Review | Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss

One of my prized books that I own, the Necronomicon, is a heavy, thickly bound book with embossed gold writing. It is old, but quite rare. This book was written by H. P. Lovecraft, who for the most part was the father of everything Eldritch Horror, Cthulhu being the most iconic of them all. Being a horror enthusiast, H. P. Lovecraft has always been a storyteller I admire. The storytelling even by today’s standards is a lot scarier as it is contained to the individual mind, making each experience unique and profoundly different. I always found that losing your mind is more horrific than anything else because it can happen.

Big Bad Wolf now has a shot at a new Cthulhu game called Cosmic Abyss, published by Nacon, which tells the tale of Noah, a researcher who is looking for their recently missing colleague Mei. When searching her house, they find a portal to another world where Cthulhu resides, and Mei. After a short intro we are thrown back into the real world, which takes place several months later, and we must now uncover the secrets of Cthulhu, and find our way back to save the world from the recently awoken Eldritch God.

Things I liked!

• Your own personal AI assistant | The best mechanic in the game has to be Key, who also acts as a supporting character. Key is your own personal AI that helps you identify things in the environment, but also deduce things inside your vault. Key is equipped with a sonar pulse that can detect items in the world using their material as a base. For example, when I found an ID card inside the underwater base, I could attach that to the sonar, and when pinging, it would highlight on my visor locations of other ID cards that carried that signal. Items already seen and interacted with will still ping, but ones that haven’t will display a question mark above it.
  
  Key will also act as an objective guide from time to time, displaying what you need to do next, but not how to do it. This is when you need to use the vault section of your inventory. You can connect evidence together like a detective’s cork board and deduce events for more information. These will subtly allow you to figure out what to do next, and how to complete puzzles. It is down to you to fully explore the environment, look for clues, and figure out your next steps.

• The graphics | Graphically, Cosmic Abyss is an impressive looking game. It uses Unreal Engine 5 and has impressive lighting that helps make the models look realistic, including the objects and world feel real. The game opens with a rather impressive looking boat ride with decent water physics, and good facial motion capture for the cast. Cthulhu especially looks amazing with its grand tentacles, and huge arms. We don’t get to see it too much in the earlier stages of the game, but in the later sections, and especially the end, Cthulhu makes a rather grand appearance, which really sells the Lovecraftian theme.
  
  
• The story | Cthulhu: Cosmic Abyss has a great story. Your fellow colleague and friend Mei has gone missing. Up until recently, Mei was investigating an occult that worshipped a god called Cthulhu. Following up at her house, you find that Mei has seemingly lost her mind, and has found a way to enter the Eldritch otherworld. Following in her footsteps, you make your way through the portal where you are attacked, and then thrown back through the portal barely escaping with your life.
  
  Several months later, a mining station in the Pacific abyss is no longer responding. As an investigator of the occult, you venture down into the depths of the ocean looking for answers on what went wrong, only to find the crew dead, with trails leading towards a new portal. What I liked about the story, was how it allows for incredible set pieces to take place. Huge underwater sea bases, above water locations, followed by temples and tombs, followed by the otherworld where Cthulhu lives. I love the many different locations it offers, and how it fleshes out the story around it.
  
  
• Multiple paths to choose from | During your investigation, you will sometimes come across multiple pieces of information that dictate what can be done about certain situations. For example, in one of the later chapters, there is a guardian that is looking after the star of shamash, and how you reach that star can be in one of two ways. You can hypnotise it with an orb that you create in one of the labs, or you can kill it. I opted for the hypnotise option, as it gave me less corruption, but each path either creates more or less work, and depending on how badly you want to finish an area, this is your choice. Opting for the quicker option, however, does seem to penalise you for the increase of corruption, and sometimes that’s okay, providing you still have the brain capacity to spare.
  
