Great scary and athmopheric game, if you aren't afraid to be challenged and don't get frustrated easily.
The game is played from first person perspective, and there is no HUD or anything the player could tell how much energy or bullets he has left. Instead the player sees the the effects directly on the screen, when you're panicing your vision gets blurry and when you're hurt you see blood on the screen ect. The effects are are done brilliantly and they add greatly to the game's athmosphere.
The game isn't your standars shooter, in fact you spend a big part of the game playing without weaponry of any kind. This leads to the most intense chase sequenses I've ever seen in ANY game, or a movie. The beginning of the game is pretty much your basic adventure game stuff, looking for clues and solving puzzles, AND staying alive. Once you get guns it turns into a basic shooter.
What makes this game so special is that the mental state of the character also affects the game, he's not an invurnerable superhero, but looking down from a high building makes him dizzy and finding a corpse messess up the vision so that you need to cool down in a safe place to get everything working normally again. Sounds annoying? Well, it's not because it's done so well.
The graphics are IMO a strong point of the game, they might look a bit dated compared to the newest shooters, but the graphics have this general "soft" feel to them that makes everything look very nice. All the great effects mentioned earlier put "bullet-time" ect. in shame. Sounds are good, the voice acting is very pleasent and the creepy noices coming from the distance keep the player on his toes.
The gameplay is the weakpoint, the shooting is done well, firing from hip is inaccurate, but bringing up the sights with r.mouse button allows deadly headshots ect. But some of the weapons are a bit underpowered, tommy-gun with it's recoil and the big flame coming from the pipe make shooting with it difficult, especially since it's not all that powerfull. Some of the weapons are done better than others, and even tho you can hit opponents in different body parts, the combat has a slightly clunky feel to it.
The difficulty level is what somewhat ruins this game, at times it's ridiculously easy, then suddenly you find yourself wishing Bethesda had implemented a quicksave in the game. Especially some parts WILL make you frustrated, running from enemies when you have no weapons is fun for a while, but since sneaking isn't done that well, you will get caught, tho this does add a feeling of vengeange once you get your hands into guns. There are also some other frustrating moments reserved for the player, and unfortunately for some those might be enough to make you not wanting to come back to this game. You can only save at spots marked with a certain symbol, this makes the game scarier, but also a much more difficult. Tho the stupid AI does even the score a bit. IMO The game would had been better off with less action and sneaking, and more adventure and puzzle solving
Call of Cthulhu has its problems, but it also includes some of the best gaming moments in years. The game isn't "Resident Evil - scary", but more like creates this uncomfortable feeling ..in a good way. I definately recommend this game to horror fans, and with horror I don't mean games like Doom 3.