Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet

Shadow of the Comet is one of the best horror adventure games ever made. And one of the best hommages to the works of H.P. Lovecraft. A great setting , made even more unsettling by the game's graphic style. The mix between digitized photography and hand-made drawings for the scenary creates an eerie and somewhat surreal atmosphere. Very apropriate for a game inspired by Lovecraft's works. The puzzles can sometimes be quite difficult. But, for those who like adventure games (and specially for those who've played old Sierra games) that is nothing out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, the only real bad point about the game is it's "lovecraftian" interface. The game is completely controlled by keyboard. No mouse. No "point n'click". Just old keyboard like the first EGA Sierra adventure games. For those of you who're only used to mouse-driven adventure games that may seem quite odd and cumbersome. But, if you manage to overcome the clumsiness of the interface, you'll have the pleasure of playing one of the best horror games ever made. And, if you like Lovecraft's work, you'll love this game.

I do like this game, despite its age, it has that victorian style throughout, there is a really good atmosphere and unsettleness where each character you meet seems to be hiding something, and you have to pay attention to the game hints, especially in the dialogue. The dialogue and most especially the voice acting is one of the best, it can really get on your nerves sometimes, and after a few minutes playing you start to immerse yourself into this character walking inot a strange place and perhaps in way over his head. The gameplay is like all classic adventure games. You have to search, look, and interact with objects persons, looking for clues to advance the plot. There is little clues on what to interact with so be ready for some extreme pixel hunting. And this game is hard. We would be 2 at a computer trying to solve this game, but in the end I had to wait years, and for walkthroughs to be available on the internet to solve the puzzles and finish it. In the end it is a good game to play in a couple of hours, but keep a walkthrough around, or you may slowly feel the old ones creep into your mind, trying to make sense of it all.

Shadow of the Comet makes it damn hard to love. The story is really good and exciting. Not just for diehard Lovecraft fans. The game delivers a very special creepy and eerie atmosphere that I only know from a few adventure games. Unfortunately, the technical implementation can also be described as creepy and eerie. This is especially true for the controls and handling of the game. Actually, it's not even a real point&click adventure, because you control the protagonist mainly with the keyboard. The inventory and basic functions (saving, loading, menu navigation) are also unnecessarily complicated. I am ambivalent about the graphics: The cut scenes are great, but the graphics during the game seem half-baked. They often look like badly scanned, unfinished collages displayed in Amiga HAM mode (although it is a PC VGA game). The voice acting is good and very appropriate to the creepy genre in its old-fashioned language. Unfortunately, the technical realisation is weak, as the voices are digitised with low quality and sound very tinny. Similar to the handling and controls, the gameplay also makes it unnecessarily difficult. The puzzles are mostly well done, but you can die far too often, the game has many dead ends and is generally intolerant of the smallest mistakes of the player. Maybe that's why I have to be so intolerant of the many weaknesses of this game as well ;-). I can nevertheless recommend the game to all die-hard adventure fans and fans of cosmic Lovecraft horror. The game has its strengths, but the technical implementation is not weak. As a result, Shadow of the Comet cannot stand up to comparison with competitor games such as Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers (also from 1993). If there is any 90s point and click adventure that has great potential for a remake, then Shadow of the Comet is certainly a hot candidate!

The game works fine under Windows 10. It's just a bit tricky to get the subtitles in synch with the voice recordings. Controls are definitely a bit clunky, though. In fact I had to refer back to the game's manual to figure out how they're supposed to work. Graphics are quite dated and highly pixellated but still charming. Music and sound quality aren't great, however. Still. This was one of the first decent adventures based on Lovecraft's Mythos, so I'm glad it found its way back into my collection.

I have fond memories of this game. When I was a kid of twelve or thirteen years old, me and one of my class mates used to play PC games. One day he bought this game called "Shadow of the Comet", as part of a collection of PC Games. When we booted the game for the first time, we were sucked into the mistery right away. We couldn't part with it until we beat the game. This is one of my favouritest games of all time. Based on H.P. Lovecraft's Story 'The Shadow over Inssmouth', it's a brilliant work of writing and programming. The game developers managed to create an immersive, atmospheric jewel of an adventure game that, back in the early 90s, was something difficult to achieve, due to the obvious limitations. The controls are a bit weird, though. In the floppy disk version of the game, it was entirely controlled by keyboard, using the arrows to move your main character around and interact with the environment - for example, pressing 'L' to 'Look'. This was a bit frustrating for certain parts of the game, but bearable. Another brilliant feature was the release of something that was top notch back then- The Glorious CD-ROM version. It was one of the first games to use that technology. They included a brand new mouse control interface, and they were brave enough to give voices to the entire dialogues in the floppy disk version. They also included a demo of what was to become a revolutionary game ('In 3D!') 'Alone In the Dark', *And* a Homage to Lovecraft's works, in the form of a 'Museum',like some kind of mini-game in which you can navigate much like in the main game - using the arrows to move the visitor (Edward Carnby?) around the Museum, and pressing ´L´to take a look at the various pieces of artwork, jewelry and many other things that appear in some of the Lovecraft's stories. If you like horror games, be sure to play this one. It was one of the first, and possibly one of the best. I could talk about the music, but you'd better experience it by yourself.