A opinion on Call of Cthulhu: Wasted Land.
Google Play Store: Call of Cthulhu: Wasted Land
I came upon the game through the current Indie Gala IX, that was offering the game in a pay what you want action.
The first experiences didn’t bode well. The game restarts any time your screen locks, and as mine is set to lock very quickly, that gets irksome real soon. The controls appear to be a bit weird, I had to check the tutorial to see how the game works and apparently it does as I expected, so Ill have to figure out how to do that “correctly”? And several times, after starting the game, it crashed my phone. Annoying. But the reviews on the play store seem relatively positive, so it must just be a streak of bad luck. Time to play it some more.
Extended play eliminated a lot of my irks with the game.
- The controls are not very intuitive, but they suffice.
- The graphics are not too spectacular but certainly up to par with any android game you might find.
- The story feels a bit weird to me because I simply don’t see the Chtulhu mythos as a good place for a shooter type game of any kind. I expect lot’s of angst, madness, weakness, etc. Not the testosterone driven gunslinging that this game offers. I might be behind on the Cthulhu game fashion, as I did skip on Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth some years ago, but going back to the original stories, I don’t think it fits. And honestly, I even find the Dark Corners approach slightly more fitting since it at least has the “lonely guy fighting the impossible” angle.
That being said, the old “It’s WW2, the germans have occult allies” is a well trodden path, Indiana Jones comes to mind, but also the Tannhauser boardgame.
A final conclusion would be that this isn’t a bad game. The controls could have been better, but they’re not awful either, once you get the hang of them. Don’t get this if you’re looking for a decent Cthulhu mythos game, you might want to consider Elder Sign: Omens. It’s more of a boardgame approach to the mythos, but at least it feels right. If you’re on the other hand looking for turn based combat, you might like this game. Although you I personally prefer Cyberlords – Arcology, not an exact match, more of an RPG side to it, but still better. Or for the hard-line turn based fans maybe Battle for Wesnoth even though I haven’t tried it on Android yet.
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