This article originally appeared in Pyramid #12
Shadow of the Comet
Published by I•Motion
Directed by Norbert Cellier,
Production Designer: Patrick Charpenet
Price: $79.95In case you haven't noticed by the large number of Call of Cthulhu-related items I've reviewed here in the past year and a half, I'm a big fan of horror in general and H.P. Lovecraft in particular. So when I•Motion announced that they had reached an agreement with Chaosium to produce Call of Cthulhu computer games, I was jazzed to the max.
But I also had some concerns. The otherworldly horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos don't seem to translate very well to a visual medium. It's one thing to read about buildings with non-Euclidian geometry, and beasts that live in the angles of time while the rest of us live in the curves — it's quite another thing to show it. The spectacular failure of every movie that ever tried to properly capture the utter alienness of Lovecraft's vision is proof of that. So how would a computer game fare?
Not badly at all, thank you. Shadow of the Comet is a very nice computer RPG version of a typical Call of Cthulhu story. You are John Parker, English astronomy student, and you're on the trail of something big. Seems back in 1836, another English astronomer named Boleskine decided, after perusing certain odd books, that the small Massachusetts town of Illsmouth would be the perfect spot from which to view the passing of Halley's Comet. But Boleskine found more than he bargained for and was returned to England, hopelessly . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: March 1, 1995
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