Call of Cthulhu on GOG - gog.la/SquidJank THE LIST - docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_K3ziSxT9zcUUGCddS4sF1uNJTWHSbOwB1CQX2Rx4Uo I'll get around to The Sinking City one of these days. I heard that one gets strange even for Lovecraft.

"My eyeballs don't work like cameras." /me screams and points at Mandalore to notify the hive that he hasn't been processed yet.

The biggest problem with "Lovecraftian" games (as well as movies, books etc) is that when we hear "Lovecraftian" we already know what it will be about: there is going to be a small creepy town filled with creepy unfriendly people, there is going to be a lot of water, there are probably going to be either tentacle or fish monsters, there are going to be awkward mentions of Ctulhu (cause we all know that Lovecraft only ever wrote about Ctulhu), the protagonist is most likely going to be a detective and probably an alcoholic. I think to really create the true "Lovecraftian" feel all tentaclefishymagickoldgods stuff must be hidden and only revealed as you progress (much like Bloodborne that hid lovecraftian story behind gothic horror).

OBJECTION! There IS a "good ending", which is hard to reach. Mostly because you need to ignore as much of the game as possible to keep your insanity low. If you get to the ending with high enough sanity (and did some other good-boy stuff) the MC basically realizes that simply walking away is a better option than choosing any side. I have no idea why the cultists lets him do that, but they do.

"Aid in Pierce's investigation" "Aiden Pearce's investigation" Oh god what game is this

I believe the reason why most Lovecraft games "fail" is because they try to cram in everything from the author's most popular stories without much thought or focus on the end product. This also may be the reason why Amnesia and Bloodborne, whilst heavily influenced by the Lovecraftian mythos, are successful because they try to do their own thing and not overdo it.

"The more creepy people you investigate the more CP you find" I see what you did there.

The closets making your vision go wobbly is because Pierce is claustrophobic. He's literally in no danger there, but he is terrified and I think hyperventilates while you're in them. Doesn't have any effect on the game, but they do justify it.

I still maintain that in order to make a truly memorable Lovecraft game, the game devs have to stop treating the player as a fan of Lovecraftian horror, but rather as a protagonist in a HP Lovecraft story. Marketing and branding the game as Lovecraftian feels like the first huge mistake these companies make. You're trading the effect of the story for hype. That's why Bloodborne worked so fucking well. That or the execution and polish have to be pristine.

"It's more blurry and out of focus than gay characters in a Disney Star Wars product" Mandalore you're going to lose social credit

The lead is voiced by Anthony Howell, the same actor who played the protagonist in Vampyr. He really deserves more work. Side note: I'd love to know your thoughts on Vampyr if you ever get around to it. It's a vampire RPG published by the same company as this game.

"Seems like every Lovecraft game is gonna be something much bigger." And there's the problem. Developers are trying to make Lovecraft The GameTM, and just shove all his popular stories into one narrative without trying to understand the strengths and ideas of each story. Instead of using Lovecraft as an influence and using their own ideas to build upon the themes of his works, they grab the popular stuff and hope it works somehow. This is why some of the more interesting Lovecraftian games and movies aren't adaptations of his works, but rather their own unique ideas. This is when you get games like Sunless Sea with its unique world building and top notch atmosphere, or movies like Event Horizon which became a cult classic despite its flaws. Hell, look at in The Mouth of Madness, it doesn't hide the fact that it's Carpenter's take at a Lovecraft-esque story, but he doesn't just copy his stuff and instead works off his own ideas into this Borgesian, semi-meta narrative that is a great mix of themes that make for an unique story. There's no Lovecraft checklist you need to fill to make a Lovecraftian story. He had no mold and wrote about many different ideas.

17:06 What?! So you are telling me giant scratches in my house are not normal occurences?! They are all over my house, on the walls, the doors, on my face, around the haunted statue of Nyarlathotep I keep under my bed etc, etc. and more appear after every night.

Thought I recognised Edward Pierce Voice actor Its Vampyr's Jonathan Reid his Voice definitely helped.

"The more creepy people you investigate, the more CP you find out" - Nice

I think the worst part about these Lovecraftian horror games is the OIGHHHGGH IM GOING INSANNEEEEEEE MY MIND IS ALTERINNGGGGG stuff they do. Insanity is a lot creepier if what you're physically seeing is different and offputting rather than just a bunch of wild camera effects. To effectively portray insanity, you need to have much subtler methods of portraying that than shaking the camera around, fucking with the FOV, and putting tentacles everywhere. Cthulu doesnt even have tentacles! We just think he does because that's what our small mortal minds grasp when we view him! Cultist Sim did this the best because the card descriptions change and what you can physically do alters over time. You see the world differently- imagination and passion become ingredients to pierce the veil rather than merely resources to expend in survival. We need more things like that in gaming, real unnerving experiences.

