Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss

My LIKE comes with WARNINGS (and I admit a relatively minimal bug experience)! But I think this game will satisfy people looking for a modernized take on the classic investigation/puzzle mechanics gameplay (no combat/survival action elements) with that Mythos cosmic horror / gore blended into scifi as the setting (and a billionaire of course), so long as you have as much patience for the bugs as you do for the investigations in the game. It felt like the game was a modern love letter to investigative cosmic horror, though the company firing all devs upon release was the thing that really messed with this game's ability to be great since they couldn't fix any of the day one bugs, thanks Nacon! /s The GOOD: I love visually stunning cosmic/scifi horror vibes, and I've played probably most games that fit that genre that exist, though usually in more the survival horror action/adventure or FPS realm. I found the game to be a fantastic experience in terms of story, atmosphere, and worldbuilding, but I also have a soft spot for games like this. There were times I'd catch myself just like staring at grotesque things, and being immersed in the atmosphere of the horrible scene I'd find myself in. Maybe my view was colored from beating the Call of Cthulu game immediately prior (a classic, but hampered by the tech/graphics of the time), and then this going on sale at 30% off and me buying it up since I wanted to experience something made recently and see how much the tech/graphics could help with the actual horror and atmosphere, and wow it was AWESOME. Much like Dead Space 1 needed the remaster to get you scared in a new way again, I reveled in the modernity of the game. The BAD: There are BUGS and you will probably experience some, but no one can say which or how annoying they may be. Worse, the company fired the dev team upon release of the game, so patches aren't coming (maybe modders can assist). I've seen instances of people not getting deduction prompts but some turned out to be user error with missing evidence (and you might spend 30 mins re-checking everywhere if this happens to you). However, others and I can agree that sometimes the game doesn't trigger certain things in your investigation vault, or dialogue, depending on how you move through the scenes and collect data. The most common bug I ran into was the cursor problem (started in chapter 4, happened occasionally for the next few chapters) where my mouse no longer controls my movement without clicking and dragging, mouse buttons don't work in-game, and jump no longer works. I found I could switch to controller, or to just immediately exit to menu and then continue, and always found it returned me exactly to where I quit from with the issue resolved. Some people reported rebinding jump fixed that if they ran into that, etc. Some people had issues where they had to restart a chapter, but personally I also knew I'd have a high tolerance for this since the value is me learning all the notes and data, not just clicking things to try and make them work without understanding them in the game. So the second time around is just doing all the things you understand, and the chapters themselves aren't an enormous amount of time either. So again, I went into the purchase knowing that most people were able to workaround the bugs, and I knew I would too. The most "annoying" bug (which wasn't a big deal to me) I ran into was in the last proper chapter where I had some deductions not get triggered, and thus was missing some content to solve the final puzzle of the chapter, and then got some help from the internet to figure out I was actually missing some info, but instead of restarting the chapter I used that info for evil because I could taste the victory. I could have restarted the chapter and caught up in like 30 mins, but alas sometimes walkthrough temptation gets the better of us. I'll hopefully get it all the second time around though. I was hardly inconvenienced, but obviously if the game can't deliver you the info needed to solve the puzzle due to a bug, then, it's not exactly a complete game. Final thoughts: The game isn't super long in terms of gameplay (maybe a dozen hours), so the last question of how much you want to spend for the experience is going to depend on how much you are into games like this. I can't recommend it at full price of $40 unless you just don't care about price (though I admit I was considering it because I wanted to play it so bad). Under $30 (-30% sale) is solid for more of the Cosmic Horror lovers like myself, especially if you're fine with some of the games you play being buggy, but is still steep for the hours of gameplay (but I found it solid for that price). I think the average price for the average person is probably more like -50% ($20) with the warning that Nacon the publisher couldn't be bothered to test the game adequately, but it's not worth trashing outright because it's still a fantastic experience. If the sale gets it down to $10 I think a lot of people would be OK with it being a little buggy. For the audience that drops a game if they ever have to backtrack or restart a chapter, you might want to watch this on youtube instead, unless you're feeling lucky (well do ya', punk?).