  
• Passive abilities to unlock | Cthulhu: Cosmic Abyss has optional passive abilities to unlock by finding secrets throughout the chapters. It’s a good little way to encourage players to look, because you need to look for clues anyway. Secrets are in the form of stone tablets that emit a green glow. They look like they are from the Eldritch world but unlock parts of your brain that then allow you to gain further sonar distances, reduce corruption on successful deduction of clues, and even protect certain abilities from being eaten by corruption entirely. These can be swapped out at any time in your inventory, and the more secrets you unlock, the more you can equip as long as you have the brain capacity to do so. Some abilities cost less to equip than others, so you can mix and match what works best for you.
  
  
• Multiple endings | There are two endings to achieve in Cthulhu: Cosmic Abyss. One good, and one bad. Without spoiling the endings, there are also after credit scenes that play out after you have made your choice. Thankfully, you can re-load your final save and experience them both all within the span of half an hour or so.
  
  
• Music & sounds | Overall, Cthulhu: Cosmic Abyss has great music coupled with strong voice acting, and sound effects. Apart from a few issues that I will mention below, music is heavily used throughout to convey a sense of dread, mystery, and awe. Entering huge water filled temples meets you with melancholic orchestral scores, whereas mysterious circumstances are met with much lighter toned music. Voice acting is strong, especially from Key the AI. All of the supporting cast have great lines too, and it is delivered to a high standard that compliments the writing. Noah, the lead character, also does a great job, especially with all of the crazy stuff he sees in game. He sells the confusion, and all his falls, tumbles, and damage sounds feel authentic when delivered.

Mixed & disliked!

• Difficulty | Cthulhu: Cosmic Abyss can be a very difficult game. Not because there are a lot of enemies, but because of two design choices. I’m not going to say it’s all bad, but it can leave you feeling a little deflated at times. Cosmic Abyss unapologetically denies any form of hand holding. Around the halfway mark, the game gets increasingly hard and a lot more vague, with chapter 6 having one of the most difficult puzzles I have ever figured out in a videogame. If you miss even one piece of evidence, it can prevent you from deducing the clue, and prevent you from finding out what to do next. Since the environments are quite large and also contain a lot of the evidence you need, you will scouring every nook and cranny of the game until you find that missing clue. I also found it to be quite frustrating, that at times, when I needed something to progress, it was always right at the start of the level hidden behind a piece of scenery.
  
  The second issue is managing your corruption. During gameplay, there will always be multiple ways of figuring out how to tackle a situation, sometimes it can lead to corruption where your brain is literally being eaten alive by Cthulhu’s influence, and other times it is either low corruption, or none. Getting fully corrupted causes a game over, but can sometimes cause you to be so far gone, that it means restarting the game. To combat this, the team have implemented abilities to unlock, which I mentioned above. There is one specific ability that you can unlock that reduces corruption by 5% every time a clue is deduced in the vault. It is imperative that you unlock this ability by finding secrets throughout the game. If you don’t, you will struggle like hell to make it to the end. I was just lucky I found enough to unlock it.

• Buggy in places | Cthulhu: Cosmic Abyss isn’t free from bugs. During my time, the most common issue I ran into was audio not playing, or audio cutting out. It didn’t matter if it was voice lines, or music, at some point, it would cut out. This could be that the loop functionality wasn’t present on that track, or audio wasn’t properly configured, but it does take you out of the game when this happens. Other than that, though, the game was largely bug free, except for one issue where some stairs disappeared after I fell to my death, and upon reloading, they had gone. I got it figured out, though, with the team, and they were very helpful during this pre-release review.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 10 hours
How long to beat the story? 10 hours
How long to Complete the game 100%? 20 hours (2 playthroughs are required to get all achievements)
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 10
You’ll love this game if you like these | Call of Cthulhu, Worshippers of Cthulhu

CONCLUSION

Score: 85/100

Cthulhu: Cosmic Abyss is a great example on how to make a game centred around interactive storytelling fun. While it may lack some of the action and combat orientated takes of previous Cthulhu games, Cosmic Abyss thrives in its environmental storytelling and deep investigative mechanics, that give it an addictive, and engaging style of gameplay that is rarely explored in gaming. Strong supportive characters, with a likeable main protagonist, made me feel connected to them, and their personal battles they went through with the Eldritch God Cthulhu.