It’s finally here! Call of Cthulhu, the game based on the board game based on the stories by H.P. Lovecraft, arrives on the Nintendo Switch in all of its gothic splendour, allowing us to experience the full game wherever and whenever we like. Published by Focus Home Interactive and developed by Cyanide Studio, Call of Cthulhu sees you play as Edward Pierce in the same world as the board game, trying to solve a very mysterious case involving the death of a family in strange circumstances. From this small beginning, the game takes you on a dark and disturbing journey.

I haven’t played Call of Cthulhu before so the Switch version will be my first time. This will be my own view on the game but if you’re interested to see how it plays on PS4 or for a second opinion, go have a read of Rob’s review HERE.

Luckily, I made it through the other side and live to tell you about my experiences in this tale of cosmic horror…

As previously mentioned, you (mostly) play as Edward Pierce, who has been through some dark times. After returning from the war, the horrors in his mind are shrouding his working life so much that he relies on heavy drinking to feel alive and sleeping pills to stop his night terrors. Moments after receiving a phone call announcing that he may soon be out of the job because he isn’t taking on enough investigating work, he gets a knock on the door for a case he couldn’t possibly have imagined. The client’s daughter was killed in a house fire with her husband and son, however, he’s received a painting of hers that he assumes to be a message that his daughter, Sarah Hawkins, is not actually dead.

What follows is an 8-10 hour journey where you must use your detective and survival skills in order to discover just what is going on in the eerie town of Darkwater. The story is definitely engaging if a little predictable. There are some very interesting characters – the main ones are acted brilliantly. However, some of the voices felt a bit over the top but nothing truly stopped the immersion. Also, there’s some twists and turns and some disturbing scenes, but I doubt there will be anything that actually frightens you. That being said, that doesn’t make it boring, far from it. It’s one of the more enjoyable stories that I’ve played in a while. It’s gripping; one-more-chapter-before-I-sleep stuff and I didn’t want it to end. I had to know what was going on and I wasn’t let down by any story beats, even if they weren’t particularly shocking.

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The aspect of the gameplay I personally dislike is the stealth sections. Thankfully there aren’t many; this isn’t Outlast or Alien Isolation but I still found them frustrating and long-winded. I fully understand their inclusion; they make sense in the context of the game. It’s not like you’re a super-soldier who can fight of groups of guys and demons so stealth is definitely the best option. Also, I reckon Cyanide Studios thought that a game that is only talking to people and searching environments seemed boring and honestly, to most people it probably does but I would have been more than happy with that. The reason I dislike them is that they’re just so unclear. If it was a case of “get to here by dodging enemies” then that would be okay. Instead, you’re forced to clamber slowly around the same environment over and over again to fetch items and return to interact with a previously useless item and it just made certain areas feel more frustrating than interesting. The mechanics are very simple where you basically have to stay behind them and stay crouched while still completing objectives.

Most of the autosaves in the game are actually very kind, but some of the stealth parts take you back to the beginning which makes it harder. It makes these particular chapters two or three times as long when I just want to go back to being a detective!

All of these gameplay elements are enhanced by a skill tree that affects not only your strengths but also how your game will progress. When the game begins, you are gifted some skill points to assign to your own Edward Pierce. Your choices have an impact on how your game will progress as they each give more importance to a particular skill set. For example, if you choose to increase your eloquence, you can use your communication skills to talk your way out of bad situations. Or, you can instead choose to increase your strength and just stubborn your way out of something using brute force. There are also skills that you improve without using skill points. One of these is the occult skill, where you must find and read books that give you knowledge of the occult and its dark secrets.

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This RPG-style skill system makes for some really interesting gameplay moments as it affects your path through the game and the ending that you will get. It allows you to personalise the progression to your own version of Edward Pierce whilst still experiencing an effectively linear story. Pierce feels like a rough stereotype ‘bad cop’ kind of character with not much personality at the beginning but it’s in your choices of skills that make him feel like your own character, adding that sense of empathy. There’s also the replayability that this adds, as there are so many different things that can play out differently throughout the game, not just the endings.

For example, with the puzzles, there are sometimes multiple ways they can be solved. You can either be a smarty pants by figuring them out based on clues or sometimes your strength skill will dissolve any need to be smart as you can smash through that secret entrance instead. Personally, I recommend trying to figure the puzzles out though as they’re just easy enough to not get stuck and just hard enough for you to feel smug when you solve them.

One thing Call of Cthulhu absolutely nails is the atmosphere. The sense of impending horror is always there, whether it’s in the clues you read, the lies of the characters or the foreboding and overbearing settings. Every place you visit in the game, even the pub and the book store which are supposed to be happy, make you feel isolated and tense. If it’s not the people staring at you watching your every move, it’s the way things feel abandoned and unkempt, like something came and just took over. The sounds are creepy, with creaks, screams and demons all sounding increasingly threatening. The lighting is also fantastic, which you have to manage with a lighter or a lantern by filling the oil, and the greens and greys make everything feel mystical and eerie.

The game isn’t particularly scary, there are not really any jumpscares of such, apart from a scripted one in a maze-like sequence, but its more about how uncomfortable it makes you. Then there is the madness that your character endures when he experiences a phobia. If you’re hiding in a tight space or looking at a monstrosity your vision becomes blurred and you feel panicked and isolated. It doesn’t really affect the game, it’s more there to throw you off and make you feel uncomfortable and it definitely works. I just wish had an impact on the gameplay too, other than simply blurring the screen.