Call of Cthulhu (Xbox, PC) – In the Press

The folks over at eat. sleep. game. introduced a new podcast earlier this week, Rebel FM Game Club, the spiritual successor to the late 1UP FM podcast’s Backlog segment. For the uninitiated, Backlog dedicated 45 minutes or more each week to an in-depth discussion regarding one particular game from years past, and each game’s discussion would generally span over three or four weeks. Rebel FM Game Club –if its first show is any indication– will run about an hour each week and each game’s coverage will span over several weeks as well.

Their first selection is Bethesda Softworks’ Call of Cthulhu, a first-person adventure game that was released for the original Xbox in 2005 and later saw a PC release in 2006. I have not historically been a PC guy and did not own an original Xbox, so I sadly never had any exposure to the title. Because of the high praise being thrown around, I decided to obtain a copy of the game on the PC and follow along.

For those familiar with the game, I’m at a point early in the game in which the protagonist is awoken during the middle of the night by a aggressive group of fisherman. I won’t discount the possibility that I just suck, but I have not been able to get past this point even with a dozen repeated attempts. This particular event takes place in a hotel, and the escape involves moving between rooms through inner-connecting doors, and bolting and pushing bookshelves and other heavy objects in front doors to slow down your attacker’s progress. By the final room though, I repeatedly find myself getting shot dead before I can make it out the window onto the balcony below. The game doesn’t have gamepad support, so I’m using Xpadder to map my SIXAXIS to the mouse and keyboard controls . . . I might need to switch back to an actual mouse and keyboard for this part.

Anyhow, I’ll be sure to write more about my thoughts on the game if/as I progress.