Cthulhu is a single-player modification for Half-Life. It contains 65 maps, 21 new monsters and 14 new weapons. Aeons ago, Earth was ruled by The Great Old Ones, beings so alien and terrible that merely seeing them would drive most people mad. Before man's ancestors climbed down from the trees, these being were defeated in a war with The Elder Gods. But their alien nature meant that they could not be slain in any way that we would understand, so they were imprisoned. And so they wait, patient and potent until the stars are right and they shall walk forth once again and wipe mankind from the face of the Earth. You play Ranulf Stafford, an occult investigator in Arkham in the year 1928. Drawn into a nightmare chain of events, you find yourself the only thing standing between mankind and the return of Cthulhu, one of the most dreadful of The Great Old Ones.
I have to say that this is a very good mod. The story is engaging and kept me playing. But the only thing that made me sad was the fact that the mele weapons you use deal barely any damage and the enemies kill you in two hits.
the story and environment compensates for it
I think i played the mod back around 2010-ish, sort of about a year before i decided to make stuff up to make it look better.
The mod overall is okay, i liked the fact that it tried to grab some of the Lovecraft's cosmic horror over despite the many problems that sort-of buggers around the mod.
It is unfortunate that the level design is overall pretty terrible even by HL's nineties standards, the models are mixed up, the coding screwed (had to even remove the shotgun's muzzleflash because of that), and many of the gameplay decisions is just baffling to me.
But hey! I can see a lot of love and imagination put to this mod, even if the lack of skills really stand out during gameplay, so that's that.
To start off, this mod is quite awesome. It has atmosphere, some cool effects, new monsters, mostly well designed levels and a fun, Lovecraft styled story.
Using magic is an interesting experience, since using it will drain sanity and if that hits zero, will kill you. It is absurdly powerful though, so there are times when you have to use it (and times you just want to make cultists explode). The weapons are fun, and look pretty good too.
The monsters are, for the most part, pretty good. Some, however, are merely reskins of Half-Life monsters, and I seem to recall there being some normal Half-Life monsters in there too. Nothing too serious though, just it can take you out of the experience a little sometimes.
The levels are a bit of a mixed bag. For the most part, they're awesome. They're nice to look at, have an interesting design, and are fun. However, a couple levels are rather annoying. I enjoyed Innsmouth, but it was easy to get lost in there. The Ghoul Caves were a cool idea, but it's not too fun to wander around in the dark with the honestly not too good Half-Life torch, and the big puzzle was kind of annoying. Mostly though, the maps are good.
I did notice some graphical glitches though, however, I'm not certain if that was the fault of the mod or my computer. With some weapons (the rifle and the pistol, mainly) sometimes when the cross hairs go over an enemy, the cross hairs are replaced with a black square. A little annoying but nothing too game breaking.
Story-wise, this is nothing too spectacular, definitely feels like a Lovecraft fanfiction, but it's a well done and fun one, so that's no real problem at all, unless you are a fanatical Lovecraft purist.
All in all, it was an excellent trip, that aside from some moments of checking the walk through (helpfully included in the download, props for that), some Half-Life enemies, and annoying maps, is well worth your time and effort.
JUST GATA LOVE HP LOVE CRAFT AND THE GOOD OL 20S
Back then, when The Shadow Over Innsmouth or Call of Cthulhu wasn't as mainstream as today and had tons of games and other media that we were sick of seeing, getting a HL mod based on it was exciting. It really was a fresh idea.
The mod is a good but flawed total conversion, barely anything is from HL though the new content is not flawless. The biggest problem is the mapping in my opinion, while mostly okay they lack detail in so many places, there's z-fighthing everywhere and you can easily break some of the scripts by not playing like the developer intendeed. For a 2006 mod the lighting also looks very bad, I think the creator compiled the mod with outdated compile tools. The models are also hit and miss. I normally have zero problems with clunky models in these old mods but seeing Cthulhu, Dagon and regular fishman enemies being edited gargantua models, the civilian from TFC as a mobster with magnums and G-man as a flying demon was a weird experience. The original, made from scratch models are pretty basic most of the time too. Some look great others look weird. The policeman's backwards facing hand still bothers me to this day.
