Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet

Great horror game inspired by Lovecraft's "Shadow of Innsmouth". The overall atmosphere is consistently creepy and unsettling throughout the game. For the best effect I recommend playing it in the middle of the night. :) The graphics are mostly very nice if you grew up with and can appreciate the pixellated beauty of '90s games. The game is very hard though, even if you are familiar with the Cthulhu mythos, and its knowledge doesn't really help with solving the various puzzles, so I recommend having a walkthrough handy to save yourself some frustration. Sometimes the in-game clues do not make it clear enough where to go next, sometimes you just miss a tiny detail, and sometimes you feel stuck even if you are doing the right thing but the cursor is off by a few pixels and you wonder why you can't get something working, or why you can't find and object despite you have clicked on every inch of the screen. Also save often, because there are many ways you can die unexpectedly. As I already mentioned the controls are the biggest flaw of the game, takes a while to get used to and up to the very end of the game I wasn't always sure how to use them properly -- sometimes to 'use' an object you have to 'look' at something rather than click the 'use' icon, and so forth... it's not very intuitive, hence only 4 stars.

This game is an old school adventure whose strong points are the atmosphere and originality of the puzzles. The graphics, music and gallery of characters are notable and have a considerable charm, even if outdated for modern standards. The story is interesting and unfolds nicely during the game, although it is a bit cheesy and not very original. My wife and I liked the puzzles and we found them logical and non trivial, which is not easy to achieve. The puzzles require some thinking, but the automatic journal helps a lot. Overall, the game is very challenging but not absurd, and we could complete it withot consulting the walkthrough. The interface is not the best one out there, but it kind of works if one uses the keyboard. Those who wish to play with the mouse are going to have a very hard time, as the mouse support was a late game addition and is made to mimick the keyboard commands.

Intro is kind of cool and the story kind of holds up until halfway through the game. The interface though makes it a lot more painful than it should have been.

This retro point and click adventure isn't particularly scary but it really digs into the Lovecraftian mythos in an interesting way, and though the game could use some updates for modern hardware, it's an enjoyable experience for fans of classic point and click games.

I like the storyline ( yeah!), I like the dialogue( yeah!), I like the retro graphics ( yeah!), I really can't stand the music and the user interface left me with a sense of impatience and frustration that to be honest ruined the game for me. If you are a Cthulhu nut give it a go, if you're a p n' c nut and want to see something historic give it a go. But again to be honest the free copy of flight of the amazon is way better. Pity I do love reading Lovecraft and I was really looking forward to this.