If we want to be really pedantic, we could call the game an “Open-World Third Person Action-Adventure Investigation Survival Horror” title.
It also feels a lot more reasonable, “down to earth” and faithful to the limitations of the Mythos compared to, say, Dark Corners of the Earth, during the course of which we ended up killing Dagon and 2 other Great Old Ones (!), for example.īut it’s through its gameplay elements that The Sinking City demonstrates its more original virtues. However, the game’s story is well-written and presented in a most imposing and atmospheric manner, managing to intrigue, shock and horrify without ANY jump-scares whatsoever – an immense feat for a “Horror” game of our times.
It’s true that the concept of “coastal Massachusetts town suffering from sea-based calamities” is not the most original in the annals of established Cthulhu-related works of fiction. Not that I would know this feeling, of course. Reed’s eyes remind me of a game reviewer who’s played a game for 48 hours straight in order to publish his review on time. Needless to say, he ends up getting mixed up in an adventure that involves supernatural phenomena, feuds and quarrels between Oakmont’s peculiar “Great Families”, hostile and corrupted city officials, warring citizen factions, and, of course, stupendous and unheard-of wonders calling from the depths of the sea. With his health and sanity rapidly deteriorating, Reed decides to travel to Oakmont and seek out the cause of his dreams. These afflictions seem to be troubling our story’s protagonist, as well – Charles Reed, an ex-World War One Marine who’s currently working as a Private Detective in Boston.
And, as if things weren’t bad enough already, after the Flood many inhabitants of Oakmont and the wider Massachusetts area have reported strange hallucinations and vivid nightmares… Even more inexplicable is the sudden appearance of horrifying creatures that defy logic and established scientific knowledge, creeping up from Oakmont’s flooded areas. Close to Innsmouth is the once prosperous town of Oakmont, which has suffered a sudden and inexplicable flood of massive proportions that has left large parts of the town covered with water and cut off all access to it by land. We’re in 1920s Massachusetts, sometime after the FBI’s assault on the infamous city of Innsmouth that resulted in the mass arrest or flight of most of its weird inhabitants. The game’s general plot elements inevitably don’t stray far from what we’ve come to expect from a Lovecraftian story. So without further ado… The Sinking City.
THE SINKING CITY SWITCH REVIEW SERIES
The second one is developed by Ukranian studio Frogwares (who have produced a series of more than decent Sherlock Holmes adventure games), is being officially released on the 27th of June, and is the focus of this here review. The first one is Cyanide’s Call of Cthulhu, which essentially tried to be an adaptation of the similarly named pen-and-paper RPG published by Chaosium Inc. Independent publisher Focus Home Interactive attempted back in 2014 to commence the production of its own game which takes place within the Cthulhu Mythos, and this attempt eventually split into two distinct projects.
And it’s rather telling that in the year 2019, the game that is still considered by most “knowers” to be the best adaptation of the Mythos is 1993’s Shadow of the Comet, with second place being usually awarded to 2005’s decent, but still problematic in many aspects, Dark Corners of the Earth. We’ve seen all sorts of games that draw a little bit or even a lot of inspiration from this Mythology without it being their main focal point (legendary titles from the 90s like Alone in the Dark or even Quake come to mind, as well as more recent releases like Darkest Dungeon), but too few games that are based on a 100% Lovecraftian background and manage to successfuly convey the whole “Cthuloid” atmosphere in a respectable manner. Lovecraft is indeed a rather troubled one. The history of games which have attempted to port to our computer screens the cosmic horrors, of what has come to be collectively referred to as the Cthulhu Mythos, based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories” “ We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
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