Clod of Cthulhu: Haunted Blandsion

When I last abandoned Jack, he was drafted into a raid he was unqualified for, on behalf of an agency he is not employed by, all for an employer who is a sadist and a blackmailer. The thought of just straight-up either refusing to do this or running far away does not appear to have occurred to him; I think the last thought that went through his head was about fudge, come to think of it.

To be fair, the overall density of stupid decisions does sort of take a dive for the next few hours. While he’s still sticking his nose in places where it doesn’t belong and picking fights he has no earthly right to win, this isn’t exactly unheard of behavior for an adventure/action game protagonist. Hell, for him, it’s practically the cautious, reserved approach—he may be intruding on nests of ancient horrors, but at least he’s not taking a nap once he gets there. Gameplay’s on the upswing too—there’s some good stealth and combat sequences here, and the levels are fun to explore. Quality is up, irritation is down, and I’m starting to once again be entertained.

Needless to say, I’m furious.

There’s an entire chapter here that has almost nothing for me to make fun of. It’s not even that Jack is wising up, there’s just really been no opportunity for him to let his jackhattery shine through. He’s already resigned himself to poke around in a bunch of dark, nasty places for no adequately explored reason, so once he starts actualizing that plan, it feels a bit redundant to mock him for it. Again, he’s not even going about it in a particularly stupid way.

I’ll just give a quick summary of this one, then. Jack gets split up from his unit within like twenty seconds of the level starting, finds a frozen door in the side of a cliff, melts it open, watches a nasty-lookin’ creature devour someone, lights the creature on fire, then sets off into the tunnel. Before long, we find an old cryptic advice-spewing quasifriend, Mackey, who’s been imprisoned by the fishmongers and wants Jack to help him get out. Mackey is clearly torn between his intellectual side, which tells him that Jack may be his only chance of ever leaving his cell alive, and his survival instinct, which is telling him that getting as far away from Jack as possible is one of the 7 traits of highly not-dead people. He settles for asking Jack to find the key to his cell and reunite him with his firearm, then directs me to where both are located—a manor that can be accessed at the end of the tunnel.

Turns out, Robert Marsh (that’s the senior Marsh) is conducting some sort of evil clandestine ritual inside. Honestly, I’m not 100% sure as to what it’s for, I think it’s protection or something. This was explained, it just doesn’t really matter. Cultists waving their arms around and gabbing in the basement, you’re a red-blooded square-jawed theoretically heroic detective type, go break it up. Anyway, before you can do that, you have to poke around and find the stuff to free Mackey, taking out sentries and discovering secret passages. This level’s actually a lot of fun, for a variety of reasons. One is the creative level design, which is at the very least more entertaining than the smells-like-gunmetal standard FPS refinery level we just got out of. Since the FBI took your weapons before the raid began, for reasons I won’t bother speculating on, avoiding straight-up fights via stealth is once again a viable strategy. Super viable, actually, since you find a sweet backstabbin’ knife that can absolutely brutalize anyone from behind. It’s not mechanically much more effective than bullets, but it’s far cooler, so you find yourself using it a lot.

About halfway through my sweep of the manor, I find a side room with a crank in it. It’s obvious that turning the crank lifts a section of floor in the next room, which itself reveals a secret passage into the depths of the earth, either leading to a secret cult headquarters or a really fancy and exclusive wine cellar. Either way, I wanted me some of that, so I started leaning on the crank.

It took longer than I anticipated to turn. For some reason, Jack is only capable of manipulating the darn thing at the pace of a hamstrung snail, so it literally took about thirty seconds of work to get the trapdoor open all the way.

At which point I stepped away, the crank began instantly unwinding, and the trapdoor fell back down. Jack says something to the tune of, “No good. I need to get someone else to turn it for me!”

Okay, I know this is a nitpick, but dammit, that’s 30 seconds of my life I’m not getting back in a hurry. Why did you have to let me turn the thing all the way before letting me know it wasn’t going to work? It’s just a little thing, but I feel like this kind of shenanigan wouldn’t have made it past a developer that knew what they were doing. If this were Valve, they’d find out who was responsible, drag them out into the street, then cave their skull in with a toilet seat.

Right, let’s wrap this chapter up. I rescue Mackey, he opens the door for me, and I go break up the ritual downstairs. The head honcho, Robert Marsh, manages to run away—when I go after him, the tunnel I’m in collapses and I end up in the ocean.

Wait, what? Were we that close to the…how did I…wouldn’t I just be…

Screw it. That’s another chunk of gameplay down. Before long, we’ll be done with this goddamned thing once and for all.