Still, despite its flaws Cthulhu is still a classic HL mod that is worthy of play. First off the concept is great, the mystery is there and you want to see what happens next. The new weapons are generally fun to use though a bit on the weaker side. Some unique ideas like spellbooks are there which are powerful weapons that drain your sanity, once it hits zero you go mad with a cutscene and the game ends. The enemies are imaginative such as green, scaly cultist that spawn snakes using staves, shamblers that teleport near you in an instant when you go too far (though they are very underused) ghouls, mobsters and even a T-rex one time. Like mentioned before, while they are a bit bland, the maps are generally fun to run around in. Sometimes there are sections that may seem a bit complicated but generally they play fine. The voice acting is decent too. Also, while I didn't like the final boss battle (you can bring down the Great Old One with just four shots to the head with a laser gun) I really enjoyed the ending.
Overall, this is a classic mod that's not without flaws. If you disregard the not-so-pleasing design and some half baked ideas you have a fun and medium length mod that's worth playing.
That was a really different take at a classic mod for Half Life.
Cthulhu combined horror with sci-fi elements, included a twist of occult rites and black magic as well as very interesting concepts and takes at your armory.
While I did not use a majority of the weapons, I enjoyed all of them quite a bit.
The revolver was **** but the remodels were absolutely great, big credits to ZikShadow at this point.
There were many different areas in this mod: From zombie-plagued forests to ancient temples over highly scientific alien complexes to mystic occult seatowns.
The only models I did not really like were those of the cultists, because in the original version, they looked a lot more crazy than in the HD pack.
But other than that, great mod with innovative ideas and features.
Well here's a mod I played 8 years ago and never finished due to me getting lost however when I was looking through the site, I came across this mod again and said to my self "This time I will finish this mod". So I play through it on Hard and enjoy almost every single bit of it.
Anyway I love this mod as it's probably has some of the most custom weapons, enemies, locations I seen in a mod. The story is pretty much you having to stop the cultists from bringing back Cthulhu and having to find a way to stop him, the mod mostly focuses on exploring big areas and having to find a book to tell you where to go next (by having to head back to your car to go to the next area or giving you a hint on what to do next).
The weapons are really cool as none of them are from HL1 and all of them are new, from revolvers to lever-action rifles and a spell book (to leech health or to damage enemies with lasers). Locations are new and you never feel like going through the same area twice (besides one point but it is part of the story), the only problem with the locations is that the level design isn't the best at times (Only some parts were a bit poorly designed).
There is lots of new enemy types however sadly (one of problems I find with the mod) is that the cultists mostly take the spotlight, they appear almost in every chapter and mostly be the enemies you're fighting. Now there isn't anything wrong with this but the creatures that appear are so more interesting and you don't get to fight them that often (besides the basic zombie-like creatures). However there is one point when they disappear for a chapter and replaced with some interesting enemies (love this chapter).
Now I'm not going say anymore then you get the idea now (and I don't want to spoiler anything more), these types of mods what add lots of new content and change the game heavily are so few and rare these days (you took call this type of mod a full made "game" compare to other mods).
Anyway I'm going to give this mod a 9/10 and I recommend you grab this mod if you love Love-craft or want something new to try out.
Amazing.....just...amazing o.o
I'll admit this can be a chore at sometimes, but in my opinion, this is decent enough to play. It has its boring parts: a maze, fighting on low health and dying all the time (those medkits really should give you more health), timed sequences that are hard to do, or waiting for the flashlight to reload...
Lets start from the beginning: The story. If you know anything about horror, you’ll know H. P. Lovecraft. If not, look it up. You can get his whole works for free off the internet. Even though I haven’t read his stuff, I can tell you that the mod’s story is pretty much in the spirit of H. P. Lovecraft if I learned anything from Call of Cthulhu.. the characters are supposedly from his books although have very little dialogue. Regardless it is an original idea for a mod. But the story is merely a background for the levels, the story tries to interconnect these levels together but they seem rather random when it comes down to it.
Reading the books in the game are the highlight of the mod, and are important to follow this story. The spells are a nice addition although I barely used them.
This mod is somewhat a total conversion. All weapons are changed, and most of the characters. However, you’ll also find some original half-life characters and zombies.. which looks out of place, and also detracts somewhat from the story.
While there where flashlights in 1928, the elevators don’t make much sense in that time period. The only place it belongs,is later on, when you’re in the city of Yith. It’s an advanced civilization, a couple of million year’s ago. While original and in style with the year 1928, the weapons can be a bit annoying too as it takes about 3 headshots with the pistol to take down cultists and their reload times are painfully long.
There are some surprises (Snakes/Big Monsters). Some of the boss fights require some keen observing but the rest is mostly gun fights. I like the locations even if some levels are bland.
To summarize, it could have been better.
An incredible mod from start to finish.
Among my favorite half-life mods of all time. :)