I don't think it's a good adventure game. The game gives you zero feedback, e.g: you can't examine items in your inventory to figure out what they even are or might be used for, you must be standing in the exact correct spot to examine environment objects or nothing happens. The brooch didn't do anything when I used it before I needed to to progress. I've seen screenshots where other people have used it before then, I'm not sure if this is a bug.

There are doorways that lead to death pits, you can't even examine them to see that there's anything wrong. Hope you saved before entering. Invisible death pits in the centre of several rooms. Rats kill you by touching you, I'm not sure why. They don't even seem to be eldritch rats or anything. I don't know what's with the spiders, their sprites look like something from an 8-bit game. It was bugging me trying to think what they looked like, I figured it out - the crab-type Space Invaders. Long pauses at the end of voice lines, and the voice lines often run on past the displayed dialogue so if you skip ahead it skips the following dialogue boxes for that line and fast forwards the entire conversation.

A few moon logic puzzles, particularly the feather one and what I don't think is even a puzzle - walk around a random room for a minute until a secret door opens in the wall. There's absolutely no indication to do this. Hope you know which chemicals and order to use them in for the process for developing photographs, that's actually a puzzle. You only have about a 1/3500 chance of guessing it, so you'd better look it up.


I got stuck in unwinnable states twice, once by using the book before getting the key for it, the game would not allow me to use the book again, had to reload and get the key first before looking at it. Second time was if Bishop walks off the screen without giving you a key, you are stuck in an unwinnable state with no idea that anything is actually wrong unless you look it up. I'm unclear as to what was supposed to be happening at the end of the Hambleton house. The protagonist started running but I had no idea what he was running from. Apparently there's supposed to be a fire? I didn't see anything. Maybe it's some kind of emulation error.

The voice actors' attempts at eldritch gibbering are pretty amusing. I also liked that the cat runs around inside your inventory window. It occasionally looks quite nice, the cemetery at night particularly stood out to me. Other times it's some sort of digitized photograph background, it works sometimes, but I'm not really a fan of the effect overall.

I'm pretty disappointed with it since I had heard positive things about it before. Excavation of Hob's Barrow is more like what I thought this game would be.

Spoiler Alert
* Story
Good story but not recommended for anyone who seeks the actual Cthulhu Mythos experience cause the story in this game will focus on the protagonist who can stop the awakening of The Great Old One and become a Hero, unlike other Cthulhu Mythos media characters who mostly end up insane, suicide, depressed, or live in fear for their entire life.
*Performance
I often found a bug that makes my screen freeze during the cutscene and a bug that makes me can't interact or speak with some NPC which both result in loading the latest save. This is so annoying especially when I did not save the game at the point where bugs have not occurred.

*However, If you are used to the classic game during that period and do not easily get annoyed by the old-school gameplay like me. I highly recommend this game.

I am half way in the game (more or less) and even if the story seems ok, the mechanics are so old that are frustrating.
A word to the wise: for the love of the great old ones, please learn the keyboard shortcut for the actions (the game will NOT tell you what they are, but Internet can help), otherwise the game will drag on for ages, while you search for pixel clues using the mouse

Although it has an interesting story, it is unplayable due to the lack of information provided by the game for the player to navigate and know what they have to do, and I'm not talking about puzzles, I'm talking about the fact that mechanically the game only progresses if you do exactly one action but you have no clues to know that you should do that action.

Additionally, my gameplay got stuck after I couldn't progress past a dialogue; there's only one correct answer, yet it marks all four options as incorrect.

It's the last game with "Call of Cthulhu" in title that I'd have to beat to complete this "series". My hope was to play at least enjoyable adventure game, but Shadow of the Comet is one of the most (if not THE most) confusing adventure games that I've played.

It has kinda interesting plot, nice atmosphere and few really good game design decisions, but puzzles, pacing, controls(!) makes it borderline unplayable mess of a game.

Good luck to get anywhere in this game without guide.

Meiner Meinung nach nicht gut auf modernen PCs spielbar, manche Aktionen funktionieren nicht, oder nicht immer.

Some things, are best left in the past.

This game is let down by ii's extremely clunky user interface. No action is intuitive and scene exploration is a chore. Look elsewhere for point and click goodness. It's a shame because the story and theme have real potential but the execution is flawed to the point of agony.

