Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss Review - Eldritch Chore

For someone who considers himself a massive fan of cosmic horror above any other flavor of spookiness, it might sound weird that I've never directly engaged much with the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and hey, you wouldn’t be the first one to call me weird. Most games directly following the Cthulhu mythos have done so with lukewarm reception from critics and audiences, so the closest I've personally gotten is the eldritch horror of something like Dredge or that one episode of Love, Death & Robots.  I know, God forbid I just read a book, right? Oh, the faith you have in my attention span.

That's why when a game like Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss comes across my desk and promises a compelling narrative, gorgeous visuals, and investigation mechanics, it's hard to say no. 

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss stars Noah, who is stuck in the very Dead Space-ian scenario of having to investigate a Pacific undersea mining station after communication with their crew cuts out. But the key difference here is that Noah isn't much of a fighter - rather, your greatest weapon will be your problem-solving skills and, perhaps, your patience.

This is overwhelmingly a puzzle game with investigative elements, so anybody expecting a fast-paced horror experience may find the real horror to be how slow and obtuse the game is. As a noteworthy aside, though, the start of Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss allows you to choose the default Investigation mode or the more accessible Exploration mode, which allows you some additional assistance from Noah's AI companion, Key. Given that Key's helpful quips are optional, I see little downside to playing on Exploration mode, as I found it invaluable for making progress when I frequently got stuck. This is not an easy game, and the amount of time you'll be exploring and trying to understand your next steps may grind you down if you're stuck spinning your wheels on where to go next.

That will truly be in the eye of the beholder, though, because I'm someone uniquely turned off by the sort of obtuse puzzles in horror games that blend real-world logic with contrived nonsense logic. I never find myself thinking in the way they want me to,  especially when I'm less confused by the solution itself and more by how to execute it. I'll talk about that in due time, though - first, I'd like to highlight the gameplay mechanics, which I did find unexpectedly clever.

Each chapter of the game will have you hunting for clues and lore around each level to piece together what happened at the PIT station you've been sent to below the Pacific Ocean, and key to doing so is your sonar. Analyzing clues in the game will allow you to release a sonar pulse that hunts for different versions of that item or material around your environment. For example: scan a key card, and you can configure your sonar to highlight other key cards in the area. It's a clever mechanic, especially because you can configure the sonar to scan combinations of item signatures that allow a more targeted scan, which will be required to solve some of the trickier deductions.

Analyzing each clue will cost an energy point, but these can be refilled by injecting yourself with a serum made of suspicious glowing mushrooms which are definitely not FDA approved. Key also has upgradeable abilities that can make analyzing clues more efficient. Clues you collect will be dumped in your mental map, which allows you to drag them around in a variety of ways to solve the minor and major conundrums you find along your path. The clues themselves can be pretty interesting too, since each location is filled with well-written lore that gives meaningful context to what's happened to this station and the people in it.

If you struggle to wrap up a particular investigation, you may not be out of luck, as most chapters have two distinct paths they can take to affect your game and ultimately grant you one of several endings. One path will increase your level of corruption and thus empower Cthulhu, and the other will decrease it. It may sound like a stereotypical good and evil system on the surface, but the way it changes the course of the game makes it fairly unique.

The trouble ultimately lies in the execution. Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is a very slow game, and while its puzzle-solving can be clever, it can also be obtuse and frustrating. In one case, a room on the station was flooded, and draining the water required unclogging the pipes leading to that room. I won’t spoil how I figured that out, but after lots of pussyfooting around and enough pointless laps around the station to hit my daily step count and then some, I basically just asked Key for the solution. Did I mention I appreciate Exploration mode? Worth repeating. Anyway, once the clogged pipe was fixed, which bafflingly only required replacing one piece rather than others I pulled away that were also clearly clogged, the next step was to reset the drainage system, whose computer terminal was actively zero help. This left me to bang my head against the figurative wall until I realized that despite the futuristic technology all over the station, the drainage system had a physical button below the terminal that needed to be pressed to finish the puzzle. It didn’t exactly stick out, let’s put it that way. Or maybe I’m dumb. I will accept either explanation.

Other than prompting Key to give you the best answer she can in exploration mode, there's not much that can be done if you get truly stuck like this. In another situation, I had to power a laptop that would give me the necessary information to translate an ancient language.  I powered the laptop, read what was on it, and was seemingly no closer to the solution. Boom, baffled again.  That is until I figured out that in order to complete that piece of the puzzle, you seemingly need to go into the mental map, physically connect the clues in your brain, and then you do the translating.  Does this sound intuitive?  I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but that particular solution felt like passing your driving test only to learn you’re not allowed to get in the car until you recite your license number back to it.

Compounding the haphazard nature of the puzzle design is the fact that the controls are… interesting. When interacting with an object using a controller, Noah can press X to examine it, which gives you a close-up view and ability to rotate, but does not put it in your inventory.  To put it in your inventory, you have to press down on the directional pad to take it.  Then to pull it back out and put it down, you need to navigate to it in your inventory, press up on the directional pad to take it out, and then X to place it.  It never once felt intuitive to pick up and put down items with the d-pad this way, and little nagging issues like having to gingerly place an object somewhere the game allows you to rather than simply dropping it feel like a waste of time.  There’s an odd clumsiness to the UI and controls that seems counter-intuitive, which is a shame given how much effort has been put into aspects like the mental map and organization of your clues.

The game also isn’t the least bit scary.  I certainly wouldn’t want or expect a jump scare-fest here, but the overall mood missed an opportunity to gain a foothold under my skin.  It’s not a bad atmosphere by any means, especially when talking about the visuals, which look great in just about any area and damn near photorealistic when underwater.  Seriously, the underwater sections of this game look very cool.  There is the typical stutter you get with Unreal Engine 5 games, unfortunately, but it’s fairly minor and performance is otherwise pretty good.  But I kept hoping for the audio to thrum with the sort of menace I’d expect to make me feel like I’m not alone when I should be.  Ambient noise is a subtle but powerful tool in the horror genre, and proper use of it in games like Silent Hill can create deep discomfort and dread even when nothing is happening.  That tool feels very underutilized here, to the point where despite a whole lot of dreadful things happening, the vibe can feel irrationally chill.  The voice acting is mostly pretty good, despite a few lines here or there seeming stilted or read off a script.  I’m not expecting AAA-level performances anyway, but it’s just another little dent in the immersion.

It might sound like I’m pretty negative on Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, but despite its oddities and frustrations, its tools of puzzle-solving and interesting storytelling have genuine merit.  For that reason alone, I imagine plenty of players can overlook the warts to indulge in a visually stunning experience that doesn’t feel AAA levels of watered down or safe.  So while I’m slapping a rating on it based on my personal experience, here more than usual, carefully consider if you’re the type of person who enjoys the slow-paced and occasionally bizarre puzzle design of games like Myst… or Scorn!  Okay, okay, Scorn is a bad example, I promise this one is better than that. 

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