Lonely Planet: Innsmouth

Running my little horror diary on videogame that’s not only obscure but also legendary for it’s bull-headed refusal to function properly may sound like eldritch-driven madness, and it probably is, but there are two relatively sane reasons behind my decision to pick Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

Firstly, its notorious instability was something , to a degree, appealed to me. Sometimes a piece of art or media that is a disjointed mess ends up that way through trying to implement unique ideas in new ways. Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk movie, the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica and IO Interactive’s 2007 shooting game Kane And Lynch: Dead Men leap to mind as being recent examples of half-mad and poorly executed but conceptually interesting and intriguing works of fiction that were far more interesting for me to experience than the functional-yet-dull bog standard that makes up the majority of consumer entertainment.

Pictured: the functional-yet-dull bog standard

Secondly, in spite of it having Call of Cthulhu in the title, Dark Corners of the Earth is based on one of my favourite Lovecraft stories The Shadow over Innsmouth. The Shadow over Innsmouth tells the tale of a young man becoming stranded in a dishevelled backwater harbour town (pun not intended, unless it’s funny, in which case it is was absolutely intended) named Innsmouth, which held a tragic past and an otherworldly secret involving hidden cults and fish-people. If Dark Corners can immerse the player in Innsmouth’s horrifying secrets, then I’m 100% on board (harbour-related pun not intended, unless it’s funny, in which case it was completely intentional.) 

Phil Mitchell is once again employed to boost the sales of Lovecraft-related fiction

Although a game taking place in a otherworldly town with dark secrets could make me feel a little homesick for my hometown of Stockport.  

Dark Corners

The horror genre is perhaps the broadest genre of fiction around, with the many subgenres and approaches that are frequently separated by huge stylistic gulfs linked only by the overarching objective of leaving the viewer/reader/player/listener with bad dreams and/or brown trousers. Taking the broadness of the genre into account, I find it difficult to name my favourite horror artist because it’s difficult to compare the many styles of those who I think excel within the genre.

But if anyone stands out clearly to me as a master of horror, it would be Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

Seen here looking eerily similar to Reggie Kray

Lovecraft wasn’t the originator of his particular field of horror¸ taking cues from many authors before him and hefty inspiration from myth and legend from around the world. What Lovecraft did do though, much like Tolkien would do with the fantasy genre, was take those concepts and merge them together into an intriguing and rich fictional universe to tell enduring stories in that later authors could, and would, work from.

Lovecraft’s signature style of writing about beings, forces and places existing so close to us, yet that are so far beyond human understanding that to try to comprehend them in anything approaching their true forms would drive men mad plays so well on our primal fears about our place in the world, both as individuals and as a whole, that it resonates with almost any audience. The terror came not from our heroes being menaced by ghouls or madmen but from the idea that they shared a world with eldritch beings so ancient and powerful that humanity is as insignificant to them as mayflies are to us.

Unfortunately, Lovecraft’s works have been reduced to something of cult phenomena amongst the geekier elements of society and his wide influence on mass media goes unknown by a depressingly large proportion of the entertainment-consuming public. The unenlightened amongst you may be aware of the two most popular things attributed to H.P Lovecraft: the 1985 film Re-Animator, an adaptation of his short story Herbert West- Reanimator (serialized between 1921 and 1922), that would introduce the ancient and powerful eldritch being known as Jeffery Combs into the world

To behold Jeffery Combs in his true form is to behold terrors from beyond space and time

and the terrifying, squid-headed dragon creature known as Cthulhu.

 Cthulhu, in spite of the fact that he was a relatively minor character in the Lovecraft universe (only appearing directly in the short story The Call of Cthulhu), would go on to become the poster-child of the entire Lovecraft universe to the extent that Lovecraft’s fictional universe would come to be called the “Cthulhu Mythos”.  Cthulhu is a cultural meme in his own right (helped by an incredibly convoluted situation regarding the copyright on Lovecraft’s works), appearing on t-shirts, in comics and even in a family friendly parody of classic swords n’ sorcery videogames wherein he takes up a sword and shield and saves a princess.

 It’s like Conan The Barbarian, if Arnold was more normal looking

Speaking of Cthulhu and Videogames, we finally come to the purpose of this post and to a degree, this blog. My love for both the Cthulhu Mythos and videogames has driven me to want to share my experiences playing the 2006 Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth PC game, for the first time, with anyone willing to listen to an enthusiast playing  something infamous for being conceptually brilliant but technically flawed. 

Phil Mitchell's cameo on the cover did not improve sales as predicted.