There’s a cosmic mystery afoot
For as much as I have read fantasy and sci-fi books believe it or not, I have never read anything about Cthulhu. Oh sure, I know of the Old God and have heard bits and pieces of lore through the years. Who doesn’t remember when the Dark God joined Coon and Friends and had The Coon ride atop him. The point I am trying to make is that I didn’t know much about this mythos before booting up Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss which was a good thing as I got more from the game, I think.
While I thought this was going to be a cosmic horror FPS I was prepared for jump scares while I blasted monsters. But actually, The Cosmic Abyss is an investigation game from a first-person perspective. Players will take control of Noah Williams who works for a secret division of Interpol known as Ancile. Noah has a history with the occult as he was found as a child at the scene of a ritual, his parents being found dead. He is sent to investigate why one of his colleagues has fallen off the face of the Earth. Once there he finds a portal to the what he believes is the ancient and dark city of R’lyeh and his missing colleague who attacks him before he can make it back through the portal.
MSRP: $49.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $49.99
This is just the prologue, and boy oh boy did it have me hooked. I am purposefully being vague in parts because the less players know before playing this game, the better. The mystery part of this game is fantastic. Once the real game starts, Noah will be sent to an underwater research station that some rich guy has built for some nefarious purpose. That purpose, Noah finds out is that it’s researching a mysterious submerged city, one who is linked to an ancient and dark cult. It’s here that players are met with feat and a corruption meter that will influence how much control the Dark God will have over the player the more it grows.
The Cosmic Abyss is set in the future, 2053 to be exact and Noah has an A.I. assistant known as Key. One of the neat things that developer Big Bad Wolf does here is blend the menu system in the game into part of the game world. So, the same elements that players navigate will be what protagonist Noah also does. Gameplay in this game is all about investigations, that means lots of picking up things and turning them over to examine them. The Cosmic Abyss also is heavily reliant on environmental puzzles and having players thoroughly explore areas. I can’t tell you how many times I was utterly lost because I missed something in the corner of a room.
One of the things that I didn’t like was the fact the game just kind of gives you an overarching objective and tells you to go. This new age love of having no directions or instructions in games is so niche and I am tired of seeing it put into everything; *glares in Crimson Desert*. The real issue is that players can interact with SO MANY objects in this game, that it is almost overwhelming. Some things will further your investigations while others are just red herrings. Luckily the game does give players all the tools they need to keep track of everything. Players can pin tasks and various pieces of evidence that they don’t want to forget, and for someone who is an old ass gamer, that was a lifesaver.
In fact, one of the more interesting tools that players will have access to early on is the Sonar system and it will be absolutely crucial for progress. It makes tracking down things super easy, early on players will need to find a few specific rock types. With the Sonar, players are able to analyze a rock and then highlight all the rocks in the area that players can investigate. It all functions much like Batman’s detective mode that was featured in the Arkham games, but unlike those games players don’t get to keep the Sonar pings up forever; they will time out, forcing players to ping things again.
The corruption system which works a lot like a sanity bar is also really cool. As players make their way through the facility they will fall under more and more of Cthulhu’s influence. This manifest by players seeing things that aren’t real, flashes of gruesome creatures and events and this will even change the course of the narrative as players under the influence will do things that could end up negatively impacting them. I absolutely loved this design and setup, it put me in the mindset of that Denis Dyack game, no not Too Human; I am talking about Eternal Darkness on the Gamecube.
It’s not all great though as I had quite a few issues with the game on Series X. For starters all the music in the cutscenes skipped in-and-out. I didn’t even realize at first because I thought the music was just being creepy but the further, I got in the game the more I realized it’s a bug, not a feature. There was a patch that dropped during my review period but it never fixed the music problem. I also had more than a few times where I was unable to rotate items I needed to examine to proceed. To get around this I had to restart the game which was frustrating but thankful only happened a few times.
As a relative noob to Cthulhu’s lore, I really loved Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss because of its more psychological horror nature. It would be easy to make this into a monster blasting, shooter type but the choice to slow things down, and tell a more methodical story was a great thing. As a fan of the investigative type games this was a joy to play despite the issues with performance I had on Series X.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
