Cons: I’m not going to lie to you. This game is piss-poor ugly. From the monsters to the guns, its all bad. But this really shouldn’t stop you from enjoying this great mod. Unless you’re one of those kids that graphics is everything, in that case go away. I mean, this is an old mod for a game that is now 11 years old. Graphics shouldn’t be a priority anyway. (Not to say HL1 can’t produce pretty things, HoE Napalm Edition is a fantastic example of it.)

Overall: If you’re an old-school gamer who can look past the graphics, you should get this mod asap.

Interesting notes:
The “zap” gun, an alien gun in the shape of a tinfoil cone, may look ugly. But I’m incredibly sure that’s the “gun” from the 1970′s movie based on the book, The Martian Chronicles. A nice little reference to a great series.

Also, HP Lovecraft, the author of the original Call of Cthulhu book, is from Rhode Island. That makes my state important for once! ^^

There’s one last thing I’d like to point out: It’s called “Cthulhu”. Not “Call of Cthulhu”, just plain old “Cthulhu”. Hmm.

-Tabris

Then there’s a zombie in the house’s dark attic, but apparently nothing else is there.

Check the walkthrough or read this

SPOILER!!!

There’s a weapon (a swordcane) in a room on the ground floor. It’s on a little table somewhere.

END OF SPOILER

Basically it is true what you say. However it does pick up later. I guess he was still learning when he made the first maps, a lot of mods have this. You can see the maps getting better as you go along.

I just didn’t find anything that I enjoyed here, and with no logical path to follow decided to get on with it and download the next one on my list.

Yes, I have played through this whole thing. And it can be a bit of a chore sometimes. But in my opinion, this is more than outweighed by the good parts. And with a chore I mean: boring parts, getting lost in a maze, fighting on low health and dying all the time, timed sequences that are hard to do, etc. Or waiting for the flashlight to reload… As almost all horrormods for half-life this one has many dark parts, the flashlight works badly, and runs empty all the time… Yes, I know, it’s to create an atmosphere, but still, it gets old after a while.
Anyway, let me begin at the beginning: The story. If you know anything about horror and s-f, you’ll know H. P. Lovecraft and his mythology. If not, look it up. Even though I haven’t read much of his stuff, I can tell you that the mod’s story is pretty much in the spirit of H. P. Lovecraft. And the characters are from his books. So that is an original idea for a mod to start with. Also the story is not just background, it plays an important role in the mod. Read the books in the game, that is important to follow this story.
This mod is a somewhat less than total conversion. All weapons are changed, and most of the characters. However, you’ll also find some original half-life characters. And I have to agree with what the others said about this, it looks out of place, and also detracts somewhat from the story. The elevators for example don’t make much sense in 1828. The only place it belongs, the half-life stuff, is later on, when you’re in the city of Yith. It’s an advanced civilization, a couple of million year’s ago. Also, while original and in style with the year 1828, the weapons can be a bit annoying too. They take forever to reload, while some of the enemies tend to be pretty fast. On the whole however, the conversion looks good, and is consistent, and in line with the story. Doesn’t matter if a lot of it is borrowed.
Now for the gameplay: It’s not very linear, I already mentioned the mazes. Boy, does this guy like mazes! He’s got about five of ‘m in there, I think. And they get progressively harder too. The first one is simple, then he starts to add levers and doors and bridges… Lucky for you, a walkthrough is already included with the mod. Sometimes they are disguised as caves or sewers, but they’re mazes. In between that it’s pretty linear. Find your way, shoot the enemy. Find the items, find the clues to the next part, and sometimes a level boss. All level bosses, including the end boss, are well-known characters from the novels and stories of H. P. Lovecraft, by the way. And there are cutscenes ofcourse. These are done well, and in the right place, adding to the story, or explaining what to do next. Lots of puzzles too, mostly not too hard. You can’t get stuck. Thanks to the walkthrough. Having said that, I must also agree with earlier comments that some of the mapping is a bit flaky. Flaky in the sense that it either doesn’t work very well, or gets you confused. Take the level boss Dagon for example. Here you have to know or find out two things: First, the shed you’re locked in, will start to burn, once you’ve wounded him enough. Second, when you reach the top of the crates in the back, a beam will fall down, allowing you to escape. If you miss the second, you will be wondering for a long time what to do… Maybe these two things should’ve been triggered together. There are some nice gameplay-innovations too, like the spells. The fighting is often a bit off, though. It’s either too hard, for example the little dinosaurs with the zapguns, that kill you immediately when they see you. Or it’s too easy, cultists standing still, just waiting for you to shoot them. The mobsters are a little better, but not much. Sometimes they even line up for it in a row…! Only a part of the fighting is of the right kind. So, if you’re a fighting man (or woman), this is not for you. But a lot of things are very good too. To mention a few things: There’s a part where you work yourself through a ruined building, to a time machine wich brings you back a few millions of years, when the building was still intact. Then you backtrack through the same building, before it became a ruin. And of course my personal favorite: a real life dinosaur. I liked that part very much too, where you switch off the laser barrier, to let him in, and slaughter some of his more evolved cousins for you… Saves a lot of hard fighting… Now a game like this has to have an end boss of course. Which is none other then Cthulhu himself. Here, again an example of not quite complete design. There’s a whole song and dance routine about how to kill him, in the walkthrough. According to the developer, you have to use the tunnels to shoot him, and lure him to the boat, where you can have a go at him with the ship’s gun. Until he runs away, and you have to do it again. However, he forgot about the zap gun. Six zaps suffices to kill him, and i had thirty rounds. So that that takes care of him, and saves me about half a day…
Enough about the gameplay, now the technical stuff. I’m a player, not a developer, so I don’t know anything about textures, alignment, triggers, entities, and all that. But I can say something about the stability, that is bugs and crashes. If you’ve done the patches, there shouldn’t be any bugs anymore. I think it crashed on me once, during the whole mod, and I couldn’t repeat that. So it’s very stable, and bug-free. You will get stuck on elevators or in corners, and you’ll sometimes see enemies getting stuck, or behaving oddly, but that’s just half-life.
It’s a long mod, about 60 playable maps, albeit short ones often, and it took this guy 2 year’s to make it. It’s original and very narrative, and most of it is good, despite some obvious downsides. So I think it’s deserving a little more attention than it’s gotten sofar on this site. Hence this somewhat lenghthy comment…

Peace out!

put it in the half life folder.

It already is. I installed it there. It just will not run for some reason.

Even the patch did not fix the problem.

P.S.

ive never actually read any HP Lovecraft but you should probably try that new game thats out about cthulu

Yes, the Xbox/PC game, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth. It’s great, I recommend it too all Lovecraft/horror fans.

“In his house at R’yleh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming…”-The Call Of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft-