Let's play Dark Corners of the Earth; Prologue Part.1

This took a really, really long time. Things got in the way, not helped by the fact my brain runs on Valve time

Before I go into the game proper, I thought some background might be appropriate. I’d always liked Lovecraft’s horror concepts but never read any of his work proper until 2009, when I read a blog post (Entry on the 16/4/09 by internet funnyman and game commentator Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw) briefly discussing his own experiences with the man and his work. I’ve been toying with the idea of playing Dark Corners of the Earth ever since but I never got around to it until now, through a combination me not being able to find game itself until relatively recently and it having a reputation for crashing, freezing or having bugs that can render the game unwinnable.

However, as I said in a prior post, sometimes a particular work of entertainment fails because it’s trying to employ and use too many big ideas and either can’t get them to work together or within existing structure. I realize I sound like an apologist snob here (as if things I like or think sound interesting didn’t really work because the petty constraints of the medium, genre or laws of physics were just too primitive to handle the artistic genius at work), I don’t mean to be but something that fails due to over ambition is at least going to be interesting, if only in the sense that it’s an awful but compelling train-wreck you can’t turn away from.  

So let's get into the game. Immediately, things take a dark and scary turn, as when I tried to start the game it informed me it was going to install Windows Media Player 9 components onto my machine, then it tried to install said components, then it told me it couldn't, then the game crashed, then it started again and worked fine. So I'm left wondering if what I just installed was a computer or a Windows XP demo disk.

So, this is the first real screen of the game, just before the menu. It does look pretty promising. Although what really concerns me is that last sentence; "This is perfectly normal, and is unlikely to be a problem with your game disk or your sanity".

"unlikely to be a problem"

I'm running a legally downloaded copy of this game, so there's no game disk to go wrong. I don't like the idea of my computer questioning my sanity. 

It starts off with an eerie shot of Arkham Asylum. Great start but it makes me wonder if there’s a psychiatric hospital that isn’t sinister and evil in popular fiction. (Unless the one from that Green Day music video counts.)

Speaking of sinister, the opening scene continues with the camera moving through the hallways of the dingy asylum, as the pained cries of inmates are ignored by an official of some variety, and into a cell, wherein a dishevelled looking fellow rambles incoherently while writing some kind of diary, surrounded by glyphs written in what I seriously hope is raspberry jam.

Then he stands on a chair and tries to hang himself, probably overcome with the terrors of what he has witnessed. My hopes that it was some kind of PSA against watching Armageddon were shot down when he was rescued by an astute orderly and the game dove into flashback.

We quantum leap in the shoes of our main character as actual gameplay starts, Detective Jack Walters, who is told by the police manning a blockade that the crumbling mansion looming over us has been occupied by insane cultists armed to the teeth that are willing to negotiate only with me.

Being totally unarmed isn’t making me feel any better with this situation, especially when I got close to the mansion and the gunfire started and I had to run into the creepy house full of armed cultists to avoid the crossfire.

And of course, the ground floor has to be completely dilapidated and have paintings of inhuman monstrosities on the walls. The paintings on the wall and the ruined house remind me somewhat of the Lovecraft short story Pickman’s Model.

Moving on, I found a room full photos and writings about my character and this combined with the cultist diary I found, that predicted my arrival, didn’t put my feelings at ease.

Nor did chapel to horrifying creatures from beyond time and space, which has the same mad rambling speech from the introduction written upon it.

And that's just downstairs.

As this is more than 700 words, I shall leave it there and pick it up in the next instalment of this little project (which hopefully won't be another ten billion weeks) and in the mean time, I'll be using the next few entries to get up on my soapbox once more.