Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth Preview

To help them create a detailed and highly immersive setting, the developers first relied on NDL's NetImmerse engine formerly used to power their adventure game Simon the Sorcerer 3D. The NetImmerse engine was dropped some time ago, however, in favor of a proprietary renderer. As many contemporary development teams, Headfirst decided to incorporate the Havok Physics Engine, but it too was dropped in favor of a homemade solution over three years ago as they had troubles getting it integrated.

Damn, I hate rain! It messes up my hair!

This place gives me the creeps... maybe if I whistle...

According to the designers and programmers, the physics are essential to making a believable and fully interactive game environment. Like most high-profile games we see nowadays, Call of Cthulhu features object collision, water effects, wind effects, etc. Besides that, monsters appear to be loaded with details. It was revealed that each creature in the game was packed with approximately 10,000 polys, which will hopefully make them considerably scarier. An additional effort was poured into things like positional audio, which should literarily make you piss in your pants when the action starts rolling and you are overwhelmed by monsters.

Believe it or not, the boys at Headfirst Productions even had a multiplayer mode planned, but, again, they had to scrap it in order to fully concentrate on the single-player campaign.

At this point it looks as though CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth is well on its way to become one of the most appreciated horror titles on the market. The disappointing thing is that you won't be able to play it until some time in September 2004. We sincerely hope the programmers and designers will make the most of all the extra time for development. At any rate, be on the lookout for this one when it hits the shelves this summer.