Clod of Cthlhu: Innsmouth is Over, No More Fish Puns, Dangit

A correction: I went back to check, and it looks like Burnham probably does die in the crash. The truck explodes after you’re thrown off of it, and I don’t really see him getting away, so it looks like the flatbed was counter-intuitively the safest seat in the vehicle Jack’s dynamite stupidity has once again proved an essential part of survival. I’m not tallying Burnham’s death as Jack’s fault; honestly, if he’d lived any longer, he’d be Jack’s only real competition on the professional asshat circuit.

Anyway, this chapter has a lovely beginning: you wake up on a gurney in an insane asylum, attended by a doctor, a shady-looking agent, and J. Edgar Hoover. Those of you who paid attention in US History class will know who he is.

Hell if I know, mind. I think maybe he’s a matador or something.

No, of course, he’s a controversial leader of the FBI who used illegal methods to gather evidence and had dossiers on lots of famous political figures. Something of a hotly-debated individual, subject to a lot of contemporary debates on the issue of morality in the exercise of the law. In-game, this translates to the character tying Jack down, torturing him with electrodes, beating him, and forcing him into an extremely dangerous mission against his will and better judgment. I’d be annoyed at this kind of heavy-handed characterization, but I admit to kind of enjoying watching Jack get electro-shocked. Hehe. Hey, keep it up, buddy—shock him enough and you’ll either fix his brain or fry it into charcoal, and honestly, I’m not sure which I’d pay more to see right now.

According to Hoover, the Marsh gold refinery near Innsmouth has been a subject of inquiry for a while now; hence the investigation of Mackey, that cryptic bastard who was always loitering around not quite telling me what the hell was going on. Mackey was getting close to figuring out exactly what was going on at the refinery, but he mysteriously disappeared—perhaps his habit of loitering around in a very nice suit not doing much of anything tipped off the townsfolk that he was up to shonky business, or perhaps they just figured that their track record for outsiders isn’t looking too good. Regardless, Hoover has decided to damn all of that “investigation” crap—the Federal Bureau of Investigation has no time for those shenanigans. Time to do a lock-and-load door-bashing raid of the Marsh refinery, killing any sentries that interfere and kidnapping one of the proprietors on location. He has decided to take Jack with him, for reasons that are powerfully unclear.

What does Jack add to this operation, really? Hoover does mention that Jack is famous back in Boston, but you know what he’s famous as? A detective. You know what detectives do? Mope around a scene after the violence has gone down, talk to a bunch of drunk liars until they have enough drunk lies to find the edges of a truth, file reports, and wear unseasonably warm coats. Hoover seems to have confused “detective” with “SWAT officer,” or perhaps “John McClane.”

Okay, so I actually have killed more people in the past hour than I have fingers and toes, and I seem to have absorbed twenty-one bullets and a dozen bone fractures in the space of an evening, but he doesn’t know that. If he somehow did, he would also know not to trust Jack with any weapon more dangerous than a slingshot. Loaded with butter.

Anyway, needless to say, Jack accepts. The next cutscene is of the car trip to the refinery, a car trip which probably include little in the way of license plate games and much in the way of awkward silences. Hoover—and allow me to reiterate that this is the man who has been quite enthusiastically torturing and threatening me–is sitting in the seat to my side. He proceeds to give me a pistol and two magazines, stating that my profile says that I’m, “to be trusted.” Uh-huh. This profile of yours; it hasn’t been updated recently, has it? Just saying, you might want to re-evaluate to consider a few new factors. For example, I’m more stressed out because of financial woes, I’ve cheated on my income taxes in the past few years, I missed a credit card payment, and, oh yeah, you just tortured me and then coerced me into running this operation. Just saying, my “profile” might not be enough to go on, here. Cooperating with law enforcement in exchange for a paycheck is one thing, acting as lapdog for a sadistic twerp is another.

We arrive at the refinery, and Hoover outlines our objective in a little more detail: to capture the manager’s son, Jacob Marsh, and interrogate him about the goings-on at the refinery. The manager himself should be out of town, but the security in the place is expected to be kind of heavy. A handful of FBI agents and a wounded, weary, disloyal detective who just failed his first job in months, versus a horde of well-armed entrenched cultist fanatics? How could this go wrong?

Well, for starters, you could have a guy go up to the main gates and very slowly open them, leaving him to get gunned down by a mounted machine gunner on the other side who’s probably been enthusiastically waiting several months for this very opportunity. This barrage scatters the invading agents—some of them take cover behind crates on one side, some of them take cover behind crates on the other, with a path in the middle representing the line of fire of the machine gunner. I’m at the back of the group, hiding with Hoover behind the set of crates closer to the area we came in from. Luckily, my position seems entirely safe. Unluckily for me, my proximity to the supreme jerkoff means he’s free to order me to dive out of cover, zigzag over to the main gates, find a side entrance, and neutralize the machine gunner all by myself.

So, let me get this straight. I am:

1.)    Behind cover
2.)    Near a car
3.)    Armed
4.)    With a man who just tortured me
5.)    Who is telling me to make what is basically a suicide run
6.)    So we can enter a building, where I will be involuntarily subjected to further risk

The gunner is making a huge racket. If I shot Hoover and ran, probably nobody would ever notice it—I could always come up with some excuse later, like he got winged and asked me to go for help or something. But of course, shooting him isn’t an option. Well, actually, no, it is an option, but it doesn’t do anything besides make you feel marginally better, like if I’d held up my index finger and thumb and pretended I was crushing his head. Alright, screw it: you want me to go from entrenched cover to entrenched cover to take out that goddamned machine gun nest, that’s just what I’ll do. Did I miss the part when Call of Cthulhu became Call of Duty?

After a few frustrating tries, I manage to sort of make my way to the main gates without getting torn apart. I open the side door, and he seems to notice me, releasing the gun and firing conventional weapons at me. I get beside the door frame, lean in, take careful aim…and unload my entire magazine into him.

And totally miss every single shot.

There are no crosshairs in this game, and I swear that when you lean, you end up aiming for some random spot in the middle of nowhere. In my attempt to hit him with my inaccurate pistol, I end up wasting a ton of ammo without hitting the guy once. Okay, get back, reload the gun, lean again…

This time, he manages to hit me, while I have continue to have no luck whatsoever. I reload again—this is my last mag. If I blow through this, I’m screwed.

Aaaand I blow straight through it without hitting him, because apparently I can’t shoot for peanuts. I would reload, but since the game runs on checkpoints, I’d have to do the whole running-dodging sequence again, and I’m sorry—not in this lifetime. Eventually, I’m forced to damn the torpedoes and charge straight in, pistol-whipping him very slowly to death while he attempts to give me a heart transplant made out of lead.

I am frustrated, bleeding, out of ammo, out of medical supplies, and out of dignity. The mission began four minutes ago.

This whole thing is going to be more fun than a barrel of goddamned monkeys.