By Kieron Gillen on May 27th, 2010 at 8:30 pm.
Lovecraft? I LOVE CRAFT! TASTY CHEESE!* Anyway… The Darkness WIthin 2: The Dark Lineage has a demo out. How do I know that name? A quick google takes the place of my all-too-feeble memory, and reveals it’s the point and click adventure I played the demo of back in 2007 to see what it was like to be John Walker for a day, and decided I hated it. And that was a fun comment thread. Anyway, new demo out, more details on its site and a little footage follows…
I will clearly never play this game… but will you?
*Yes, I know.
27/05/2010 at 20:36 Nick says:
Mmm.. brown sauce and cheese slices.
That lantern arm is rather odd looking in the video.. reminds me a bit of ‘The Arm’ in Trespasser.
27/05/2010 at 20:43 Lord_Mordja says:
“Mein fuhrer! I can walk!”
27/05/2010 at 22:26 N says:
LOOK AT MY HAND! LOOK AT IT! I HAVE A LANTERN! LOOK AT IT! LOOK AT MY LANTERN!
28/05/2010 at 00:07 jeremypeel says:
Maybe the creeping horror of the increasingly central lantern is the real antagonist of the game, and all the Lovecraftian stuff is mere misdirection.
27/05/2010 at 20:37 zulu12 says:
Wow. great game I think. I am a sucker for Lovecraftian stuff
27/05/2010 at 20:50 Davie says:
Something goes horribly wrong? Are we surprised?
Still, I haven’t played enough creepy games. I’ll check this out. Penumbra was probably better though.
27/05/2010 at 20:50 Antsy says:
Call of Cthul-Ooooooo!
27/05/2010 at 20:52 Bhazor says:
No. No one likes Craft cheese, its just something that happens to cheap burgers. Like falling down and getting a bruise on your arse.
27/05/2010 at 20:55 CLD says:
has a better download speed.
27/05/2010 at 20:55 CLD says:
Ahem, i meant Big Download.
27/05/2010 at 22:37 Mario Figueiredo says:
Yeah. Definiteky. Can’t stand these bandwidth throttle services and their fake connection drops to force me to subscribe. Your’s giving me >350Kbps
27/05/2010 at 21:16 Meowington T Cat says:
I love good horror games, all 2 of them. The biggest problem with these games is that they’re not suspensful or creepy at all. They usually contain poor graphics and cheap scares, and little to no atmosphere with stale environments. If you’re going to try and make a horror-based game, it better tug at my senses. Showing a trailer where aiming your flashlight at a poorly-rendered corpse is supposed to be frightening does not make me want to buy this. I felt that even though Penumbra was made by a couple of indie developers, it did a good job of making some decent suspense. I wish that developers with a bit more money in their pockets would do similar with some bigger production values.
28/05/2010 at 02:13 Samuel Bigos says:
Make sure you check out their next game;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEHPwAvrc_U
27/05/2010 at 21:16 robrob says:
Looks Penumbra-y. It would be nice if it was good.
28/05/2010 at 00:15 jeremypeel says:
I was thinking Penumbra too, until that clip of a sodding jigsaw puzzle midway through the video. Looks like there’ll be some pretty unnerving set pieces though.
27/05/2010 at 21:21 hydra9 says:
The first game was horrible, from what I played of it. Also… Loath Nolder is not the right name for a character in anything. Ever.
27/05/2010 at 23:57 kafka7 says:
For some reason I misread Loath Nolder as Noddy Holder. If he’s in a Cthulhu game I will be buying this immediately.
/beers
27/05/2010 at 21:37 dogsolitude_uk says:
Why can’t we just have a decent s0dd1ng RPG based on the Call of Cthulhu pen and paper RPG?
It’s been done with Vampire: The Masquerade, and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was pretty good, but the mystique, setting and mythos of Lovecraft’s work is simply too large to fit into a linear adventure game and work effectively.
