GAME
Anderson & the Legacy of Cthulhu

Format: PC
Homegrown
£14.99

9 006113 152019
Age Restrictions: 16+
Available
27 July 2007


Robert D. Anderson, private investigator from New York, travels to Germany during the first months of WWII in order to research his origins. Following his obscure and dire family history, he discovers a huge underground cave system beneath his ancestor's castle. There the legendary 'Order of the Black Sun' is based, with its dark Blasphemous rituals…

Anderson & the Legacy of Cthulhu is a playable horror novel containing shooter and adventure elements. The PR Company failed to send any instruction with the disc, so installing and playing the game was a bit of pain. For a start, even though you might have the latest version of DirectX, that will not be good enough. You have to install the one that comes with the game, as it contains some necessary SDK code. However the initial install screen gives the impression that this is optional, rather than being integrated into the install program itself.

The game has a number of problems. It refused, point blank, to install on my Sony Vaio laptop and it would only run on the main machine by going into the actual folders to find the individual game programs. It seems that The Legacy of Cthulhu and Vista do not like each other. Also there is no facility to allow you to change the graphics options from the game. However, if you change you desktop settings the game will run in that resolution, which gives a workable if annoying work around.

The cover, which was sent, boasts a huge bonus pack with artwork, posters, RPG materials and shorts stories based on H.P. Lovecraft's stories. If it exists I failed to find it, presumably it was meant to come as a two disc set rather than the one I got.

Having given the set-up a bit of a kicking, what of the game? Well to be honest, given that this is an amateur produced game, with little in the way of resources of a big studio, it's nothing less than average, especially as they are trying to break into the popular and overcrowded first person shooter (FPS) market.

Graphically it's not up to the best of the competition, The main purpose of the game appears to be to unlock the extras and cut scenes on the disc, which can be accessed individually anyway through your browser. The AI is hardly in evidence and some of their attacks are dubious.

Overall, even given that this is an amateur product, it only just stays this side of mediocre. The makers have addressed some of the problems in an update patch, especially the loading time which was long enough to make a cup of coffee, as well as some annoying bugs and crashes.

If you want to support a fan created product then be my guest, buy it, but to be honest there numerous better examples of FPS games on the market.

Charles Packer

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cover

£11.98 (Amazon.co.uk)

   
cover
£11.99 (Play.com)
   

£12.87 (Thehut.com)

All prices correct at time of going to press.