[SamandMax]

I'm playing Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth right now, a weird FPS/adventure hybrid from 2005 set in the Lovecraft universe. It's one of those games that's tough to judge because it does a lot of good things, you just have to wade through a lot of bad decisions and poor execution to get to them. When the game plays like an adventure, which it does mostly for the first half, it works and creates a vibe that's not unlike a horror-tinged Deus Ex. The town of Innsmouth acts like a hub and you get to wander around slowly getting more immersed in the story and atmosphere which makes the occasional stealth sequence that much more harrowing. Trouble comes at a certain point in the game when guns become involved and soon it just falls apart because of some really awful action sequences that are handled poorly and feel completely out of place in comparison to the first half. Combine that with countless bugs and glitches that sometimes make the game unplayable, a ridiculous save system and controller-throwing levels of frustration and you've got a weirdly unique game tarnished by sloppy design.