It says 12 hours, but I believe that number isn’t representative of a normal playthrough. Things like indicators on faraway points of interest or direct hints (when requested) would go a long way towards making this adventure more playable and less frustrating.īelow this review there’s a disclosure that lists how long I played Call of the Sea for.

While the presentation is clearly built for enmeshing the player in the world with minimal HUD elements cluttering up the screen, some artistic purity could have been sacrificed to make things easier for players at the end of their rope. Generally, I think it’s design malpractice for any puzzle game to not offer one, and Call of the Sea is an egregious example - I had to look online for help on more than half of the puzzles, and I doubt my experience is unique. The lack of a hint system is another failure on Call of the Sea‘s part. It’s not often I have to break out a pen and notepad to make progress in a game, but I did here. As Norah explores the island, her journal is automatically updated and supposedly notes everything she needs to know to solve the tasks ahead, but these notes are simply insufficient.

However, just as things got rolling, I’d inevitably come up against another frustratingly oblique puzzle that served only to stop that lovely progress dead in its tracks.Ĭall of the Sea‘s developers have badly misjudged how much explanation their puzzles require. Every new piece of story was pitch-perfect in tone, and the gradual ramp-up of threat is incredibly effective at creating dread. None are in any way intuitive.Īs I worked my way through the campaign, I found myself alternately delighted and furious. Each of the half-dozen major locations has a handful of puzzles to solve, and they’re some of the most annoying and inexplicable videogamey brain-teasers I’ve ever come across, with most built around deciphering ancient locks or operating unusual technology. This is a great place to start, but the problem with Call of the Sea is that it makes the story so hard to get to. Call of the Sea takes players on a journey through one of those impossible locations and gives them a glimpse of things that drove the characters in those stories insane. The famously xenophobic Lovecraft had endless references to strange, foreign places in the South Pacific where natives worshipped strange alien deities. It’s a Lovecraft-inspired tale (although I won’t say which story it’s inspired by, lest the whole thing be given away) and it does a fantastic job of expanding on one of the less-explored facets of his writing. She’ll also see the sometimes-terrifying results of his investigations.Ĭall of the Sea‘s greatest strength is in the story it’s telling. She’ll spend the next few hours following in his footsteps while finding notes and audio logs that detail his trials. As things begin, she’s traveling to the island where his expedition was last heard from. If only the game itself weren’t such a slog.Ī first-person puzzle adventure, Call of the Sea puts players behind the eyes of Norah, a woman whose husband has disappeared while searching for a cure to her hereditary illness. By embracing a bright and varied color palette and going the extra mile on level design, the developers have created one of the most visually captivating worlds I’ve seen in ages. Gorgeous sun-soaked beaches, foreboding rain-drenched spires, terrifying subterranean architecture - every new area I found in Call of the Sea was better than the last. WTF It’s weird when a game’s title gives the plot away!

Call of the sea chapter 2 walkthrough