For a game that's so focused around it's aesthetic and art style. It's strange that the cut scenes weren't just still frames stylised to look like paintings or sketches. Would have cured a lot of that uncanny valley sickness.

Feel like the only good Lovecraftian games are the ones that hide the fact they're Lovecraftian. Bloodborne, Cultist Simulator, the great ones build up to the cosmic stuff. All the "official" Lovecraft games have zero pacing, and end up trying to include everything there was in the mythos.

Mandalore you have some of the most peculiarly rewatchable reviews. I repeatedly rewatch many if not most of your reviews & I dont fully understand why. So every time you upload I get excited because it means there's 4 more hours of content to watch

“The more creepy characters you investigate, the more cp you find” Didn’t realize this was an FBI role play game

'Fade to black and a gunshot. There is nothing more film school than that!' - Redlettermedia

The booze mechanic needed to be more fleshed out: yes, make it so it affects your ending, but also give it some gameplay benefit to tempt the player into drinking it. Don't just tell me "if you drink this, it will affect your ending" and that's it.

I can't believe this story you're telling me, it's macabre.

One thing you missed with the multiple ending is that they have a different after the credits moments. For instance, in the suicide ending, a painting gets mailed to your office depicting pierce killing himself. Kind of implying that your suicide was predicted like everything else. It's not much more, but it's definitely more than just fade to black.

13:12 This reminds me of Miraak cultists in Whiterun trying to start a dialogue with me way too much

>Mandy reviews game >3 hours later it appears on this month's humble bundle THEY'VE FOUND YOU MANDY, RUN!

3:27 - Preach. Eyes aren't cameras. Shame on devs that force these awful features. CA, DoF, Motion Blur, and Lens Flares should always be optional!

Again, I'm astounded at how Mandalore's Reviews and Ross's Game Dungeon seem to be converging into a single entity. Particularly after the post-processing rant.

"How barely is barley".. Every. Single. Time.

I feel like the best adaptations of Lovecraft are those that incorporate elements from his mythology rather than trying to trasnlate his stories into another medium whole cloth.

I think disco elysium did a great job at using dice rolls in a non-combat rpg. some dice rolls can be repreated if you improve the skill, and when you get a skill high enough you'll have a 100% chance for easier things

holy shit that sneaky neverhood OST, I need to get that oh also yeah this game... kinda not good and also half a second of cthulhu

The scariest part of a game for me was in Condemned where you had to investigate a creepy abandoned house and you had a light showing where these footprints were going and they ran up walls and every second brought you closer to the source, scared the shit out of me

Oh shit, earliest I've been to this. Glad to see you've gotten this one out. Wouldn't be a Lovecraft game without some really serious variations in quality, I've heard both extremes of opinion for this, seems weird that developers can't seem to really nail down a properly good adaptation, there's always something that seems to rub people the wrong way. Curious to see if there's any dev history about it; especially the character designs (they really are offputting, and the cutscene models just look like rubber dolls).

JUST THE INTRO, and I am already dead of laughing.

"The more creepy people you investigate the more CP you find" Hah! Indeed. It always makes me do a double take when I see that abbreviation used in a game.

To be fair to CoC's skill trees, the actual Call of Cthulhu board game is a dice roll. I deliberately restrain my players from maxing out any stats because even if they have a 95% chance of succeeding, there's no real guarantee of success. I think that's the kind of system they were trying to go for.

"More out of focus than gay characters in a disney star wars property" omg, dead.

4:24 Is that a FnaF joke I see there crawling from beneath a gibbous moon, drenched in a eldritch colour and unnatural geometry?

"I wonder if Mandalore will put any gachi in thi-" >macabre Kino

My favourite 'lovecraftian' game I've seen yet is Cultist Simulator. Spooky, tense and surreal, yet with no jumpscares whatsoever. Also blends gameplay and story quite well, imo.

6:35 - Very subtle joke. I love it.

4:44 -- King of Limbo flashbacks. "Jeeves, bring my forgetting juice. All of it."

"I would have been agravated if I bought it at that price." You described me.

I really like the graphics in this game. I'm not sure if it's unusual to be attracted to graphics that strive towards some kind of realism but fall short of the mark. My favourite graphics in games are often those that look artificial without going for a stylised version of artificiality such as that of a cartoon or an outwardly intentional aesthetic. Perhaps it's something like a nostalgia for that 'in-between' era of video game visual design before anything like realism was technically obtainable but designers were still striving to push the medium further towards it, so you end up with this really strange visual aesthetic which as far as I can think is completely exclusive to the medium. I'm curious if anyone feels similar to this or understands what I'm trying to get at. Let me know!

