Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics

Between the upcoming Call of Cthulhu game and the previously released Tesla vs. Lovecraft, Cthulhu is having something of a moment in 2018. Now the pile gets a little taller with Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics, a curious new strategy game that mixes gothic horror with World War II. It's basically a game that does to XCOM what Pride & Prejudice & Zombies did to Jane Austen. And while it's certainly silly, occasionally dumb and always absurd, there's something to the fast-paced action and supernatural bad guys that makes this more than a guilty pleasure.

This is not your typical World War II story. When the Nazis start dabbling with supernatural powers, the allied forces send their occult specialists to investigate. Unfortunately, it was a trap and only a few soldiers were able to escape the ambush. With nothing left to lose, French resistance leader Ariane Dubois and Corporal Akhee Singh are deployed to take a small squad of specialists to save the captured soldiers and investigate the supernatural anomalies.

The game centers on these four fighters and their struggles to sneak behind enemy lines. That's one of the most glaring differences between this and other recent strategy games. Where most titles let you pick and choose between a large cast of characters, you only have four people in this game. And it's the same four people throughout. In that sense it's a more personal adventure than what we saw in something like XCOM.

The level designs also differ from similar strategy games in some key ways. Where most games in this genre will plop you down inside a large battlefield, Cthulhu Tactics gives us a few smaller fights that are separated by mostly linear paths. There are a lot of times where you'll control the four characters as a single unit and explore the surroundings, which can also include alternate paths where you can complete optional objectives. But let's be realistic here, most of the time these exploration bits are only there to get you from one encounter to the next.

The good news is that the combat is fast and fun. If you've played a modern strategy game, then you're going to recognize a lot of what Cthulhu Tactics does. It's a turn-based game where you move your entire squad person by person and then wait for the computer to make all of its moves. Just like XCOM and other similar games, you get a chance to level up the soldiers and unlock different abilities. There are both passive and active perks that will help to give you an edge over the supernatural Nazis.

There are some adjustments that have been made in order to compensate for the smaller four-person squad. Beyond giving each character all kinds of different abilities, we also get more turns than the typical strategy game. Our fighters can shoot their guns three or four times on average, with some able to get close to a dozen shots off before stopping. The smaller squads and tighter spaces help to keep the battles quick and intense, though there are times where you'll definitely get sucked into long and drawn-out battles.

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It's also worth noting that there aren't permanent deaths. If one of the four characters goes down in combat, you'll have to go on a special side-quest in order to rescue them from capture. You'll also be able to revive your fallen friends mid-battle, assuming there's somebody still standing on your team. What's more, your character's shield will be completely replenished after each skirmish, though the character's overall health will still remain low.

Oh, and did I mention that there are blobby sea-creature monsters that fight alongside the Nazis? A lot of the fun of this game is seeing how the other side uses their supernatural powers to develop crazier and crazier bad guys. There comes a point where we're essentially fighting comic book villains with super powers. And that's not even including the actual monsters that show up from time to time. This is really the selling point of Cthulhu Tactics, and while I wish they would have gone a little more over-the-top with the bad guys, I had a huge grin from ear to ear every time a new villain was introduced.

But that brings me to the problems I have with this game. The issue isn't that you'll see the same types of characters way too often, but rather that you'll see everything too often. This is especially true when it comes to the locations. There aren't that many types of areas to fight in, a disappointing byproduct of the limited scope of the mission. And there are specific areas you'll end up seeing multiple times in different missions, which sometimes makes the game feel like there's too much padding.

The combat is also incredibly repetitive, even with the addition of the different weapons and abilities. I hate to say it, but the four-person squad limits a lot of the strategy and makes every battle feel the same. It doesn't help that most of the missions revolve around doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same way. It would have been nice to see more variety in the missions and levels.

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This is the kind of ridiculous premise that demands exciting cinemas and big story beats, but all of the narrative stuff is confined to pre-mission briefings. I wish we could have seen what this game looked like with more time and a slightly bigger budget. There's a lot of potential in this concept, so it's a little disappointing that it sometimes feels like the developers were forced to hold back. I want to see the full-on over-the-top insane version the developers probably had in their heads.

Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics is every bit as silly and dumb as you would expect, all while being a fun and fast-paced strategy game with a great premise. The action is marred by some repetitive combat that is limited by the small squad, but the creative bad guys and Lovecraftian nods go a long way to giving this game a unique identity. Although imperfect, Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics is just silly enough to be a good time.