The Sinking City

The Sinking City is deeply evocative in its oppressive dourness, and stays true to the investigative backbone of Cthulhu. We are presented an open world of horror and suspense that HP Lovecraft surely would have enjoyed investigating.

The Sinking City is an amazing experience, portraying a great interpretation of the pieces of H. P. Lovecraft. Adding together L.A. Noire with Sherlock Holmes, Frogwares gives us a game that blends private investigation, shooting and narrative into a believable world that is immersive and molded by our decisions, making us feel the true protagonist of the adventure.

From the first moment when I fired up The Sinking City, I was immediately transported to a world HP Lovecraft could have created himself.

As much as I adore the story and atmosphere of The Sinking City, it definitely feels like a budget title at times. If you can get past the weak combat, harmless jank, and enjoy a solid detective experience that won't hold your hand and throw tough choices your way, you shouldn't pass up on it. Even more so if you're a fan of Lovecraft.

Even with its (few) flaws, The Sinking City manages to shine right where other games of the same genre have failed to impress. It doesn’t abuse jumpscare and useless boss fights, but instead Frogwares focused on a well thought out and engaging investigative system and on pleasant action parts, which naturally lead the player to discover the monstrosities of the abyss and to bitterly repent of their own curiosity.

For the first time in its long existence, Frogwares created a mature, multilayered, intense adventure that will keep you in its tentacled grip until the very last second.

The Sinking City's unique blend of Detective gameplay and Cthulhu Mythos elements will intrigue fans of H.P. Lovecraft's works, even if certain shortcomings ultimately prevent it from truly standing out as the best Cthulhu game ever made.

A good example of how to craft a Mythos game. Not for the faint of heart. Cool fact: a gamer who knows nothing about the mythos will probably make all the wrong choices in the game.

Despite its shortcomings, the story and the oppressing atmosphere of The Sinking City recommend it as one of the best Lovecraft inspired game to date. If you can get past the clunky combat and technical issues, there's much to like in The Sinking City.

The Sinking City has an incredible atmosphere that really grips the darkest parts of your mind. Oakmont feels hostile, unwelcoming and full of secrets, but the game makes it clear that it might cost more than just your life to find out what they are. While it stumbles with its characters and combat, The Sinking City is a great first step into the supernatural detective game.

Aside from some indie crunch, The Sinking City is a moody yet faithful dive into the world of Lovecraft that would make a great starting ground for anyone new to the genre. It would be nice to see the world and combat tightened up a bit, but its incredibly rewarding mystery-solving makes it a stellar investigation game that succeeds at such a naturally mystifying genre where many others fail.

A treat for fans of H. P. Lovecraft's works, mystifying settings, and followers of the Cthulhu Mythos. Unfortunately, its weaker combat and exploration mechanics remain asleep at the bottom of the ocean.

The Sinking City is probably the Lovecraft inspired game currently available on the market, thanks to its oppressive atmosphere and its story, which utilizes the lore masterfully without deviating from the canon. AI and technical issues, as well as the clunky combat, are often immersion breaking, but the excellent investigation mechanics and exploration features make it easy to look past these issues. Highly recommended to survival horror fans and those who live and breath Lovecraft.

While occasionally frustrating, The Sinking City's compelling stories, exciting environments, and memorable characters make for one of the better Cthulhu lore games around.

The Sinking City is a decent adaptation of Lovecraft’s work, meshing dark themes with a variety of great investigations that culminate into tricky decisions. If the combat was less clunky and the world more polished, it would have beckoned all to its desolate shore.

Even if it doesn’t succeed at everything it’s trying, The Sinking City has a lot of personality. The investigation isn’t as free as we were promised it would be, and the fighting are weak. But it’s a strong game with good writing.

What goes down must come up. The Sinking City is more than the sum of its glitchy b-game parts. Balanced detective work makes up for shoddy gunplay. A gruff and well-realized cast makes up for brain-dead AI. This is unironically a highwater mark for both detective fiction and Lovecraftian Horror in video gaming.

A truly groundbreaking experience is not the mish-mash of clues, uninspired fireworks and quite appealing story with a rather lame ending - but for answering difficult questions, you have to beat The Sinking City more than just on the back.

The Sinking City is a very interesting game, with some great ideas but also some shortcomings. If you’re looking for a slow-paced, investigation-based game, make sure to check this out.

Even if the uneasy Lovecraftian atmosphere of The Sinking City can hook us with its gloomy graphics, the game is a technical mess. It's not the senseless battles that we will remember, but rather the investigative gameplay. Above all, the narrative around madness is remarkably well transcribed, both visually and acoustically. Fans of the genre will undoubtedly ignore its shortcomings and better appreciate its universe.

Though it muddies the waters by needlessly cramming in a boatload of gameplay mechanics that drown out some of the fun, The Sinking City delivers a believable turn-of-the-century Lovecraftian setting and infuses it with fittingly macabre story beats that would do the author proud.