4:26 IS THAT THE BITE OF '87?

I remember watching the superbestfriends play through of this and being kinda impressed... until the combat started

Gunshot, fade to black? Gunshot, fade to black... Fucking art-HOUSE BRILLIANCE!

i was honestly looking forward to this review for quite a bit THANKS MANDALORE

Sounds more like you are playing as a man, who is named Jonathan Reid, a traumatized WW1 veteran, who became a vampire, who plays a man who is named William Pierce, a traumatized WW1 veteran.

i'm really, REALLY looking forward to your video on The Sinking City!!!

I saw that reference to aslan. Podcast bois know what I'm talking about

hell yeah, made my food in time!

what if this is a good time to take a look at Disco Elysium?

"How barely is barely" See, what I usually do in horror games, or games in general when they promt me to adjust the brightness according to the logo, is that I go all the way down until it's black, and then slide the bar ever so gently until the logo shows up, as faint as it may be it's visible. In other words, the lowest you can go and still see the logo. Works every time.

Your reviews remind me of the old Gametrailers reviews. I could watch those for hours! Nostalgia...

"The more creepy people you investigate, the more cp you find." 🤣

"In particular the one at Chuck E. Cheese that definitely bit me when I was six" Was that the bite of 87?

You're my favorite video game critic , you have the best humor , I'm miserably depressed , I've lost everything I hold dear in my life and even so , your videos squeeze a chuckle from me even when I rewatch an old episode , keep up the amazing work

Gotta love that Neverhood soundtrack rocking out in the background. Thanks, Mr Mandalore!

6:22 that is not how lamps work. A pool of light at your feet when the base of the lamp is solid?

I really like your vids mandalore. They're always so high quality, classy and without tons of filler but still being lengthy enough for an in depth review.

New favorite channel. The reductionist process that you use to break these games up really gets me to agree with almost each critique. Very thorough as well. I come here to check out your take on most of my favorite games. I thought I was the only one who thought $40 at launch was crap, but I got suckered in by Dark Corners nostalgia and figured it would be another Shadow over innsmouth. Still a good detective game a times and the stressful encounters are memorable, but I totally agree with the diagnosis.

6:33 Was very well done editing. Loved how you transitioned into the "another day or another room" part of your sentence literally to another day or another room lol

10:30 The logic behind having everything be a dice roll is that this game is based on a table top RPG and thus it follows the rules of that RPG to a greater or lesser degree. And in TTRPGs its always just a better roll, not a guarantee or threshold. Works for Table top games which have literally limitless possibilities, not so much for video games.

I find it annoying, how all C'thulhu portrayals in media, are of this giant, with a squid face and demonic wings. In the bloody book, he was described as a blob of green, that kind of resembled its figures... in which it was a humanoid dragon with squid-like deformations (and in the figures, it had a bloated stomach and thin limbs). Like... Bloodborne, is the closest we got to the description of C'thulhu, with Ebrietas.

That Neverhood soundtrack just awakened some nostalgia in me

Mandalore is sliding ever so closely to the ‘Ross’s Game Dungeon’ side of reviews. I am not complaining.

Given your reaction to the game's skill system, I'm thinking you might be into the way The Council does things. Having the skill lets you use it, having the skill improved eases off the skill's cost on the resource management aspect, but there's no RNG involved. It also helps that The Council is a pretty good game in general.

Im so Happy to catch this literally seconds after the upload, makes me feels like a hot-rigged decker from shadowrun.

I love how he even put the green filter over the gatchi intro.

This is the.. best..bad game i have ever played if that makes sense? If you are a lovecraftian lover like me ,you will find something to enjoy here...under the rubble.

"Call of Cthulhu"? More like "Call the FBI cuz this guys got hoards of CP"

"then the next sounds like it was recorded on a different day in a different room" LOL what a genius gag!

0:45 That accidental name drop. Too good.

How much I've missed your content!

Wow the axe steal thing killed all my interest in playing instantly. Thats honestly terrible.

I feel like a game like this would benefit from first being played out as a tabletop game. Like, one or more of the devs would DM an approximation of the story they want to tell, and they would use the behavior of the players to adjust how it gets adapted into the video game. It'd be like beta testing for storytelling. It would have told them that players would consider the groundskeeper more worthy of attention than just 'guy who spooks you and then opens door.' It would have told them that, if you mention claw marks on walls, then players are going to want to investigate them. Stuff like that. And, since it's a human DM running the show, they can improvise when necessary, take notes, and then use those notes to affect the final product. But having the skill checks here based on RNG? That's...agh. That's such a terrible idea that it didn't even occur to me that that's what the "increases your chances of" terminology meant. I took that just to mean that the element of chance was whether or not you had invested the points to push your character over the necessary threshold to turn 'guaranteed failure' into 'guaranteed success.'

