Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss ★★☆☆☆
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, underwater buildings are bad enough, now we throw Cthulhu into the mix.
A mining station in the Pacific abyss is no longer responding. As an investigator of the occult, unravel the mysteries of the deep. Test your wits and sanity in this lovecraftian thriller.
- Gameplay: Investigate environments and objects for clues on progression
- Visual presentation: Important objects around you light up when using the Sonar ability
- Storytelling: Told through conversations, scenes, and clues you pick up
Pros:
- Sonar helps you find objects
- Find things easier with frequencies
- Pick and choose Evolutions
Cons:
- Are we okay when we jump?
- Sonar panel confusing
- Fiddling with our wrist during downtime
- Manually look into tutorials
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Explanation to Negative Feedback
Are we okay when we jump?
It sounds like we’re really struggling whenever we jump up and down. Like it’s taking everything out of us just to jump in place. If he’s having that hard of a time with it, maybe he shouldn’t be jumping in the first place.
Sonar menu confusing
I got stuck for way too long on a portion of the game where I had to power up the station, and I basically needed a full hydrogen tank or two, if I remember correctly? But there are a ton of cans scattered about that are empty, meaning you have to find the full ones.
Well, I looked all around one area and couldn’t get the power to work with the tubes I found, so I traveled all over this base for no reason.
You can use the Sonar menu to group specific frequencies, and this should enable you to find specific items a lot quicker, but I had no idea what I was doing. I feel like the game should’ve taken us through an example scenario when introducing us to the Sonar menu. Otherwise, it just looks weird and complicated.
Once you understand it, it’s not that bad.
It’s kind of like an, oh, that’s how it’s used.
But the fact that it took me forever and a half on a demo in order to figure out how it really is supposed to work is annoying.
Fiddling with our wrist during downtime
For some reason, when we haven’t moved in a while, our character will rotate his wrist or kind of fiddle with it. And he does it so often that it somehow triggers my anger. Like, I want to constantly move, when I remember he puts an emphasis on his wrist. And I’m not sure why he does it either.
I don’t know if he’s got something wrong with that wrist or hand where it acts up when he’s not moving it around.
I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a nervous habit, but he doesn’t really seem to be the kind of person with that kind of nervous energy.
Characters can twitch and shift from foot to foot and do whatever they need to do during downtime of not moving, I really don’t mind it. But the reason this is so triggering to me is because of how often he does it.
I’m sitting here thinking about how to figure something out for a minute and he’s fondled his wrist like five times.
Stop.
Manually look into tutorials
When you come across something you’ve not done before, a tutorial for it does pop up, but you have to go into the menu to see it, and I’m one of those people that are busy looking at the things in front of me, that half the time I’m not going to think about going into the menu to figure something out.
Now, I understand that this is a me problem, don’t worry.
But I prefer games that give you a tutorial up front, instead of having you look for it yourself, especially if it’s something as complex as this game gives you.
Explanation to Positive Feedback
Sonar helps you find objects
You have a keybind you can use that acts as a literal sonar which will highlight objects around you that you can investigate. Not that everything will be super beneficial to you in the moment, but they’re worth looking into.
I’m happy when detective type of games throw this ability in, that way we don’t have to look all over the place for things that may or may not help with our objective.
Find things easier with frequencies
Once you understand how the Sonar menu works and you get a handle on choosing what frequencies you need to find certain things, it makes it so much easier to find what you actually need to progress forward.
Like with the powering up the station section for me, it gave me such a hassle, but once I figured out the frequencies, I found what I needed.
It just took me way too long to figure out how frequencies even worked and what to pair with what, because you can pair up to three material components, let’s say, and as long as those three are connected somehow, your sonar ability will point them out in the environment.
Pick and choose Evolutions
The Evolutions are your abilities that you can, not place points into, but give yourself, in regards to your capacity.
For instance, if I have three Evolutions to choose from and my brain has a capacity of five slots, I can choose enough Evolutions that will fill up those five slots. Each evolution icon has the amount of capacity it takes up on it, so you’ll know.
I think, from what I could glean from my playthrough, that you can choose whichever Evolutions you want on the fly, as long as you have enough capacity for them. I’m not sure if this is a game where if you choose certain ones, you’re stuck with them.
Which makes the Evolution system even nicer if that’s the case.