The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu - Lovecraftian co-op between a wild trip and creeping horror, IGN's first impressions

ACE Team doesn't do conventional, and The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu confirms it. Beneath the trappings of a four-player co-op shooter, behind a genuine Lovecraftian nightmare unfolds a cursed jungle where every expedition is a suicidal gamble. Let's take a look at IGN's analysis.

Before each outing, the crew prepares aboard a galleon, a floating hub where you choose your arsenal, your consumables and a few gimmicky gadgets that you'd best not expect too much from before heading out into the hostile vegetation. This preamble sets the tone, the journalist tells us: gear gets discussed, banter flies, but everyone knows very well that once boots hit the mud, the jungle shows no mercy.

The Mound oscillates between tense gunfights and constant terrain management. The creatures don't just charge into the fray, they keep warping reality, vanishing into a blind spot only to resurface behind a tree; the brutality of life and death is anything but playful, a single tentacle strike is enough to shatter your bearings. So you move forward in fear, eyes fixed not only on the horizon, but also on the sanity indicators, since losing your mind is not much less dangerous than emptying your clip.

Visually, the journalist confirms a familiar impression: the jungle is a character in its own right, with its thick mist, its sickly colors and other cyclopean shapes glimpsed in the distance... ACE Team imposes a strange aesthetic, somewhere between colorful pulp and cosmic horror, as fascinating as it is disturbing. When the lights flicker at the passing of an abomination, when it becomes clear that the scenery warps under its very weight, IGN states that the game cares less about shooting precision than about atmosphere.

What emerges from these first sessions is an unlikely yet appealing blend, the journalist tells us: this is at once a loud co-op game, ideal for sharing with friends, but constantly pervaded by a Lovecraftian unease that reminds you that, in this jungle, you're just one more intruder destined to be swallowed whole.