I was looking for a nostalgia hit, loved casually playing adventure games when i was younger. For 1993, the voice acting and presentation is fairly decent, but the controls are unorthodox -- favoring the arrow keys and some shortcuts (which will require some outside research) for various actions - ([T]alk, [O]pen, ect.). Feels a quite clunky compared to the far more polished sierra/LucasArts games of the same era. There's a mouse in there but it just moves you in the most-relevant carnal direction at the time you first press it -- if that makes sense.

Story blends themes and plot elements from quite a few lovecraft plots. This works, it lends itself a great twin-peaks atmosphere of extra-spooky-seamy underbelly type stuff.

Its also good to mention that the text speed is pretty slow, often lagging behind the voice acting, but skipping the text can often inadvertently skip the next line. So be prepared for just hanging in there with an extra chill gaming experience, or do what I did -- and watch a long-play.

I'd recommend Gabriel Knight if you're looking for a good spooky retro-adventure game.

Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet

POSITIVES

+ Cthulhu-Mythos
+ aktuelle Bildschirmauflösungen funktionieren
+ alle Dialoge (auf Englisch) vertont
+ obwohl es auf der Steamseite nicht als deutsch markiert ist, kann man sehr wohl eine deutsche Übersetzung der Texte im Menü auswählen
+ Dialoge werden meist über bildschirmfüllende Animationen der entsprechenden Person abgehandelt (etwas das spätere Adventures in der Form leider nicht wiederverwendet haben)
+ Tagebuch sammelt alle gefundenen Informationen

NEGATIVES

- trashiges Intro
- Grafisch auch damals nicht herausragend und heute natürlich noch unansehnlicher
- dudelige Sounduntermalung oder komplette Stille, was beides schlimm ist
- altmodische Technik ist weit untertrieben ausgedrückt
- umständliche Bedienung: man kann nicht einfach auf einen Punkt klicken und die Figur bewegt sich hin, sondern man steuert über Pfeilsymbole oder einfach gleich über die Pfeiltasten, wobei Letzteres noch am besten klappt; man kann nicht etwa ein interaktives Objekt einfach anklicken, sondern man muss in seine Nähe gehen und dann extra in einem Menü auswählen was man damit machen möchte, was unfassbar umständlich ist
- einmal im Inventar gelesene Bücher oder Telegramme verschwinden (deren Infos können aber immerhin im Tagebuch wieder eingesehen werden)
- Textgeschwindigkeit ist viel langsamer als das Gesprochenen, und zwar so langsam, dass der Text schon mal eine Minute oder mehr hinterherginkt
- hoher Schwierigkeitsgrad und ja, man kann in dem Spiel sterben was an sich kein Problem darstellt, aber wenn man einfach mal in der Stadt an helllichten Tag erschossen wird, ist das schon schwer nachvollziehbar
- umherirren in einem Wald der fast überall gleich aussieht
- kurze Spielzeit von etwa 4 Stunden, auch wenn man es soweit eh nicht spielen möchte

FAZIT

Das Horror-Adventure von 1993 basiert auf H. P. Lovecrafts Cthulhu-Mythos und verwendet viele Elemente aus Lovecrafts Geschichten Das Grauen von Dunwich und Schatten über Innsmouth.
Man verkörpert den jungen, britischen Astronomen und Journalist John Parker, der 1910 nach Illsmouth reist um den Halleyschen Kometen für eine Zeitung zu fotografieren. Schon einmal 1834 hat Lord Boleskine den Komet damals gut beobachten können, wurde daraufhin aber wahnsinnig. John, der noch drei Tage bis zum Komet Zeit hat, möchte herausfinden was damals geschah.
Die Steuerung und die Interaktion mit Objekten ist fast schon „schmerzhaft“, vor allem wenn man bedenkt, dass Monkey Island 2 zu dem Zeitpunkt schon zwei Jahre auf dem Markt war und zeigte wie man es besser macht. Aber immerhin ist in dieser Version schon eine Maussteuerung integriert, die die Release-Version noch nicht hatte. Ein furchtbarer Gedanke.
Rätsel und Geschichte sind eher mittelmäßig und Horror oder Grusel kann bei der Optik und den Sounds leider nicht aufkommen. Durch den ständigen Kampf gegen die Steuerung kann auch kein Spielspaß aufkommen, weshalb ich dem Spiel nur einen Daumen nach unten geben kann, und das obwohl ich ein Lovecraft-Fan bin.

Dennoch danke an den User, der mir das Spiel geschenkt hat.

Wenn ihr an weiteren Reviews von mir interessiert seid, dann folgt meiner Gruppe.