I want to wander round foggy coastal towns with a knackered revolver and two bullets, slowly losing my mind because the suspiciously fish-like locals are after me for their moonlit sacrifice on the beach (in a game though, not like that time in Cromer).
I want to be able to choose my character, use guns if necessary, pick locks, rifle through drawers, improve my skills, and replay with different characters. Seriously, how a Cthulhu game could be anything other than a large, sandboxy RPG I’ll never know.
And get the guy who designed the Shalebridge Cradle (Thief III) to do the art direction.
And bring me a truffle pizza with caviar and champagne sauce, NOW.
28/05/2010 at 09:31 MadMatty says:
i agree with all posts from the top down which is a new experience- get the essence from the pen n paper RPG- long creepy hours at the library. Open world style would suit the game, with a travel map-
as for corpses- you dont wanna be slowly walking towards it- Its supposed to fall over ya when you open the cupboard or something, with some audio chord striking… dont the designers see horror movies?
Only played about 2 hours into Penumbra the 1st, but that game is pretty cool
27/05/2010 at 21:39 bob says:
I’ve been stuck on the demo, several times.
I’ve got the piece of paper taped together, found a locked hatch on the floor, have the torch, lantern and handle.
the hints both mention an elevator controlled by stones on the wall but I can’t find jack.
27/05/2010 at 21:43 Sam says:
Yeah, I noticed that to..
But I think it looks more like Frictional Games upcoming game: Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Especially the lantern..
But thats not a bad think because Amnesia looks incredible :D (I think it will be the best of these)
http://www.amnesiagame.com/
27/05/2010 at 21:49 jti says:
Might not be what you’re looking for, but Cyclopean seems like an interesting project. http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/
27/05/2010 at 22:00 dogsolitude_uk says:
Wow, I’ll be keeping an eye on that one :) Thanks!
27/05/2010 at 21:59 stahlwerk says:
Is this a first person clicker (myst) or more of a shoot’n'chat?
also..
“Iceberg Interactive – play it cool”
…really?
27/05/2010 at 22:03 Al3xand3r says:
More adventure games are always good. This and Amnesia: The Dark Descent will be mine.
27/05/2010 at 22:05 GoldenNugget says:
Looks a lot like Amnesia: the Dark Descent, which is being made by the Penumbra guys.
27/05/2010 at 22:13 MWoody says:
Maybe this is nitpicky, but is it really necessary to state “from the makers of The Darkness Within” when it’s in the title of the game?
27/05/2010 at 22:39 Mario Figueiredo says:
Probably. When you consider that today there’s this trend to give sequels to other developers.
27/05/2010 at 23:16 Krimson says:
Hopefully this will be like the good, non-shooty bits of Dark Corners of The Earth.
I remember reading somewhere that there’s no chance of death in the game though, and part of the horror in a, well, horror game is that the forces you are pit against are a serious threat to your wellbeing. If that threat is taken away, then you’re just walking through a spooky house.
That said, I am cautiously optimistic, and the sooner all the myst-like games switch to 3D the better.
27/05/2010 at 23:38 jvempire says:
I hope there’s more bolt-dooring action!
27/05/2010 at 23:46 Krimson says:
Oh, don’t be like that.
Yeah, there is a fine line between ‘oh shit, I’m gonna die!’ and ‘I’ve played this bit 30 times already.’
But once you got into the groove of COC’s chase sequence it was genuinely thrilling… At least until you forgot to push the cupboard in front of the door.
Perhaps a better example would be the first Alone in the Dark? Apart from the unkillable and surprisingly dangerous spiders/rats and that goddamned pirate, the difficulty seemed about right in terms of horror gameplay.
28/05/2010 at 01:24 durr says:
Is that the Penumbra engine?
btw… play Penumbra!
28/05/2010 at 02:22 Ozzie says:
Is this all pre-rendered or is there also some realtime 3D?
Some shots of the trailer suggested that you could move through the environments, but mostly it looked like node-based 1st person.
