The Clan of the Cave Bague

Chapter Two complet0red. The beginning of Chapter Three gives me the heebie jeebies and, as there’s a lot going on, the framerate is giving me some problems. I shouldn’t really complain – I’m running it on a Celeron 1.3 laptop with ATI X300 Mobility graphics card, so 1280×800x32 16:9 aspect is probably expecting a bit much. Having said that, Warcraft runs just fine I’m going to drop it to 800×600 and see if I can make it silky smooth. Note from the future – it did indeed Anyway, without giving much away, let’s just say there’s lots of RUNNING AWAY from lots of bad people. And they’re armed to the teeth. And I’m not.

What I’d give for a BFG9000. Sadly, I don’t think they had those in 1929.

Finally – kudos to Bethesda – the game doesn’t need the CD in the drive to run. Thankyou Bethesda! It means I can put it safely on the shelf, rather than leaving it lying around on the desk.

I’ve been a fan of H.P. Lovecraft’s eerie tales since I was fourteen years old. His particular brand of creepiness appeals to me, for some reason. His fiction generally centers on the concept that man is just a very small part of the universe and there are things out there which are simply to hideous/vast/old/evil that the merest glimpse of them would shatter a man’s delicate sanity and send him scampering back to the trees.

So, perfect material for entertainment, don’t you think? There’ve been a few attempts to move Lovecraft from print to film (directly, I mean – Lovecraft has influenced every single horror author and screenwriter from 1922 onwards) – Stuart Gordon’s black comedies based on the ‘Herbert West: Reanimator’ series, a dubious mid-eighties gorefest called ‘From Beyond’ and a bizarre but entertaining take on ‘The Unnameable’.

Call of Cthulhu – Dark Corners of the Earth, appears to span a range of tales based around the Cthulhu Mythos – that is, those stories which share a common central lore and a concept of ‘Great Old Ones’ biding their time till they can return and reclaim the earth.

DCoE is a first person action adventure, with the emphasis on the adventure aspects. There are a variety of period weapons available throughout the game, but I haven’t found any yet, so am still wandering around unarmed. One notable aspect is the inclusion of sanity effects – a little more subtle than those in Eternal Darkness, but a lot more effective for it. Witnessing disturbing sights or being attacked causes a slight blurring and fading of the display, which can be quite alarming. Lovecraft’s idea of the boundary between sanity and the mad, capering horrors that live beyond as a thin veil is well supported here – the first mutilated body discovered in the prologue has a notable effect on the character’s vision. A nice touch is that there’s no heads up display to remove you from the story.

So – I’m playing a private investigator with a six year gap in his life following finding some nasty things in the basement of a New England cult. After a stint in Arkham Asylum, I’m back on the street and have been asked to find a missing person in, of all places Innsmouth.

I have to say here that the recreation of Innsmouth is absolutely perfect. From the strange ‘inbred’ locals, to the architecture, tone, everything – it’s quite obvious the designer has a real love of the subject material.

So there I am – I’ve arrived at Innsmouth. I attempted to sneak into the missing person’s place of work but was caught by the police and unceremoniously ejected. I’ll have to try a bit harder. Which brings me to stealth. The stealth aspect (I hate stealth games, incidentally) is very well done. It’s not about following a specific path to get past the bad guys, but more like ‘Thief – The Dark Project’. It’s about staying hidden. Once spotted, there was a mad dash through deserted rooms, shoving furniture in front of doors to give me more time to investigate.

One thing worth mentioning – it’s obvious the PC version is a back port of the Xbox version. The graphics are much nicer but inventory screens and pages of text have been scaled up from the xbox rather than re-rendered for the higher resolution of the PC. A small complaint, but it would have been nice to get things that little bit clearer.

So – only half an hour in but:

Innsmouth + Lovecraft + Bethesda + Videogames == THE WIGGINS.

Had some further clarification from our agent and the delay isn’t as bad as it first looked. Rather than being an additional 4-5 months processing, all that’s changed is the initial queue before a case officer is allocated. So rather than waiting 1-4 months after lodgement for a case officer to be allocated, it’s 4-5 months. We’ve already served three and a half months of that term, so it worst it’s only going to add a month to overall processing times.

Which is alright.

Ok, on the top of the tower lives a worm. The worm lives on a platform floating in the air with a hole in the middle. This worm has one weakness – the four pixel dot at the end of its tail. If you’re fortunate enough to hit it, it runs about even faster. Six hits is probably what it takes, getting faster and faster each time.

Sounds fine.

The trouble is, if it hits you, or if you hit it anywhere EXCEPT that four pixel sweet spot, you get propelled across the room. If you’re very lucky, you’ll only fall into the room below. If you’re not so lucky, you might fall two or three rooms down. Either way, it’s start-the-boss-fight-all-over time.

I’ve only tried it twice so far. I really don’t know if I’m going to bother. I don’t need the stress right now.

Well, there’s no doubt about it – a ‘New Generation’ of consoles is being forced upon us, the gaming public, whether we think there’s life left in the current generation or not. Out of the current generation, despite having owned all consoles, the only ones I currently own are the GameCube, Nintendo DS, and numerous iterations of Game Boy Advance.

