Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet

This is your standard early 90s point-and-click adventure fare, with a fairly well-crafted Lovecraftian story for you to become immersed in. It's definitely a bit of a niche game, and modern gamers without the background in early adventure games will likely be confused and/or frustrated. The gameplay itself is rather mediocre. You have puzzles to solve in a specific order. You must answer certain dialog trees in a certain way or else you will be in an unwinnable state. It's definitely a save often type of game, with lots of trial-and-error. If you enjoy Lovecraft and point-and-click adventures, this game is worth the price of admission: $5.99. The story is its strength, yet the obtuse puzzles often interfere with - not add to - the experience.

Actually a rather faithful Lovecraft adapation in that you play as person completely powerless before the seemingly arbitrary machinations of powerful entities... however here instead of unspeakable horrors we have tricky puzzle design driving us to madness. For that they did an excellent job, a true Lovecraftian experience.

Great atmosphere but poor game design. The first half its remarkable because of the general feeling of mystery and horror, even if you need a guide to advance in the story. Second part it's not worth your time.

There's a lot to like about this game. It pays a lot of attention on mood, story, and the townsfolk of the cursed town Illsmouth. The main character, a photographer by the name of Parker, arrives in the town wanting to photograph a comet due to arrive in three days. From this, you come to realise that there is some kind of cult that is connected to the phenomena. You unravel the mystery of Illsmouth through interacting and combining objects, as well as talking to the somewhat odd locals. The great things about the game are immediately apparent when you play it. The story and how the mystery is unraveled is done very effectively. The depiction of the town and its people gives the impression that they are living and breathing in the environments. You often see characters walking past in the background, or some, perhaps, are casually spy on you... there is a sense of paranoia that is felt as you come to know the locals. The story and the representation of Cthulhu is atmospheric and often bombastic. You get to explore the forest, the town of Illsmouth, graveyards and crypts during the night. Visually it is strikingly portrayed, and you find that you'll want to keep playing in order to find out more about the occult and demons and whatnot. I would say that for a Dos game, it is a very aesthetic game. Problem arises through the dated gameplay. The interface and the ingame system is quite fiddly and sometimes glitchy. Instances where you can be trying to analyse an object in order to progress the game, but it doesn't register. Then there's the fact that the puzzles don't seem to have any logic to them... the solutions are actually very bizarre. I had to rely on a walkthrough to complete the game, and I suspect this might be a common thing. If you find you're more resistant to dated gaming systems and mechanics, then this could be for you. Underneath the awkward controls, there's a lot of cinematics and artistry here which I found enjoyable.

The game overall is amazing but (and maybe this is just me) the save and load buttons are so easily confused and that leads to confustion and because of that it lead me to accidently save during death animations and having to start the game all over again. This happened like 3 times during my playthrough