Let’s be frank: games live and die by their environments - especially ones with a story to tell. The world never sings because it all looks the same. I’m all for variety so long as it services the larger whole, but it never does here.īut perhaps the biggest kicker is Oakmont itself, a hub world teeming with plenty of detail, but lacking soul. A boss battle with red barrels was just about the last straw for me. At all times, combat is uniformly terrible, with janky guns to use (pistols, shotguns, submachine guns) and enemies that are frustratingly hard to take down. Walk up these roads and enemies will spring from the ground with a bloodcurdling groan. In fact, entire sections of the map are at the mercy of the infected. There are, for instance, several combat encounters throughout The Sinking City. Understandably, Frogewares is anxious to keep things fresh. The wider canvas has had other unintended consequences too. NPCs look like stuffed potatoes with all the facial expressions to match, and the voice acting throughout is a letdown. That extends to the characters that you’ll encounter in the world, of which there are many. With a face wracked from lack of sleep, he does at least resemble someone living a nightmare, but it’s not enough to anchor a story around a character whose major distinguishing feature is his inability to get forty winks. That hypnotic illusion of freedom is never as strong here, in part because Reed is such an unmemorable protagonist. There are also deductions to be made, a nod to Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, a game that played with the exciting fantasy that you could condemn or pardon people as you pleased. While exciting at first, the repetitive gameplay loop wears thin after a while. Stuck? Invariably you’ll need to try the police station, library, or city hall to access the archives to find out more about a suspect. From here, it’s necessary to assemble the pieces in the right order. In due course, you’ll need to activate Mind’s Eye (think Sherlock Vision), where Reed can dive into an otherworldly realm and piece together what happened. Once inside a building of interest, a single button press will find all the clues in the area. That said, when you’re in the right place, detection tends to follow a fairly predictable pattern. Often, you’ll need to consult the map to work out where you need to go - sans objective marker - and there’s even the option to craft waypoints based on the clues you’ve picked up. You’re given a map of the city - a bird’s eye diagram of the forsaken world - replete with road names and opportunities to plan your progress. While the opening tutorial mission slowly gets you to grips with the mechanics of play, later cases feel refreshingly open. In fact, the game’s biggest strength is its unwillingness to hold your hand. A variety of cases sit between you and the endgame and there’s a pleasing level of openness to proceedings. Reed is in town to find out what’s causing the townsfolk’s descent into madness, but that’s just the initial tease. You can explore the map as you please, running, fast-traveling, or using a boat to get between points of interest. Except, we’re in Prohibition-era 1920s here. Dilapidated American flags flutter sadly in the breeze and fungal growth lines the numerous riverways, giving Oakmont a post-apocalyptic Venetian vibe. After a mysterious flood, hysteria has spread and the city streets are completely under water. The Sinking City is set in Oakmont, an island city neighboring Massachusetts. In Charles Reed, private investigator extraordinaire, we’ve got a dull-as-dishwater protagonist servicing a story that groans under the weight of Lovecraftian mythos. Holmes, with his neurotic proclamations and obsessive tendencies, is a character with so much to love. The new window dressing is a welcome change, but the bad news is that we no longer have the world’s most famous detective at the helm. This time around, say goodbye to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and hello to HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu. The Sinking City, the latest from Ukrainian developer Frogwares, is another interpretation of a classic novelist’s work.
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