Call of Cthulhu - A casual vacation in R'lyeh

[Grounder]

Goodnight, Cthulu-sempai~

[Ometeotl]

Dammit, you stole my "Cthulhu DOES make people mad" joke before I could post it.

[Telamon]

So, what DOES happen if you don't get all the dagron coins?

[Ivy]

So, what DOES happen if you don't get all the dagron coins?

you die after killing the evil priest man because Mario Goes Insane

[Le Neveu de Rameau]

Now there's a short little hack with atmosphere in spades. I especially enjoyed the wee touches like the blocks flickering in the torchlight; those sort of details show a particular care for making sure the playing is immersed in the experience which goes above and beyond the call of duty. All in all a very well-done project.

That said...I was a bit disconcerted by the fact that Cthulhu himself A) deigns to talk to pitiful, insect-like humans in their own pitiful, insect-like language, and B) he rants like a standard villain about all the evil and chaos he's going to cause. Cthulhu doesn't plan to drive humans insane, that's just the side-effect of beholding him. He doesn't have any particular plans involving humans at all, for that matter, because they're completely irrelevant to him; it's not so much "I shall CRUSH this PITIFUL INFERIOR CREATURE" as "Egh, a gnat (swat)". That's meant to be the terrifying aspect of the Great Old Ones: they're not even malicious gods who deliberately wish to cause you suffering; the suffering they cause is coldly impersonal and incidental from their perspective, because they barely even notice you. Part of the madness associated with them, it is implied, is due to one's realization of one's utterly minuscule place in the (cold, indifferent) universe. Giving Cthulhu a vendetta against humanity removes this aspect, and makes him rather less impressive.

It does seem a bit of an odd last impression to have after a very good buildup. As a whole, this hack was very good at conveying a Lovecraftian sense of dread, and had some very cool interpretations of R'lyehian architechture; this giving way to traditional good-vs-evil in the final boss seems a bit odd. I wonder if it might not have helped to leave all exposition to Joseph Priestly before he kicks the sacrifical blood-collecting vessel and just let the C-man do incophrensible Cthulhu-esque things, without any implication that he considers himself to be engaging on a personal level with cthulh-you. Though on the other hand, maybe trying to frame a final fight against an unstoppable force as a conflict you can win is intrinsically a losing battle.

In any event, it's good to see that in contrast to all appearance, Mario was in fact wearing a hat all the time. Thus may we, like him, rest once more with ease, the nightmare, for the moment, having receded into the past.

[Truhan]

Now there's a short little hack with atmosphere in spades. I especially enjoyed the wee touches like the blocks flickering in the torchlight; those sort of details show a particular care for making sure the playing is immersed in the experience which goes above and beyond the call of duty. All in all a very well-done project.

That said...I was a bit disconcerted by the fact that Cthulhu himself A) deigns to talk to pitiful, insect-like humans in their own pitiful, insect-like language, and B) he rants like a standard villain about all the evil and chaos he's going to cause. Cthulhu doesn't plan to drive humans insane, that's just the side-effect of beholding him. He doesn't have any particular plans involving humans at all, for that matter, because they're completely irrelevant to him; it's not so much "I shall CRUSH this PITIFUL INFERIOR CREATURE" as "Egh, a gnat (swat)". That's meant to be the terrifying aspect of the Great Old Ones: they're not even malicious gods who deliberately wish to cause you suffering; the suffering they cause is coldly impersonal and incidental from their perspective, because they barely even notice you. Part of the madness associated with them, it is implied, is due to one's realization of one's utterly minuscule place in the (cold, indifferent) universe. Giving Cthulhu a vendetta against humanity removes this aspect, and makes him rather less impressive.

It does seem a bit of an odd last impression to have after a very good buildup. As a whole, this hack was very good at conveying a Lovecraftian sense of dread, and had some very cool interpretations of R'lyehian architechture; this giving way to traditional good-vs-evil in the final boss seems a bit odd. I wonder if it might not have helped to leave all exposition to Joseph Priestly before he kicks the sacrifical blood-collecting vessel and just let the C-man do incophrensible Cthulhu-esque things, without any implication that he considers himself to be engaging on a personal level with cthulh-you. Though on the other hand, maybe trying to frame a final fight against an unstoppable force as a conflict you can win is intrinsically a losing battle.

In any event, it's good to see that in contrast to all appearance, Mario was in fact wearing a hat all the time. Thus may we, like him, rest once more with ease, the nightmare, for the moment, having receded into the past.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with this. Nobody survives when Cthulhu awakens. He's also really small. I think a better idea would have been to have Cthulhu himself as a vertical level where you have to grab a something and poke him in his weakness hole(s) several times before he wakes up or something to send him back to sleep. Random enemies would be all over the place that you have to dodge. It is an old hack though, it'd be pretty interesting to see what a remake would be like with today's SMW technology or in the SMBX engine.

[Ometeotl]

I mean, I think he just did what he did to make a regularish boss for the hack that included Cthulhu. All the "rawr I'm evil" stuff I think was pretty tongue in cheek.

[Ditocoaf]

I mean, pop-culture Cthulu is just a tentacle monster with a "madness" motif. This hack is far from the only offender in that regard, it just follows the standard.

I suppose if you wanted to have a final boss while still maintaining the unimaginability of the god, you could say he never got anywhere near here and instead fight the equivalent of, like, his left pinky toenail clipping. But you know what? Tentacle monsters are still fun, and Lovecraft was a d-bag, so I think stuff that's inaccurate to the original is still fine and good. And this hack was good!

[Validon98]

Well this hack happened. I do agree that yeah, Cthulhu being all "I'M EVIL" is kinda against the grain of the idea, but the idea of just pure madness and chaos associated with him is such a norm that I guess it's hard not to imagine him as evil, or any of the Great Old Ones for that matter (heck, some of them are even friendly to humans every so often occasion, like Yog-Sothoth even though he's technically an Outer God and that's like some other classification that's out there).

But other than that tiny nitpick which isn't really a nitpick because personally I don't really care too much (I recently wrote up a campaign thing that flew in the face of Lovecraft's work so much he and all the other people who contributed to the mythos are probably powering turbines in their graves about now, so I'm also guilty of doing it), this was a neat short little hack. Kinda wish in the second phase of the fight where you have to get hurt that it was a little clearer on what to do, but other than that it wasn't toooo bad of a fight, if chaotic.

[Count Mohawk]

So, what DOES happen if you don't get all the dagron coins?

you die after killing the evil priest man because Mario Goes Insane

Pretty much this, yeah. Right after Cthulhu appears and goes "BHEOLD MY INSANITY / BHEOLD MY FACE", if you don't have all the the Dargadons, instead of doing some pre-boss-battle banter with Cthulhu, you get this screen instead:
(WARNING: Not for the faint of heart!)

[Alice]

Tentacle monsters are still fun

I think there's a few anime girls who would like to have a word with you.

[Telamon]

you get this screen instead:
(WARNING: Not for the faint of heart!)

love it!

[Trevormark]

Man, I wish I knew where more of the music in this is from. Pretty much the only one I recognized was Seal Chamber from Cave Story, in the final hall before the boss fights.