Roundup: The First Reviews Have Arrived For The Mound: Omen Of Cthulhu

Prepare your butts, The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu reviews are in and they're quite mixed.

Having spent more than 25 hours with The Mound myself, I can see why its review scores vary from decent to pretty poor. It's worth noting the more favourable reviews tend to be for the PC version. Xbox Series X does an okay job of handling the game (after a lot fiddling with controller settings) but its less powerful sibling, the Xbox Series S, wholly struggles to keep up with the expedition from a visual standpoint.

The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is currently sat at 69 (don't say it) on Metacritic right now, so it's fair to say the hallucinogenic co-op extraction title is off to a slightly rocky start.

Let's take a peep at what some of the reviews are saying:

CGMagazine (8/10)

"My biggest issue with The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is one of difficulty, with the early game being relatively hard. This makes at least a three-man team almost compulsory, particularly against some of the tougher enemies found in the game, which also sometimes tend to spawn randomly, making those early few hours harder to digest. Once you find your footing, however, The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu has a rock-solid foundation that will spell a good time for those looking for a cooperative experience to play with their friends, one that doesn’t fall into the usual trappings of survival and crafting mechanics that bog down the experience."

Dualshockers (7.5/10)

"The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu is a spectacular co-op horror game that can fool players using all manner of cunning tricks. It makes for a great game to enjoy with a dedicated group or with strangers, although the difficulty of the game gets in the way occasionally. Even with many good aspects, it still seems to reach a point where progressing feels frustratingly difficult. The game doesn't always give you the best tools for the job, and, with limited meta-progression, players are left with knowledge as their only weapon. Making it to The Mound could take as little as five hours or as many as forty, and that makes the title far more interesting than its predecessors, but also significantly more frustrating to play."

IGN (7/10)

"If you have a reliable group to play with, The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu can be a challenging and entertaining horror excursion. Sometimes it feels a bit too oppressive, though, and could benefit a lot from more nuanced difficulty options, especially for introducing newer players into a high-level group. Still, clever sanity effects, great enemy variety, and an expanse of eerie, majestic jungle to explore are enough that this one will probably stay in my crew's rotation when we're up for something heart-pounding."

DayOne (6.5/10)

"An atmospheric setting, great audio and visual design, and some amusing and occasionally unnerving cosmic horror have resulted in a unique spin on the extraction genre. For those that vibe with it, it’ll probably provide many hours of fun, with lots to do as players solve mysteries, and seek out the mysterious ‘mound’ and what lies beyond – even if the gameplay loop starts to become a bit repetitive."

As you can see, The Mound is proven to be a bit hit-and-miss, with plenty of blame aimed at its unforgiving difficulty. Before you cast your vote in the poll below, I'd personally recommend Xbox Series S owners give this one a miss, or at the very least, wait until performance patches arrive. If you'd like to see for yourself, then it's worth checking out Fuzion's console performance videos below.

The Mound is available now on Xbox Series X|S and playable on PC via Xbox Play Anywhere.

So, what do you make of the reviews? Let us know in the poll below, as well as in the comment section.