A new mandalore video. It's a good day

I don't believe this opening, it's macabre!

Well time to take my half hour break so I can watch this before the rest of my night shift

Love the Turtles in Time soundtrack when you were talking about green.

I think having your skills and clues you find based on RNG to be awesome. It really gives you TTRPG type vibes and id argue makes it more enjoyable when every person's playthrough will usually yield some things that are different compared to other players

Available in August's Humble Choice!

The skill system reminds me of Disco Elysium but that managed to do it well, for one thing most checks in that game can be repeated so random chance isn't too bad plus failing checks in Disco actually makes the game more fun and interesting and even sometimes being more beneficial in some ways

That Blade Runner Video Game music in the end...fond memories. Great review, to bad about the game but await your Sinking City one, hope it fares better.

I'll be honest i dont plan on playing most of the games you review but your videos are so enjoyable i watch anyway

Main characters name is Edward Pierce, William Pierce is a....different guy

Damn, this game had me all the way up until dice rolls.

This reminded me of another game with scaringly similar concept being "The Sinking City". It also has you playing as a detective on a god-forsaken-island with a Cthulhu-like monster and cult with its inhabitants being insane or overwhelmingly British. Edit I've seen the ending. I understand why now...

Given how Lovecraft mythos games tend to rely on big visuals to deliver their content. I wonder if a point-and-click game with pre-rendered backgrounds might make better games in the genre. You would save a lot of resources and the point-and-click might fit better for the investigation side of things. When you want to pull out big puzzles or scary cutscenes, you can dedicate those saved resources into making them look and feel better.

I played this a couple of months ago! This might be the first time I've played a game that Mandalore's reviewed. I can't decide if it's a shame that it's a hilariously shit one instead of a hidden gem, but oh well. Also, I played The Sinking City. It's decent. Much better than this for sure.

00:02 "oh im sorry" "sorry for what"

The whole percentage thing is directly based on the TTRPG call of Cthulhu/pulp Cthulhu, the difference is that in the TTRPG you have LUCK points that help you pass rolls.

God bless you put this out as the new humble bundle for vampyr and call of cthulu Comesbout

Its a shame this game had the problems it ended up having, because I want a Lovecraftian game to turn out well. Honestly I think the biggest problems most of these games face is similar to the issues Lovecraft movies face, they give definitive answers that don't leave the audience pondering on the nature of reality given the new information. What I mean is, you never get that sense of being less than a pawn in these games of cosmic chess going on. Bloodborne perfectly encapsylates it with its ending where you either embrace the cycle thats being going on without realizing you're just a small piece in a much grander picture, rebel against the cycle only to realize a much darker force has been responsible, or through maccob and cryptic means ascend to godhood through your culmination of forbidden knowledge. In these games its usually, shoot and kill the spawn of these monsters, careful you don't take too much loss to your sanity. Or in this games case, heres some RNG to try and make it feel like the Pen and Paper game, but sorry we couldn't quite make it translate. Its a cool idea but executed poorly. Also, the painting monster could have worked as the crescendo of the story, as you have the player character confront it, and now you have that earth shattering revelation of where you are on the cosmic stage. It would be the climax to a Lovecraft story where now the protagonist is shook by this revelation and they're forever changed. The last issue a lot of these games seem to have is you are always a detective. Now I am knit picking here but just hear me out. The assumption you have with a detective is they can handle themselves, they investigate, theyre rough and tough cigarette smoking alcohol drinkers who are there to solve a mystery. But a lot of Lovecraft stories are about normal people discovering esoteric knowledge by chance. For instance, if you were a reporter working on a story and accidentally uncover a conspiracy of the occult worshipping lets say Shub-Niggurath, now we are talking. In this case we have someone who you can perceive as powerless digging into things they shouldn't be, creating that sense of powerlessness in the cosmic scale that creates the spine tingling horror that is cosmic horror. Essentially a game like Outlast, except tackling eldritch themes.

It'd be interesting to see you review The Sinking City in comparison of this game since it came out shortly after this one. I feel like both have failings as a Lovecraft game but in significantly different ways.

That was the best opening to a video I’ve seen in a long time

Great vid, thanks Sseth.

19:50 "MandaloreGaming : So yeah, it's a very easy section. Me, who had to retry this section a ton of times because I could not understand what I had to do : ... :( "