I don’t know what it is about H.P Lovecraft inspired video games, but they almost never manage to work out (Bloodborne excluded, of course). One thing I do know, is that Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss had me scratching at my face and facing mental turmoil much like a person would who’d been exposed to the Elder Being’s unknowable knowledge.

Normally, I’d ask you to put on your best diving suit and join me in the descent into the sea. On this occasion, however, I’ll advise you to leave me in the depths alone. Cthulhu is a merciless being, and the hours I spent with the game have left me as little more than a hollow husk. Perhaps Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is a better microcosm of Lovecraftian nightmares than I gave it credit for.

Drift Into The Abyss

I’m going to start where I typically don’t – the bugs. Good lord, the bugs. Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is in a worse technical state than a hallucinating fanatic. During my time with the game, the save system didn’t work, leading to multiple hours of lost progress. Thankfully, that’s been patched. What remains, like the specter of a looming monster in the periphery, is the crashes, framerate collapses and various glitches.

Despite Cthulhu not being a particularly long game, it’s crashed on me four times, even post-patch. Sometimes the sprint system doesn’t work. Other times the audio cuts out. Clipping on ledges as you try to clamber up? You guessed it. Then there’s the framerate, which is more torturous than any cosmic outer god could ever be.

If my sonar (more on that shortly) picked up any more than a dozen items at a time, the game would just… break. Single digit FPS, the camera chopping at every tiny movement. It’s nigh-on insufferable and makes Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss painful to play. There’s rarely more than ten minutes of playtime that goes by without some kind of irksome problem ramming its head into your brain like some kind of intrusive annoying neighbour.

Send It Into The Cosmos

Alright, so, performance and technical issues aside, let’s talk about the game itself. We step into the role of Noah, a not-so regular researcher who finds himself in quite the predicament. After going in search of a colleague who’s gone MIA at their home, you stumble into R’lyeh, a realm rather alien to humankind. Booted unceremoniously back out and barely surviving, Noah is stitched up and is intent on saving his other companion left behind, Elsa.

So follows the story as you descend into the Pacific abyss to follow in the footsteps of a research team who’ve set out to discover R’lyeh themselves. In fairness to the game, the voice acting is okay and Noah at least responds to the madness around him with suitable confusion. The other characters are… less okay, but it’s a serviceable approach.

What really lets the narrative down, however, is that it does nothing of interest with Lovecratian ideas or Cthulhu itself at all. There’s plenty of lore dumps to find as you progress, but none of it felt particularly interesting, to me at least. Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss isn’t scary to make it a horror game, and it’s devoid of any real tension or suspense to make it a psychological thriller. What’s left? Well, a rather bland walking simulator through some greenish underwater caves and not a whole lot else.

Whoever Wins, We Cthu-lose

Most of your time in Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss will be spent navigating its underwater and otherworldly environments. There are moments where it works, without a doubt. Entering into a giant puzzle structure, seeing a cosmic temple laid out before you. Hell, there’s even a black hole sequence which looks pretty cool. Unfortunately, once I had to spend time traipsing around these areas, it quickly lost its appeal.

The game has a dependence problem with its sonar device, in that you’re constantly hammering R2 to ping various objects to interact with. There’s a system whereby you pick up and analyse items you come across to access new frequencies, including combinations to find solutions to puzzles. While it’s a fine concept, it’s utterly boring and tedious in practice.

Switching between frequencies is a chore, even when you’ve shortcutted the most used ones. The targeting reticule for selecting objects is agonising for smaller pickups. When most of your gameplay is walking to A, picking something up and walking to B, it serves to have that process be as smooth as possible, but here it feels like needlessly boring busywork that’s clunky to boot.

Abyssal Dilemmas

One aspect I did like, and that I think developers Big Bad Wolf get right in connecting to Lovecraftian theme, is the dual solutions to the puzzles. Follow the more signposted, “easier” solution, and you’ll cause Noah to suffer more corruption. Once that meter fills, he’s in for a world of mental anguish. Furthermore, it impacts the potential ending you receive.

Alternatively, you can use the mind palace to consider evidence and clues you uncover. Doing so may reveal an alternative means of progressing, one which reduces your exposure to Cthulhu’s influence. I appreciate how this fits the game thematically, while also rewarding more curious and thorough players. It’s a shame that the second solutions are often more convoluted and frustrating to achieve, but we can’t have it all I suppose.

The mind vault mechanic initially appears to be a detective-esque system that’ll have you performing all manner of mental arithmatic, but it quickly becomes superfluous. Items get added which you can connect to each other, and there’ll be a handful of deductions to link the right items too, but it’s very lightweight. I found myself trying to get through as quickly as possible due to the sheer mundanity of the game, and that extended out to interacting with the mind vault for more than a passing glance.

A Corrupted (Love)craft

I think my biggest gripe with Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is that it could have worked with a real horror or psychological thriller element. A sea creature that stalks you through the environments. An imposing loss of reality as corruption builds. Something with an interesting kick. Instead, it relies on well-trodden tropes. There’s only so many times I can see a hallway change from turning around before I want to throw myself into the Mariana Trench.

Instead, it’s just a chore. One that’s drowning in technical problems, poor optimisation and a lack of anything really interesting to do. Some of the environments are visually arresting, granted, but when there’s nothing sitting behind those glowing Cthulhu eyes, what’s there to fear, or get intrigued by? I felt like I was playing a by-the-numbers walking simulator with a gloss of Lovecraft, not even a paint.

I’ll always respect any effort to craft any form of entertainment and to put your creation out into the world. But, it’s incredibly hard to recommend Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss. Even if it was in a playable technical state (which it isn’t), I’d be madder than a Cthulhu infested cult to suggest there’s something resembling fun or excitement to be found in these underwater caverns.

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss is available now on PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Developer: Big Bad Wolf
Publisher: Nacon

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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