Out of the ‘next generation’, however, I only have firm plans to purchase the Nintendo Revolution – it appears to be doing something genuinely innovative and, given the current gen (more on this in a moment) I really feel they can pull it off. The Xbox360, from what I’ve seen, is a slightly prettier version of the Xbox, pushing glossier versions of substandard PC ports. No thanks – not really interested. The PS3 may be interesting, due to it being the only platform to get whatever Final Fantasy sequels may be coming up but, to be quite honest, the lies currently issuing from Sony’s Hype Department are doing a very good job of dissuading me from parting with my cash.

So, time for a very brief run down of where the fun has been (for me anyway) in the past three years, or so. These titles are the ones that have provided me and my family (or just me) with what I’d consider value for money. This list probably won’t reflect the magazine reviews, but so what – they can sue me

In no particular order, memorable titles from the past few years are:

ICO – PS2: Possibly the game of the generation. This was an emotional experience and on more than one occasion was greeted by wails of dismay from the kids as they thought something orrible was going to happen to Yorda. A stroke of genius.

Final Fantasy X – PS2: Bad NTSC conversion aside, a long, satisfying and enthralling adventure.

Metroid Prime – GameCube: A work of genius from beginning to end. Beautiful to look at and play, difficulty setting exactly right.

Scooby Doo – Night of 100 Frights – PS2/GameCube: I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve finished this game. It makes me laugh. Best platformer in ages.

Cel Damage – GameCube: For sheer hours clocked, this is up there with Super Smash Brothers. Which brings me to:

Super Smash Bros. Melee – GameCube: You don’t get much better value than this. My kids STILL play it.

Doshin the Giant – GameCube: Mad. But lovely. There’s something that’s just NICE about spending a day doing nothing except building a great big mountain and then sitting on the top of the mountain to watch the sun go down.

Phoenix Wright – Ace Attorney – Nintendo DS: Never played anything quite like this before. Original, funny, ACE.

And I can’t be bothered writing any more. But if I could, I’d be mentioning: Resident Evil 4 (game of the year, easily), Legend of Zelda – Minish Cap, Final Fantasy I & II, Advance Wars, Sonic Rush, Mario and Luigi – all incarnations, Paper Mario II, Pikmin 1 & 2, Meteos, Mr Driller, Metal Slug Advance, Zelda – Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, Mario Kart DD, Mario Kart DS – the list just goes on and on and on. And most of them are Nintendo.

So, Mr Sony and Mr Microsoft – you can stick it wherever you like. You’re not interested in making decent games. When you do I may consider your console. Until then, Nintendo’s promise of making their back catalogue available for download on the Revolution means I’m going to have more than enough to occupy myself for the next few years.

No way! I discovered a cool thing that I never noticed before! On the title page, if you press R you get a music player so you can listen to all the music that’s been unlocked during gameplay (like it does in Fire Emblem). Given that the music is magnificent, this is a Good Thing(tm). It also has a spectrum analyser (well, a basic one) as well as a little visualiser/eyecandy thing.

Very cool.

No way! I discovered a cool thing that I never noticed before! On the title page, if you press R you get a music player so you can listen to all the music that’s been unlocked during gameplay (like it does in Fire Emblem). Given that the music is magnificent, this is a Good Thing(tm). It also has a spectrum analyser (well, a basic one) as well as a little visualiser/eyecandy thing.

Very cool.

Gah – can’t remember. Let’s see – Flippers GET! Butterfly net GET! Magic Mirror GET! Magic Boomerang GET! I also managed to teleport to dark Hyrule, but unfortunately I didn’t have a moonstone of some kind so I turned into a giant bunny. Which was fun in a giant bunny kind of way. And it was pink. Anyhoo, I now need to go to the tower in the mountain. Getting into the tower seems to be a feat in itself as Death Mountain is….. inhospitable.

Update: Power Gloves GET! Power Pendant GET! Desert Temple and Desert Palace THWARTED!

Or something. I like these little mini-dungeons – it’s a good way to get your started in what’s essentially a gargantuan game. It’s still fiendishly difficult, though, and I seem to die a little too frequently.

Pendant of Courage GET! Ice Staff GET! Bow GET! Book of Whatsisface GET! So, I’m off to the dungeon in the desert (Southwest of the map, if you know the game) next. Had a few detours along the way, but nothing awful. Link to the Past is by far the hardest Zelda game I’ve played, certainly in the early levels – even just running about the overworld can be a little on the tricky side, with the amount of nasties attempting to shoot you, stab you, bite you, sting you, and otherwise annoy you.

Anyhoo, progress is being made. On a more unfortunate note, I managed to accidentally erase my Final Fantasy I & II cart last night, which is annoying because I intended doing the Dawn of Souls campaigns. Having said that, I didn’t have 999 EVERYTHING and, well, no point in doing Final Fantasy if you’re not going to do EVERY LAST ASPECT of it So, I suspect FF I & II may be on the agenda again. Given that FF IV isn’t seeing a European release until June, it’ll keep me busy. I know, I know, I could just import but then if it’s taking them 8 months to localise it, they must be adding something else, right?