Retro Call of Cthulhu Video Game Playthrough

Someone had the courage to upload onto Youtube a full, painful playthrough of this 1995 Lovecraftian adventure game, "The Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice." Put out by Infrogrames for the PC, and a couple years later for the Sega Saturn and Playstation, this point-and-click adventure is rather akin to the slew of humorously bad films claiming to be Lovecraftian in some way. In this case, however, some serious theatrical flaws combine with the computer technology of the time to make this one a hilarious flop by today's standards.

Strangely, the game's premise is rather intriguing. It's a follow up piece to Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" set in the 1940s, which includes a Nazi base in Antarctica and a wartime backdrop. The games animation is little better than expected cartoonish graphics for 16-bit systems of the day. However, the most damning feature, especially in hindsight, is the awful dialog. Personally, it puts me in mind of the infamous script and voice acting of the original Resident Evil game, released around the same time as this Lovecraftian adventure. The chants in "Prisoner of Ice" from expected occult sources are especially difficult to take in without laughing. This horrible voice presentation more than the game's early technology ruined its attempts at cultivating ambient horror. At the same time, the said bad performance lends itself to establishing this one as the perfect example of a "retro" '90s horror game.

This is the first part, with the others available from Seablue's channel on Youtube. Clearly, only the purists or those who find B-Grade Lovecraftian humor appealing will be able to take the full playthrough, clocking in at over an hour in length.