The Sinking City feels more like it is based on a Sherlock Holmes novel rather than a game inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's work. The part of the story focusing on supernatural elements is pretty weak, but side-quests more than make up for it. This game has a very strong "one more place to visit" or "one more conversation" vibe. It's clunky but effective.

The Sinking City is a near-miss, and a unique foray into surivival horror. It doesn’t coddle you, and it certainly doesn’t do any hand-holding, which makes it a unique detective outing let down in its execution by a number of tiny flaws. A sequel that focuses on making cases less humdrum, and cuts back on the combat, could be a hell of an offering for devout fans of the detective genre. The game isn’t bad, but it’s hard to care about what you’re doing when many cases in The Sinking City are so banal.

Let me get something out of the way right now: The Sinking City is a noir detective game, not a psychological horror game or a survival horror game. The trailers give you serious Silent Hill / Eternal Darkness vibes, with a side of Resident Evil 4, and while this game visually refers to the horror game history of the last twenty years, it’s doing its own thing.

The first hurdle is certainly the shooting, and more generally the entire combat system, which is too old, woody and clumsy.

This is a good adventure with a very satisfying investigation system. Sadly its combat mechanics, the variety of the setting and the technical compartment lack quality.

Frogwares creates an open world and a story that both fit perfectly inside Lovecraft's mythology, but The Sinking City fails to sit aside the best games of the genre.

It’s clear The Sinking City tries to punch its weight with triple-A’s but overstretches itself. The fundamental lack of polish is problematic in light of its blockbuster RRP. But if nothing else, I feel it has the makings of a new cult classic.

The Sinking City feels like a mystery novel brought to life within a video game. The developers have captured that feeling of intrigue and danger perfectly. Sure, there are some rough bits attached to the entire ordeal, but overall Frogwares’ latest title is a fun romp through a dark and dangerous world that’s rife with problems for players to solve. If you’ve ever been a fan of Lovecraftian horror or just mystery stories in general, The Sinking City is one stop you’ll want to make a little time for on your trip down the rabbit hole.

If you can ignore The Sinking City's technical failings, set the combat difficulty to easy and stick to getting embroiled in the story.

While some of the quests do contain interesting stories, it’s not quite enough to make up for the weaknesses of the setting. I really wanted to like this game, and perhaps fans more interested in the source materials of Lovecraft or those interested in Frogwares’ evolving mechanics of detection will get a bigger kick out of it than I did.

It was a bad decision to create The Sinking City as an open world game, which makes the gameplay like a heap of loose sand. But the story is interesting, as is being a detective.

For the entire game you’ll have the feeling that something significant is going to happen soon – but it won’t. Story never takes a sharp turn, every interesting character is introduced in the first third of the game and there are no meaningful rewards to find in Oakmont openworld. [Issue#239, p.56]

An occasionally entertaining detective game blighted by poor writing, rote combat, and a dreary open world.

At some points The Sinking City shows small signs of the Lovecraftian horror that engulfs the city of Oakmont. Huge edifices of long forgotten deities, gargantuan subsea species and the madness of some of the citizens comes to light in, unfortunately, a few memorable segments. For the vast majority of the game though we go from one dull fetch quest to another to reach a sudden and quite uneventful ending.

Story of The Sinking City is good as novel but just story is interesting nothing more. Also animations and game mechanics feeling like playing old generation games.

Creators of the Sherlock franchise have hurled themselves into a watery abyss full of monsters and completely drowned their own brilliant investigative formula. The world is open, but terribly empty, the fights are dull, and the RPG mechanisms are lacking. Only the investigation remains fun - and it is not enough.

A brilliant concept with some excellent ideas, let down badly by the game engine, inconsistent writing and plotting.

An interesting game that scratches the detective itch, without ever reaching great heights.

The Sinking City promises a nightmarish journey through a Lovecraftian townscape filled with monsters and threatening cults, but too often falls into a loop of forced combat and resource hunting. The investigative parts are excellent, and this is probably the best Lovecraft adaptation since Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth, but it still never really lives up to its potential. Close, but no Shoggoth.

I had the same response in general to playing The Sinking City. There’s so much wonderful potential in this game that its flaws are all the more maddening. I wished that it had followed Call of Cthulhu in abandoning combat altogether and just used its larger space and considerably more nuanced investigation system to tell a great story. But it seems I’ll have to keep waiting for the perfect Lovecraft game.

The Sinking City is a Lovecraftian game with an excellent narrative but with too ambitious mechanics.

The Sinking City is certainly more involving and had more care put into it than last year’s official Call of Cthulhu game but besting its spiritual predecessor doesn’t mean it reaches its full potential. The detective work is quite involving, but the combat is a mess and the pretty open-world doesn’t have enough in it to justify its existence. It would’ve been better suited as a series of locations you hop between, rather than dull jaunts to get to places of interest or the various archives of information.

It won’t scare your socks off, but if you can avoid getting bogged down by The Sinking City’s clunkier elements, there’s enough to enjoy here.

Oakmont is a convincing Lovecraftian town - but the point of those stories is that these are places you'd never want to find yourself. [Issue#335, p.114]