Call of Cthulu: The Dark Corners of the Earth

This game is an early Bethesda creation - the same people who churned out RPG hit video games such as Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Fallout: 3.  Call of Cthulu: The Dark Corners of the Earth is an RPG with FPS elements based on the classic dice and paper RPG, Call of Cthulu.  The premise of both games is the investigation of the occult in the flavor of H.P. Lovecraft - a questionable turn of the century pulp sci-fi writer. 

The game has done a good job of incorporating much of the mechanics of the original RPG especially that of sanity checks.  What that translates into in game is a saving throw calculated at every encounter of the occult where if one fails the player loses control of his character as his character succumbs to insanity.  To counter insanity players can inject their characters with morphine which like real life has detrimental effects on the character's health.  Player can also navigate their characters around sources of the occult (i.e. dead bodies, satanic art, alien devices) but they also chance missing essential clues to their investigations.

The game follows a detective who in the prologue of the game is called out to a cult hangout where the cops have surrounded.  The cult seem to be fending off the cops from intruding but have called out your character to talk and negotiate a cease fire between them and the police.  Your character has no idea why they have called him out in particular but as the detective encounters more of the cult characters in the house he realizes that they recognize him on a personal level and that they have been tracking his movements prior to the shoot out.  Further investigations of the hangout lead him to the basement where he encounters what could be an alien being at which point he passes out.  The game continues six years later.  Your character has been in and out of the asylum and he has a vague recollection of his own whereabouts for the last six years.  It is at this point he is reluctantly hired by a store chain manager to go track down a missing store clerk in an isolated town.

The game is essentially a point and click game with a few instances of FPS-like combat.  Players must navigate the detective in each of the locations that his investigation takes him constantly managing what he focuses on for clues since every exposure to occult activity lowers his tolerance to insanity.  Should the character fail his insanity check the screen blurs and control of the character becomes even more difficult.  There are also some stealth elements to the game where the player must navigate his character to cover to avoid detection from NPCs to get to goals or in game events to progress the story as well as a few timed events where the player must navigate to an event point before he is intercepted by an NPC or an unfortunate accident.

Call of Cthulu: The Dark Corners of the Earth does a good job of bringing the the classical RPG to the PC.  The graphics are a little dated but still sets that eeriness you would expect from a game of this genre.  The sound track is low key and the voice acting of the detective is a throwback to post world war two detective fiction.  You can find the game on Steam for $9 USD.