by You just ordered a bacon cheeseburger. You get a bun. Yyyep.
Cthon promised to be a Cthulhu-esque DOOM-like game, complete with low resolutions, pixel-graphics, and a run-and gun style game. On the side, it also bragged of lite RPG roguelike elements as a bonus. The problem is… It really doesn’t have that much in common with Cthulhu or DOOM and so you’re just left with the the lite rogeulike elements… which kind of sucks. kind of like ordering a sandwich and just getting the bun.
Anything that wants to be like DOOM needs 3 ingredients for success: (1) Fast run & gun action, (2) tons of guns & baddies and (3) a complete lack of need to care for a storyline whatsoever. CTHON has very slow-paced (snail even) movement with gunplay that makes nerf guns look intense, bland enemies with unimpressive AI (move in your direction and attack), only 2 guns (that you start the game out with) and a slow-scrolling plotline introduction that I honestly couldn’t be bothered to read. The fact that it’s a roguelike and the game tries to make you read the plot each time you start a new game is also a miss.
The roguelike aspects are the most basic at best–pick up random items that increase your max ammo or HP… that’s it. Oh–and you have to push E every time you want to pick up something. This is not only pointless, but slows down the game play. There’s a reason DOOM Guy just grabs everything the moment you touch it. Nobody actually wants to consider each and every item on the ground that they pick up.
You can choose 1 of 3 classes, but even these are a joke–one class gets more ammo for the basic gun you start out with, one class deals slightly more damage with melee attacks, and the last class gets more ammo for the grenade launcher you start out with. None of the classes are dynamic enough to mean anything important. Lastly, the game is technically procedurally generated, but since every room is the same boxy area with a few office chairs and a table, you might as well be running through a coloring book maze. Likewise, there was no small number of doors that lead to a one-block dead-end hallway.
The only thing good about CTHON are its graphics… but that’s it, and even those aren’t even close enough to justify playing this game. Instead of buying this, just go download a DOOM map pack and relive the days of gunning down demons from Hell instead whatever nonsense you can find in CTHON, considering the only demons you’ll combat in CTHON are from the 3rd Tier of game reviews: Boredom, Rage and Lust for a better game in general.