To smart I think, as I didn’t find it challenging enough, and I lost interest pretty fast, one reason is because of the control setup and gunplay (more details below), the second reason is that the amount of clues and information available is too much for the User interface/menu to handle, so it’s just a mess and chaotic. There are no markers, arrows, lines of some sort to guide you, and in the beginning, this mechanic made me feel proud and smart. There is a lot of weight on self-exploring and finding clues, solving diverse clues to proceed. It’s emotionless, uninspiring and you go mad of desperation to hear something else (maybe this was intended?)

Normally the music helps to set the atmosphere feel to the game, this is not the case in The Sinking City. There is a lot of bugs that should have been noticed and fixed by the developers before releasing the game. NPC’s tend to disappear or stand in the air or on objects, some of the key objects such as opening safes might fail because of design. And when you’re in dialogs the scenes cut brutally between the characters. Tentacles growing out of my face, humans with fish heads, ape people, what is this place? So bravo to Frogware for creating this scenery with great visuals and lighting.īut then again, characters, monsters and some of the environmental objects have to move right? The animations look unfinished, it’s clunky, the smoothness in walking and facial animations are almost non-existing. The atmosphere is spooky, mysterious and makes you wonder why in the hell do I want to be here. One thing Frogware did handle correctly, is the visual feel of the art direction in The Sinking City. But the bottom line is that the story got much better potential if Frogware had handled it differently.

Picture: Kim Haug | Ulvespillįrogwares did a great job presenting a few relevant topics such as racism and how miserable the residents in Oakmont town has it. I found it very difficult to pay attention to the dialogs, as the voice acting is horrendous, emotionless and monotonic. So I thought, well, this might just be a one-time thing so I moved on with the story.

But the dialogs didn’t match up, example: We can ask five different questions but will get the exact same answer, you can talk about one subject while the key point NPC you talk with can talk about a whole another thing. I will talk about the gameplay segment further down below as this impacts on how they present the story. Not because of the story, but how they presented it. I thought the storytelling was decent enough in the beginning, but it didn’t take long before I lost interest. This is a title which is a bit difficult to talk about the story without spoiling anything, but the main thin red line is that we play as Private Detective Charles Reed, who is a newcomer to Oakmont town in the state of Massachusetts, who is tasked to figure out why the city is sinking, and why the residents are going mad. Lovecraft’s work can be summoned up with supernatural powers, monsters, tentacles, obscene scenarios, etc, and from what’s it’s worth, The Sinking City doesn’t miss any tentacles. I do love some of H.P Lovecraft’s work such as Call of Cthulhu, even World of Warcraft’s lore is inspired by Lovecraft. But I learned fast that my experience might have been a totally different experience than my colleague had.įirst things first, the script or the story in The Sinking City might be one of the strongest elements. And after a few scary feedbacks from one of our colleagues who has seen this game in action in diverse previews such as Gamescom, I was a bit excited to dive into this game. The Sinking City took a whole different path in the genre than I expected when they first announced this title. Reviewed on: PlayStation 4 & PlayStation 4 ProĪcquired: A copy of this game was provided by a publisher for review purpose

The sinking city trophy guide