the first half, collecting information, sneaking into buildings, finding hidden items, etc. From the scape in the truck onwards it becomes a janky shooter where eldritch horrors are seen as Doom enemies. Innsmouth's streets are the best part of the game, you can see deep ones on rooftops folowing your steps, a dead bodie beeing drag by something in a basement, a half human about to change in the corner of a back alley, the devs really put everything there.
Robbaz played this game in like, 2011? And every year at least once I sit down and rewatch the entire series. Just reminds me of childhood. I don't care how bad the game is, how good, how whatever you think. To me, it's amazing and will always be.
Ehhh.. Not really. The game play is bug ridden, jank as all hell, and even when it works it provides subpar action for a shooter and subpar atmosphere for a horror game. I mean, Halo had better shooting and horror. HALO. A game not known as a horror game.
The first chapter, where the MC is exploring the city and trying to find out wth is wrong with everyone is genuenly good, but after that the shooting, sneaking and healing mechanics are either in conflict with each other, or too poorly implemented to call the gameplay good. So, no, it's not underrated, but if someone took those mechanics, properly fix them and then improve some sections, the game could be one of the top lovecraftian horror games out there. Shame that, as usual, the publishers were too busy sticking their dicks into the devs, unabling them the option to properly flesh out their ideas
Yes, a werewolf may only die to silver, but I can guarantee he won't feel particularly comfortable being shot by a 3000rpm minigun for 5 minutes straight. - Supernatural Beastiary For Budget Hunters
Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners is a good case example of "Diet Lovecraft", where your guns CAN do something against the horrors in the darkness. And that comes in the form of blasting fishmen away with a Tommy Gun. Why fight monsters with a heavy and bulky SMG? BECAUSE FUCK YOU IT'S COOL AS SHIT!
To answer the question about what was happening with the PC port, one guy made it. Headfirst productions was going through a LOT of financial problems to the point where there was only one guy able to come into the office and work on the game for PC.
Honestly, it seems to me that just about every "Lovecraftian" game that's actually based on Lovecraft is just cursed. Just play Eternal Darkness or Bloodborne instead.
Yeah I played this game when it came out and was extemely impressed by the intro hour back then. Then it sort of just died. But the memory of playing that first hour or two always stayed with me
A few extra things you can do to make the game run better on modern machines: 1. Use ThirteenAG's widescreen patch (github.com/ThirteenAG/WidescreenFixesPack/releases/tag/callofcthulhu), 2. cap the framerate at 60fps (the game engine has quite a lot of problems at higher framerates), 3. use DXVK (wraps DX9-DX11 to Vulkan, originally a Linux project, but works fine on Windows too), 4. instead of modifying the movement speed, rather use the community patch to double your time at the sequence, 5. Adjust the FOV to something more sensible for widescreen resolutions, 6. To make the Steam version more playable, replace the Steam executable with a patched retail one. There's also a mod that updates the shaders which makes the game run better on modern systems (already included in the GOG version). Doing these things will make the game much better to run.
dagon and hydra are speculated to be just the oldest deep ones we call the aliens of the Lovecraft mythos gods and old ones. because we don't understand that they are either just so technologically advanced it looks like magic to us so all the creatures of the mythos are living things that can hypothetically be killed by there tech or guns. at least thats how ive always rationalised it
I loved this game and never got to finish it because I got to that platforming section towards the end and the game kinda just took away my ability to jump lmao, like my jumps kept getting shorter until hitting the button did absolutely nothing. 10/10 masterpiece
I remember watching Helloween4545's (first) let's play of this game years ago. At the time, it was a fascinating summation of Lovecraft's works and a spooky experience. For years, it was THE HP Lovecraft video game. In retrospect, though, it was jank as hell, has only become _more_ jank as technology changes, and there are far better options for those looking for a Lovecraft experience.
IT IS possible to finish the game without running, i know because i did it. It took me god knows how many tries but i did it. I had to memorize the whole route and use the shortest way possible, like going on the inside of the corner and stuff like that. Still it wasn't as nerve racking as hotel escape without running. By the way i just found out there even was running function in the game from this video, wtf?
Yeah, it's especially weird because when you run the patcher there's a specific value for run speed despite there being no way to assign a run key in-game or even in said patcher.
I can confirm this - vanilla release you could escape the collapsing tunnel. You just had to memorize and traverse the route flawlessly...a single misstep would mean game over.
I don’t wanna be that guy but... Dagon and Hydra are pretty low-ranked entities in the Cthulhu mythos. Even Cthulhu himself isn’t much when compared to the likes of Nyarlathothep and Yog-Sothoth.
I somehow managed to finish the steam version without the fan patch many years ago. I even got past the bit where you have to shoot the lights you can't see while on the ship, but I don't remember any difficulty with the escape.
Damn gonna go replay this again now, despite the bugs and absolutely awful PC port I’ve played through this game at least 5 times. Also, nice video. I subbed :)
It is possible to finish the game normally on CD/Steam but you have to mess with the video options a bit since the timer is also apparently tied to your framerate. I did that somehow on Steam version. If you have CD or Steam version, your FPS is uncapped which breaks the game but lets you finish it sometimes. If you have GOG version, your FPS is capped which means you can't escape without a patch. Or at least this is how I understand it
I feel like it either should have leaned into the survivor horror genre, with you having to manage supplies and sneak by horrors hoping you have enough bullets to take down the nightmares closing in on you, or be something more like doom just focusing on the cool horror ascetic of the environments and enemies and improving the movement and gunplay. With the way it is right now it feels like it’s trying to do both but succeeding at nothing
I really liked the game for the first hour or so. Sneaking through all the buildings, slowly uncover more history about the city. It was great. But after the hotel chase, it is you bog normal mid 2000 shooter gallery. The game really feels rushed after the first hour, like they runnned out of money and quickly needed a full game.
Figured I'd ask, any chance that you'd ever pick up Lust for Darkness? Your humor and deadpan delivery on some of these makes me feel like that'd be entertaining as shit, that said if you can't I not only understand but completely get why you wouldn't.
The Ukraine game is obviously STALKER (or he might surprise us with one of its derivatives but I digress) but I'm at a loss for what the internet horror archive is.... only thing I can think of is one of the SCP fangames but I didn't know it had a roguelike?
SCP Containment Breach, probably the most well known SCP fangame, is a roguelike. Yes, on the easier difficulties you can save and reload, but the room locations and overall map layout is different every time you start a new game, and on the harder difficulties it acts like a roguelike, where you have to start a new game every time you die.
i pirated this game many years before and got softlocked because i dont had any ammo when i reach the factory thing after the shoot in the back of the truck sequence if i remember it correctly. also the no runing thing explains a lot
If you are reviewing the STALKER series (which you obviously hinted at), can you talk a bit about STALKER Anomaly? I'm interested in your take on that fan mod. Thank you.
