Developer: Big Bad Wolf
Publisher: Nacon
Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss – Review
For some reason, when thinking of games that require us to conduct an investigation, our minds always wander back to 2014’s Murdered: Soul Suspect, a title that didn’t receive the best reviews at the time but still left a lasting impression on us. We found the premise to be fairly original and the story to be captivating, but the game suffered from clunky controls and some other issues. Nonetheless, the paranormal theme was a fun, original take on the genre. Today, we have another original entry in said genre, namely Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss. This game delves into the Lovecraftian lore, where you’ll also have to conduct investigations of your own. While Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss nailed its aesthetics, the gameplay didn’t always hit its mark.
Story
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is not your run-of-the-mill detective story, as you’ll find yourself in a universe where Lovecraftian monsters are seemingly not that unusual. That being said, after an otherworldly mishap leaves you permanently scarred, you find yourself back in the saddle to investigate the disappearance of miners at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. You are assisted by your AI companion Key, who is seemingly a lot more sentient than the usual AI. You follow leads on the disappearance of the miner crew and come into contact with many ghoulish and otherworldly occurrences. While this sounds a bit vague, we’d rather not spoil too much if you’re thinking of picking this one up. The story is probably Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss’ highlight, with an interesting approach to telling a Lovecraft-inspired tale. If you’re interested in the mythos, then you’ll probably be able to overlook many of the game’s minor flaws. The story does involve a lot of reading, which might not be for everyone.
Graphics
For the most part, Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss looks amazing. The game has a variety of different locations that were a delight to explore. Sadly, most of these locations proved to be extremely static, except for the few items you could pick up and look at. Nonetheless, Big Bad Wolf created a visually impressive game. The character models did shift in terms of quality from time to time during certain cinematics, but other than that, we were treated to an experience that feels very much in sync with the horror-themed core of the game. Sadly, on PS5, the game struggled to keep up as a result. Frame drops were very frequent, sometimes to the point that certain sequences almost dropped to single-digit FPS. We hope a performance patch is released in the future, as these frame drops did ruin the immersion for us quite often.
Sound
Overall, the sound design of Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss wasn’t too bad at all. The music set the mood for the most part, and the sound effects were fairly decent. Sometimes footsteps or jumps on certain surfaces didn’t have the correct audio feedback, but that’s just a minor remark. The voice acting, however, felt very uneven. Some performances hit their mark, while others lacked emotion, and some even sounded like AI (and we’re not talking about Key here). We did look up the latter, and developer Big Bad Wolf stated no AI was used for the voice acting. Even so, for a game that is all about its tense atmosphere, we expected a more seasoned cast voicing the dialogue.
Gameplay
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss could best be described as a mix of a walking simulator with a heavy focus on conducting different investigations. This means you’ll often explore a lot of environments on your own, while putting clues together to form conclusions of what happened or where you need to go next. The game utilizes an interesting sonar system to help you on your way, as well as equippable traits that will give you passive boosts. On top of that, you can also lose your sanity when performing these investigations. Players who want to keep it a bit more casual to focus on the story can choose to lower the difficulty, allowing them to get hints and even reduce the sanity reduction penalties.
As you explore your surroundings, you’ll uncover more and more clues to help you figure out what to do next. These clues can be linked to each other, and you can form conclusions with them. The investigation system works fairly well, even though some parts felt a bit convoluted, and some clues were somewhat unclear. Even so, as the game is very linear and there are often very limited approaches to solving puzzles, you often feel like you’re just hitching along for the ride as a result. Don’t get us wrong, however, as you still need to investigate items, analyze stuff, and figure things out yourself, but the game does feel limited in many ways. The sonar system was a nice touch, where, after analyzing items, you can scan your environment for items that have the same properties. It’s not mandatory to use the sonar, as you can still find a lot of items by just checking out the different interactable objects, but it does help you quite a bit. Then there are also passive abilities that can be equipped, which further help you on your way. We did struggle with accuracy on the controller when wanting to select different items we could interact with, especially small items on desks or behind other objects. The key bindings also weren’t always that logical in some of the menus, which also became tedious the longer we played the game.
Conclusion
While Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss did a formidable job setting the overall mood, we failed to care about any of the characters or even the quest we were embarking upon. Even though the investigation system proved to be interesting, and the game never overstayed its welcome in terms of length, a lot of the experience just felt bland, with a lot of running back and forth in visually impressive but hollow-feeling locations. We enjoyed the experience for what it was, but due to the glaring performance issues, the uneven pacing, and the very linear format, we can only recommend this one at a hefty discount.
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