[00:07] The Mound Omen of Cthulhu as a co-op survival horror game is best captured by a moment where I was yelling at my friend repeatedly asking what the hell he was laughing about before being brutally murdered. You see, this was not
[00:22] my friend at all, but a faceless one using his character model and repeatedly playing back his recorded laughter from earlier in the match. But when it comes to making me feel like I've lost my mind, the mound's clever madness effects
[00:36] sometimes take a backseat to ruthless difficulty that doesn't always respect my time or make it easy to bring in new allies.
[00:58] around 50 hours of scouring the beautiful Chilean wilderness to unberry all the secrets of the mounds rich mid600s setting. You and your friends take on the role of concistadors, ignoring every possible warning of
[01:13] danger to enrich themselves and the Spanish crown while avoiding the restless dead and trespassing on strange tombs to alien gods. >> You scout ahead. >> As far as capturing the vibes of the
[01:27] Cthulhu mythos, developer Ace team has done a fantastic job. Of course, when I hear Lovecraft and Concistadors in the same sentence, I immediately see the
[01:39] potential for a twisted kind of synergy between them we could maybe call between them we could maybe call advanced racism. And for the most part, Omen of Cthulhu threads this needle pretty well, as many of the more recent
[01:51] adaptations of Lovecraft's work have also sought to do. The Mupuche, indigenous to this region in real life, are mentioned multiple times in the story and very clearly aren't conflated with the strange
[02:05] cultists of the Elder Gods who live deeper in the jungle. I would have liked to see a bit more of the Mapuche, and there's still the implication that the new world is an untamed wilderness of nightmares and dark magic, which plays
[02:19] into some colonialist tropes, but it's certainly better than the original Lovecraft version of the story. The Tale of the Mound and the secrets that lie beneath it are told in effective journal entries with great voice acting, too.
[02:32] entries with great voice acting, too. >> A terrible storm, the kind of which I have never witnessed before, not even a Cape Horn, shattered the Commander upon >> I very much enjoyed discovering what was
[02:46] going on little by little, and the late game reveals are dramatic and game reveals are dramatic and satisfying.
[02:58] interconnect into a single large world, though you can only access one section at a time, you go forth on contracts that come with a goal, a potential reward, and a set amount of gear based on how many players are coming along up
[03:12] to a max of four. I think this way of handling equipment is quite clever. Often there aren't even enough weapons for everyone, for example. So, you have to decide who in the party is going to be responsible for combat, who's going
[03:26] to hold the lantern in dark areas, and who might simply leave their inventory slots empty to carry more loot. It also and not fall into the rut of bringing the same gear every time. I ran into an
[03:41] issue with the way contracts work after about 20 hours, though, in that the random assortment offered seems to scale with the character level of the server host. That meant that if I wanted to bring a new friend in who hadn't played
[03:55] before, I might be totally out of basic and even medium difficulty contracts to ease them into things. I appreciate that in similar co-op horror games like Fasmophobia, I can farm the newbie missions over and
[04:09] over for resources and pick difficulty settings friendly to the allies I've invited along, especially considering the mound can be incredibly punishing, even on basic expeditions. The group I've been playing with is an
[04:24] experienced co-op crew, too. With hundreds of hours together in games like Phasmophobia, Lethal Company, Abiotic Factor, and Valheim, we're no green horns. And we all came to the conclusion pretty quickly that, to put it bluntly,
[04:39] the mound is really freaking hard. Some of this can be mitigated by learning how specific mechanics work. For example, there's a timer on most expeditions that we found doesn't really matter at all. And it's much more important to move
[04:55] quietly so as not to upset the deadlier creatures of the forest than it is to go fast. >> Go away, bird. Birds aren't real. But even when we felt like we were doing everything right, sometimes the number
[05:08] and deadliness of enemies simply scales way too quickly to provide a satisfying challenge without feeling overwhelming when it's four of us against a dozen zombies and there's no room to sneak past or go around even on the lowest
[05:24] to do? >> Run, run, run. And that's assuming you even have basic contracts left in the ledger to attempt. The absolute worst for this are portal missions, which leave you without the
[05:39] usual ox cart to carry your stuff and require you to navigate a modified version of the map covered in purple goo that will kill you instantly if you stand in it for what feels like about 3 seconds,
[05:53] which then also prevents your friends from getting close enough to revive you. I can't recall ever having a good time on one of these missions and eventually tried to avoid them whenever possible. We often found ourselves asking after
[06:07] seven or eight failed expeditions if this was really the intended experience or if we were missing some key mechanic that would make it feel a bit more fair. And it seems like the answer is the former. The problem is not so much that
[06:22] advanced and legendary contracts are really difficult. they should be. I want to have something to strive for, but more that there aren't enough options to tailor the difficulty to your group or mood. The floor is too high.
[06:38] That said, I should mention there was a fairly big balance patch about a day tweaked the difficulty, among other things, but it arrived so late that I extensive testing yet. It doesn't seem to be wildly different after a couple of
[06:54] expeditions. Oh [ __ ] >> Oh no. >> Having my soul sucked out or something.
[07:07] contracts to ease the pressure, but most character levels simply unlock new knife skins that are purely cosmetic. Buying or upgrading gear ahead of a tough map is a nice option, but since you lose all those extras and upgrades
[07:22] on death or success, it's very easy to fail an advanced or legendary contract a few times, wind up broke, and not really have any way to go scr up some quick cash in calmer waters before trying again.
[07:37] It's a shame because when The Mound isn't being overly oppressive, the tense combat and horror elements work really well together. The variety of enemies is impressive, drawing from the deep corners of the Cthulhu mythos and going
[07:52] all the way from the simplest creepy possessed humans up to some very weird realitybending horrors that might not even be possible to kill, making your party navigate around them in specific and clever ways.