Which is terribly outdated, has no advantages and was always just used because of technical limitations. Unbelievable it’s still used today, I hate it!
28/05/2010 at 02:48 Mario Figueiredo says:
It’s full 3D in first-person with freedom of movement. I particularly enjoyed the eye motion, but was not too keen on the walking/running motion. For such an intimate experience, as they wish you to have, it would have been important if it had a more realistic movement motion.
However, to me the game fails considerably worse on other aspects. Being lead by the hand through the scary scenes without having an option to control my character is extremely unexpected and I didn’t particularly welcome that feature. One can argue that I could just accept that as a device to guarantee the wanted effect, much like a writer tries to lead its readers. But to me it completely blows the suspension of disbelief and ruins the whole game. It’s time game designers stop thinking about their games narrative as having the same rules as books or film. This is an entirely different medium.
28/05/2010 at 09:11 jeremypeel says:
Yep – I’m pretty sure games have greater potential for horror than either books or film in some respects. We’re all overly familiar with the argument of treating games as a different medium to film but it’s especially true here. Horror directors spend all their time trying to put the audience in the place of the protagonist, something that’s taken for granted in games; why on earth would the developers take that away at the first chance they get?
At least Frictional seem to be driving in the right direction. That Amnesia trailer is quite something, and it looks like they’re taking some of their cues from Thief.
28/05/2010 at 05:44 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
Oh, it was a pun. OK, right, gotcha.
28/05/2010 at 06:43 The Telemetrics of Robert Francis Bailey says:
Its lovecraft – so i will buy it. A compulsion that means i am constantly disappointed .
28/05/2010 at 08:38 DuQa says:
ücretsiz dizi izlemek için tıklayınız
28/05/2010 at 10:06 warth0g says:
“Seriously, how a Cthulhu game could be anything other than a large, sandboxy RPG I’ll never know.”
..welll with any luck the Secret World might give us some of that.. there’s definetly Lovecraftian influence, and it will be large and open, although it’s an MMO. We can but hope.. I’ll be checking it out as anything Lovercrafty is OK with me…
28/05/2010 at 10:52 Chaz says:
Dark Corners of the Earth is still the best Cthulhu game out in my opinion, it had a great atmosphere that even the dated graphics couldn’t diminish. Plus I loved they way you didn’t even get a gun for the first couple of hours, you just snooped around playing detective.
Just a shame I kept hitting a CTD bug in the refinery, as I’d love to finish it some day.
28/05/2010 at 10:53 Ozzie says:
Shadow of the Comet is still the best game based on Lovecrafts works that I have ever played. The graphics really don’t look too nice on screenshots, even if you like blocky pixel art, but in motion it looks better.
Great story, atmosphere, character. Too bad it features horrible keyboard controls and a stupid dead end. So, beware!
28/05/2010 at 19:38 hydra9 says:
@Ozzie:
Totally agree. Sad to say it, but Shadow Of The Comet (1992) is still my favourite Lovecraftian game. And even it was far from perfect. Btw, the keyboard interface is much better than the mouse interface they added for the CD-ROM version!
28/05/2010 at 10:55 Ozzie says:
Okay, I haven’t played Dark Corners. But I guess I’ll get around to it one day.
28/05/2010 at 14:22 Hmm says:
Love the demo. Really nice graphics, good atmosphere and it’s great that they made it 3D instead of sticking to Myst-like exploration, as much as like the latter.
28/05/2010 at 19:57 deus says:
Did you play the first game at ALL?!
Darkness within hunt for loth nolder? YOU dont get anymore suspense and atmosphere then THAT!
28/05/2010 at 21:04 kermy says:
Of course I’ll try it. I love Lovecraft and that trailer looked awesome.
28/05/2010 at 22:46 hydra9 says:
Keeping an open mind, I tried the demo… and really quite liked it. Even the bit with sticking together pieces of a torn diagram. A billion times better than the first game. I’m intrigued.