Meadhall of the Comitatus

I’m only one third through, but considering it’s that time of year this game needed to finally be reviewed. Made by Headfirst Productions it has a sortid development history, after 6 years of work it was almost canned until being picked up by Bethesda Softworks. I was surprised when it was released (the release came out of nowhere) and nabbed it as soon as I could. Unfortunately I didn’t have much time when I got it to play, but now that my plate is empty I’ve picked it up again and begun to dig in, and I’m glad I did…

The game is based off of the written world of H.P. Lovecraft, in fact a large chunk of the game is taken from the story “Shadow Over Innsmouth”. This game succeeds where other things based on Lovecraft fail. It draws you in and refuses to let go, being played entirely straight it never seems over the top and unrealistic. This helps the game play with your head a bit, questioning what’s real and what isn’t which again is a big part of Lovecraft’s works.

The immersiveness of the game is increased by the fact that there’s no hud. You experience things completely through your character’s eyes, experiencing blurred vision and delusions and even vertigo when you look down from high up. Your character panics and you panic with him. They planned everything out well so just when you’re freaking out in real life the character in the game is freaked out as well, doubling the effect. Damage is handled locationally: you’ll have to bandage things, suture cuts, and splint broken legs. This is handled by a few clicks in your inventory and a nice little animation of you opening and using things from your medkit. It’s pretty intuitive and not bothersome. Your injuries do have an effect in the game world though, a cut by your eye can blur your vision, hurt legs slow you down, and as your health lowers your ability to move and see color goes down. You can examine a lot of things in the game (just go up to them and press your “Action” button) and there’s no crosshair: You have to use intuition of the guns’ iron sights to hit your targets.

You start with no weapons and stealth plays a big part of the game. Even later on it’s better to avoid combat when you can. This brings forward one of the game’s problems: save points. Yep that’s right you can’t simply save anywhere. It’s not a problem in the beginning, as the game saves every time there’s a load (which actually isn’t that often) and you aren’t necessarily going to die (although it feels you may), but later when you life is in immediate danger it seems tedious. In one particular sequence I had to run through different hotel rooms, bolting doors behind me to slow down some axe weilding psychos, jump across landings, avoid bullets being fired at me through windows, and climb across rooftops all before finally being able to save again. Of course one screw up and I had to start the entire sequence over. For this (and other reasons) I recommend playing the game on the easiest difficulty just so you’ll avoid as much repetition as possible.

Another problem with the game is the number of bugs. I had at least one issue where my journal pages wouldn’t quit displaying in my inventory, of course making it impossible to use anything. Also, make sure you know what the combination of a lock is before you try to open a safe because once you start you’re stuck. That’s right, you can’t leave that screen and you can’t open your inventory. If you can’t figure it out you’ll be forced to reload from your last save and maybe repeat a few things.

Don’t let it stop you from playing the game though. Despite the bugs and the sometimes dated graphics there are so many nice details (peeling wallpaper is actually peeling wallpaper instead of just a texture, and you’ll see fallen out bricks and tiles and debris everywhere) and other things that really make it worth playing. The game will scare the pants off of you. Don’t expect a shooter, expect to be afraid.

I know I haven’t finished the game yet, but I’ll give it a score for now, and I’ll make sure to follow up as I finish the game. For now though, I give it 4 stars.