[08:07] Resource management is key, and the variable value of treasure leads to thrilling decisions in cases where you're not sure if you've picked up enough to meet your quota yet, but the jungle is getting angry. That's good
[08:20] >> It's also difficult to recommend the mound if you want to play solo. It will spawn an NPC companion to help you out somewhat, but they're not as competent as a human ally. And trying to complete contracts on your own can be a serious
[08:36] trial, even though the number of enemies is scaled down a bit. The co-op game is better in co-op isn't exactly a shock, but since they give you the option to fly solo, it's worth noting all the same.
[08:55] with, The Mound Omen of Cthulhu can be a challenging and entertaining horror >> Oh my god, there's four of us. >> No, there's four of you. Who's wrong? Who's Who's fake? Who's fake? >> Sometimes it feels a bit too oppressive,
[09:10] though, and could benefit a lot from more nuanced difficulty options, especially for introducing newer players into a higher level group. Still, clever sanity effects, great enemy variety, and an expanse of eerie, majestic jungle to
[09:26] explore are enough that this one will probably stay in my crew's rotation when probably stay in my crew's rotation when we're up for something heartpounding. >> This is your last mission, Padre. >> Let's get the [ __ ] out of here.
[09:38] Lyanna Hayford to talk a little bit more about her taste in this genre, the horrory co-opy stuff. you reviewed stuff like Valheim for us, Sons of the Forest, but give me just sort of like what what are some of your favorites in terms of
[09:50] this sort of emergingish genre in the last couple of years of co-op spooky last couple of years of co-op spooky games with your friends? Yeah, it's uh it's it's kind of difficult to like place the mound within that space, but I
[10:04] most meaningful are probably like fasmophobia in the sense that like you're four people with some gear and you're dealing with supernatural entities as like your job. You you have a job and this is what
[10:19] you're doing. Uh, and then Sons of the Forest actually, while it's not an open world survival crafting game at all, I think is another good point of reference just because it takes place in a forest. There's spooky weird cannibals that you
[10:32] sometimes don't really have to fight. It's sometimes better to just like avoid them if you can. Those are definitely the two maybe closest points of reference. I guess this is the way to ask this is if there were if somebody is
[10:46] already a fan of some game in that world, which which fans would you most recommend the mound to? Are you going to be recommending to this to people who are big Left 4 Dead people specifically
[10:58] big Phasmophobia fans, big Lethal Company fans? Like where where what crowd is this aiming for? Yeah, I think if you like the vibes of Sons of the Forest, you're really going to like this. But gameplay-wise, it's definitely
[11:12] closer to like a Fasmo or a Lethal Company, uh, for sure than it is to like a Left 4 Dead. Like, if you go in Guns Blazing, uh, that's not going to go well for you. Uh, it's it's definitely not like a like a Horde shooter. It's it's a
[11:29] horror game where some of the enemies, you can't even technically kill them. you have to come up with clever ways to sort of circumvent them or just not aggro them at all. Um, and even the basic enemies, like if you can avoid
[11:44] fighting them, it's usually better not to. Uh, so that's the kind of game it is. This is sort of a more of a sneaky looty game than a a shooty slashy game. Uh, let's talk a little bit more about this the insanity side of this game
[12:00] because people still talk about Eternal Darkness, right? People still talk about Metal Gear Solid messing reading your memory card. These are very clearly mechanics that stick with people and have become touchstones, but also aren't
[12:16] used very often. And then also on top of that, I feel like can risk becoming gimmicks, can risk just sort of feeling hokey rather than being scary. So what's
[12:30] hokey rather than being scary. So what's the line you see in those? And and h how does this game handle that? Yeah, I mean it literally does have some that are are Eternal Darkness, like where it looks like you have flies on your screen, and
[12:44] it a few times, you're like, "All right, yeah, I've I've seen that before." I think when it gets really clever is when it it uses like the enemy AI in interesting ways. Yeah, there's this one clip I remember in particular where
[13:00] we're all standing around a wagon and there's supposed to be four of us. can have on a server. And I realize there's five people. So obviously one of these is not a real person. So that kind of stuff I think is where sort of the
[13:16] sanity mechanics really shine. uh is when they create doubt and uh you know you're you're aiming your crossbow at what looks like a disgusting zombie but in the heat of the moment you're like okay but is that one my friend or you
[13:32] know what what's going on here. It's so funny, you know, the the this rise of very casual co-op games where you're just sort of hanging out with people and stuff like RV There yet or uh human fall flat is also being joined by
[13:50] >> be terrified with your friends games. They they feel cut from the same cloth as weird as that might be. There's some tension there, I think, especially with a game like The Mound where it's like if you want to progress, you have to
[14:03] actually kind of lock in a little bit. >> Um, cuz it is kind of a funny hangout game, especially in like those first two or three hours when we were all going, you know, insane in the game and didn't know what was going on at all. And it
[14:19] just kind of feels like inviting your friends to a cool horror party. Uh, and then you know eventually you have that that sort of vibe wears off and you're like, "Okay, we want to actually complete some missions." So, we've got
[14:33] to figure out how to keep that from happening again. But, uh, yeah, they are happening again. But, uh, yeah, they are sort of in the same spirit of of just like fun hangout games where weird stuff happens and everybody laughs about it.
[14:47] chatting with us a little bit more about uh this weird lovely genre that has is becoming more popular. Uh if you want more horror stuff from Len, you reviewed The Dark Pictures Direct of 8020 and then more co-opy stuff, let's say, uh
[15:03] Wind Rose before that. And for everything else, stick with that jam.