Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss (XSX) Review
Summary: The kind of cosmic horror that makes you ponder your place in the universe
3.5
Fear the unknown
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is one of a handful of games that properly nail the pace of a Lovecraftian mystery.
It’s slow, ponderously so at times, but this is by design. It’s a methodical mystery that eschews combat. Instead, it does its damndest to tax your grey cells to the brink of insanity while forcing you to explore a world dripping with a pervasive sense of existential dread that only good cosmic horror can.
Set in the near future in a world wrecked by climate change, players step into the shoes of Noah, an agent for the Ancile organisation. After his fellow agent, Mei, goes dark, Noah, along with his mentor Elsa, arrives at Mei’s house in the flooded Louisiana swamps to find her home empty and its walls covered in arcane sigils.
Eventually, the pair make their way to the basement, which is covered in strange goo that has formed into a pulsating organic altar. Is this a gateway to another realm?
Acting as an effective tutorial before being tasked with unravelling much greater mysteries several thousand leagues under the sea, Noah searches the house for clues using the game’s quirky radar system, which has you analysing objects to reveal a certain property or keyword. These are then used to scan for items with similar properties hidden in the environment.
For example, an early puzzle requires you to find hydrogen fuel rods for a generator. There is a stack nearby, but not every rod is fully charged. After acquiring the hydrogen keyword, you can use it to ping the stack of rods and find the correct ones.
This system makes you feel clever while forcing you to think carefully about the items you are trying to uncover, and, as the game progresses, you’ll need to use multiple words to help find what feels like the proverbial needle in a haystack at times.
There is the bare minimum of handholding throughout Cosmic Abyss. Though Noah does have an AI companion, KEY, that helps him organise evidence and relevant information, occasionally asking you questions to nudge you in the right direction, it’s ultimately down to the player to keep track of the investigation and find a way forward.
This initially feels quite compelling, especially during the opening hours when you only have a few clues to sift through; however, as the game progresses, the amount of information the player needs to parse, and tiny clues that are incredibly easy to miss, make it easy to lose track of the investigation or hit a wall.
This is compounded by the fact that each stage of the investigation contains two ways to progress. There’s a slightly more straightforward answer that will corrupt Noah and increase Cthulhu’s influence over him, or a more complicated solution that saves Noah, but attempting to figure it out drives the player insane instead.
Though this is mitigated somewhat by toggling various difficulty options, including reducing the amount of corruption certain actions produce, allowing you to analyse objects without using energy, and telling you how many clues there are in an area, or having KEY provide Noah with hints (though it’s not as useful as you think).
It’s a shame because it’s a neat idea for a detective game, especially a Lovecraftian one; it just doesn’t work very well, mainly since the corrupting solution is so obvious that you’ll actively avoid it. (I wonder if using this ancient artefact covered in eldritch glyphs that drove the crew mad is harmful?) Or you’ll end up making progress through both and end up with a hodgepodge of leads that seemingly go nowhere.
This inevitably leads to aimlessly wandering around the facility, desperately hunting for some minor clue or hidden item in the vain hope it’ll end the tedium and push the investigation forward (fine, I’ll use the glowing green madness stick, if only to get to the next area).
Thankfully, though, the game looks absolutely gorgeous. Inside the station, there’s a disquieting juxtaposition of stark industrialism and slimy eldritch organisms. Meanwhile, the twisting tunnels of the underwater labyrinth and ancient sunken city of R’lyeh are as oppressive as they are beautiful.
This is accompanied by a melancholic, at times sombre score, mixed with minimalist sound design that heightens the sense of isolation, tension, and an uneasy dread that pervades every moment as Noah plumbs the depths and slowly uncovers the horrifying truth.
You’ll want to keep pressing on, too, thanks to superb writing that does a fantastic job of merging plot points and themes from various Lovecraftian tales into a suitably macabre slice of cosmic horror all its own.
Final Thoughts
Though the pace of Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss may be a tad slow for some. If you have the patience for the kind of slow burn, you can get your surprisingly sharp teeth into and have a keen fish-like eye for a mystery that doesn’t reveal its secrets easily. It’s hard not to fall for its maddening charms.
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