Clod of Cthulhu: Crash of the Day

Okay, I’m going to go through these bits quickly, because if this series is ever going to end I’m gonna have to get out of Innsmouth. To be honest, while Jack doesn’t get any smarter as the game progresses, his stoogesque gaffes do grow somewhat less dense. I’ll be able to skim the rest of the game within a few more posts, hopefully.

Where were we? Oh yes, the intensely annoying running gunbattle sequence, where Burnham wheels through town like a maniac and I have to trade shots with every cultist in the western hemisphere. It’s particularly frustrating because when you get shot—and you will ¬get shot, since you’d not have much in the way of cover—it’s hard to find a time to heal thyself. If you’re injured while healing, the process is terminated immediately; since you’re always moving on to a new set of opponents, it’s real tricky to find a five-second interval where you can plaster over your current set of flesh wounds without sustaining a fresh batch.

What really grates my cheese is how the fighting is staged. The order of events tends to go like this: Burnham drives a ways, some gunmen appear in my vision (standing by the road or, as frequently, in it), they start successfully shooting at me. If you think this makes total sense, consider the following:

a.)    Burnham saw these guys standing around and didn’t think to run them over or warn me.
b.)    For their part, the gunmen are entirely uninterested in shooting anything until I come into view. That’s right, no point in wasting ammunition on the driver, the engine block, or the tires. Now, the jackass sitting in the back, hiding and trying to gauze up his bullet wounds—that’s a worthy target.
c.)    If they are shooting at Burnham, either they can’t penetrate the cab or they can’t get a clear shot off at him, because he ain’t even scratched. This would imply that the cab is totally safe from gunfire. Remind me why I couldn’t ride shotgun, using small words that I can comprehend in my 3.5-esque barbarian rage.

Our first stop—and only stop, presumably, between the town and the nearest Motel Six without a pool–is to go pick up Burnham’s girlfriend at the refinery. The refinery appears to be swarmed with hostiles, so getting her out won’t be easy. Since it’s his lover who is in peril, Burnham bravely volunteers to stay with the truck while I fight my way through hordes of fishmen trying to go get her. Okay, whatever, but FYI? This time, she gets to ride in the back. She’ll be okay, I’ll give her my crowbar.

I start fighting my way through more dudes, including a few blatant fish-human hybrids. Perhaps sensing that this schtick isn’t impressing me much anymore, the game is trying to up the ante on horrible abominations of god and man; perhaps sensing that these guys aren’t too impressive either, they give them submachine guns that I’m not allowed to pick up. There are a few rather large and hard-to-avoid battles—stealth becomes less and less viable an option as avenues of travel become more and more restricted. Then, halfway through this level, two significant events occur simultaneously:

1.)    I fine a submachine of my own in a disused storeroom, and
2.)    The game stops being remotely scary.

Protip, game developers: it’s hard to be terrified of my opponents if running at them guns blazing is a perfectly viable strategy. There’s one part in this level where control is wrested from me for a brief cutscene in which I walk behind a crate and see a half-dozen guys entering on the other side of the room. By giving me a room full of crates and making sure I’m aware of enemy locations, the game seems to be suggesting that I sneak past them. I reject this proposal, and elect instead to charge head-on while belching lead and screaming bloody murder. All of them die, I take a negligible and easily-negated level of damage, and I save five minutes of my life. Real scary, guys.

Let me make it clear that I am not playing on the Giant Wussy difficulty, the one that can be defeated by a sufficiently trained Doberman or a blind grandmother. I am playing on the hardest one that is initially available, before the obligatory Super Double Plus Nightmare South-of-the-Border Impossible difficulty is unlocked. Combat really just is that effective in this game, and the horror suffers for it. Sneaking around was way tenser than this was, but there’s no way I’m going to do it if I’ve got a gun like this. Giving players a massive arsenal in a horror or stealth game can be a detrimental move: If going postal is quicker, easier, and safer than sneaking around and hoping not to get caught, then expect the player to do so. If you want Sam Fisher, don’t make it easier to go Serious Sam.

Sam…Fisher…dammit! I totally could have made a Sam Fisher pun during those warehouse stealth segments. That would have been perfect. I am seriously ticked off that I missed that, I’m not even kidding. That’s going on my list of deathbed regrets.

Oh, yeah, back to the game. I manage to find his girlfriend—she’s hidden herself up on a ledge inside a warehouse, and the ledge looks like it’s about to collapse! She has no way of getting down! Oh no! She’s in great danger! She could fall at any second! I don’t care!

I glance around for a way to get her down, but none present themselves. I go outside to look around some more—it looks like Burnham’s already gotten here. Wait, why couldn’t I just ride with him instead of fighting my way here on foot? Was there a reason? I don’t care. I apprise him of the situation, and recommend that we leave her.

He refuses. He won’t accept that there’s no way to get her down—there has to be a way! Dammit, this is the love of his life we’re talking about. If there’s any chance we can save her, no matter how small, we have to take it. She is the only thing in his life that matters, and he would do anything for her.

Except, you know, get out of the truck and give me a hand.

Gamely, I get back to work, jumping around on crates in an attempt to find my way up to her. I find a few promising-looking paths, but nothing bears fruit, and thanks to the increasingly-dodgy-seeming injury system, I break my right leg three times in the space of about two minutes. I’m sure there has to be some way of getting her down, but nothing presents itself.

Which is why, after a few minutes, she falls and breaks her neck..

So…yeah, that’s mildly unexpected. You know, I really do suspect that I was doing something wrong, and that to get the rumored “good” ending you need to get her down, but damned if I can suss it out. Looks like she just gets to fall to her death, then.

Of course, this raises a moral dilemma of some significance. To wit: do I add this to Jack’s kill count? On the one hand, hiding here was kind of her idea. On the other hand, I did fail to get her down again, and possible could have saved her. But if that’s the case, it’s technically my stupidity that damned her, not Jack’s. Hm. Eh, I’ll just assume the fishmen activity that caused her to pick that particular hiding spot is Jack’s fault, which is pretty reasonable.

Innocent People Jack’s Gotten Killed: Six

I break the news to Burnham, and he’s understandably broken up about it. Hey, uh, sorry for your loss, guess she’s not coming. Just you and me. So…

Shotgun!

No shotgun?

I get back into the flatbed. A few minutes down the road, Burnham mucks up somehow and flips the truck onto its side. I hit the street, and as my vision fades, the last thing I see is him running away unscathed. Funny how that works. You’d almost think he had a seatbelt and dashboard to keep him from hitting the road like a sack of potatoes, while all I have is happy thoughts, thrice-fragmented bones, and a head as soft as goat cheese.

Thus ends Innsmouth. Wasn’t that fun?