The Sinking City

 PC
User Score
6.0

Mixed or average reviews- based on 246 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 96 out of 246
  2. Mixed: 75 out of 246
  3. Negative: 75 out of 246

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  1. Gizilq
    Jun 29, 2019
    4
    В этой игре плохо буквально все.
    1. Абсолютно пустой опенворлд. По нему ходят болванчики родом из 2005 года. Там ничего не происходит.
    3. 99% помещений будут лютой копипастой. Вплоть до расположения мебели и вещей. Учитывая что помещений в игре довольно мало, это очень плохо. 2. Хождение по адресам. Смотри как все происходит. Идет задание тебе говорят найти какого-то человека. Если    В этой игре плохо буквально все.
    1. Абсолютно пустой опенворлд. По нему ходят болванчики родом из 2005 года. Там ничего не происходит.
    3. 99% помещений будут лютой копипастой. Вплоть до расположения мебели и вещей. Учитывая что помещений в игре довольно мало, это очень плохо.
    2. Хождение по адресам. Смотри как все происходит. Идет задание тебе говорят найти какого-то человека. Если известно где он, то открываешь карту и ищешь на ней "Район Зюзино, улица Затопленая, на пересечении улицы Гопницкой и Проспекта Обрыгалова". А потом ножками ищешь, так как номеров домов тупо нет. Если нет адреса, то идешь в Ратушу/Клинику/Газету/Библиотеку и ищешь адрес через архивы. И так постоянно.
    3. Очень плохая боевка.
    4. Только что. Прохожу значит майнквест и сталкивает меня игра с ребенком. Только вот разрабы не смогли нарисовать модельку ребенка и перед нами стандартная модель 180 сантиметрового мужика, которую я уже раз двадцать на улице видел.
    Эта игра настолько плохо сделана, что продолжаешь играть только для того чтобы посмотреть, что разработчики еще сделали не так.    … Expand
  2. Bluehydra
    Jun 27, 2019
    1
    I would recommend waiting for the game too improve a lot more before even trying to buy. also get it on steam or GOG instead due to their action on making this game a exclusive, and slapping a lot of people who got the game in the face.

    The overall story seems okay for what i played so far. but the world and gameplay fall flat, due to the game isn't Finished and needs heavy work in    I would recommend waiting for the game too improve a lot more before even trying to buy. also get it on steam or GOG instead due to their action on making this game a exclusive, and slapping a lot of people who got the game in the face.

    The overall story seems okay for what i played so far.
    but the world and gameplay fall flat, due to the game isn't Finished and needs heavy work in teems of gameplay and world design.

    The AI's are just not working and randomly walking around without a function or purpose,
    the map design is a mess and kills the story you are trying to follow.
    There are so many bugs its sad. (floating ai, texture issues. etc")

    I wish the game had a more linear gameplay instead of the open world gameplay due to the lack of Life in the map.    … Expand
  3. DreamCore
    Jun 29, 2019
    3
    This game was clearly developed by a team of rookies.

    1) The graphics is below mediocre and the worst LOD I've ever seen (entire building showing up in front of you). 2) Characters standing in mid-air. 3) Buggy animations and the characters just snap when they change walking direction instead of doing a smooth turn. 5) Buggy AI pathfinding that tries to walk into objects and    This game was clearly developed by a team of rookies.

    1) The graphics is below mediocre and the worst LOD I've ever seen (entire building showing up in front of you).

    2) Characters standing in mid-air.

    3) Buggy animations and the characters just snap when they change walking direction instead of doing a smooth turn.

    5) Buggy AI pathfinding that tries to walk into objects and walls.

    4) Sound is buggy and often produces crackling distorted noice

    5) Many indoor environments look identical. I've been to several different houses and I thought at first it was one and the same house with just a few minor visual differences. Same goes for many of the characters.

    5) Bad performance. Doesn't matter if you play in 4k or 2k with/without anti-aliasing, the performance is still garbage even with a 2080 Ti even though the game visually looks like a PS3 game.

    5) Buggy settings, after chaning to full-screen once, windowed fullscreen stopped working and won't cover the entire screen.

    6) The gameplay is very repetitive, with 50% of the time spent walking aroun the empty bland city.

    This game was clearly rushed with no care for quality. Do yourself a favor and save your money.    … Expand
  4. OfCourse
    Mar 21, 2021
    0
    Developers took Lovecraft's work and spun it into the new cult of "racism bad". Except they did it for the FISH people, who became that way because of their cult devoted to a literal FISH DEMON who is in league with a ELDRICH HORROR. So they try to portray those understandably untrusted and discriminated horrific mutants as oppressed victims of KKK, to make parallels with American blacks.Developers took Lovecraft's work and spun it into the new cult of "racism bad". Except they did it for the FISH people, who became that way because of their cult devoted to a literal FISH DEMON who is in league with a ELDRICH HORROR. So they try to portray those understandably untrusted and discriminated horrific mutants as oppressed victims of KKK, to make parallels with American blacks. Well what happens when KKK are the only ones whos actively fighting a worshipers of the cult to EDRICH HORROR? No matter how you try to humanize the FISH people, the KKK look like the good guys, you absolute pillocks. Developers wanted to be so woke and give Lovecraft's racism a middle finger so badly, they did a full circle and made the KKK look rational. Incredible, just amazing.
    The gameplay is poorly made and boring.    … Expand
  5. Ingepunk
    Sep 1, 2019
    3
    Ok, You Start the Game with a boring Intro. Then you walk to a Guy who bubbles boring stuff (10 minutes long). Then you walk to another (Ape)Guy who bubbles boring stuff and give you your first Quest. His Apeboy is missing. Then you walk to a Crime Scene, do boring stuff and find out Apeboy was Murdered.
    Now you can go back to Apeguy and tell him what ever you want. BORING!
    - Graphics    Ok, You Start the Game with a boring Intro. Then you walk to a Guy who bubbles boring stuff (10 minutes long). Then you walk to another (Ape)Guy who bubbles boring stuff and give you your first Quest. His Apeboy is missing. Then you walk to a Crime Scene, do boring stuff and find out Apeboy was Murdered.
    Now you can go back to Apeguy and tell him what ever you want. BORING!

    - Graphics ok
    - Sound (speech, "Music", Weapons) not so good
    - Gameplay, God it's Hell of a F**k

    Don't Play this Game, even you wish to Torture yourself!    … Expand
  6. Tidytib
    Sep 2, 2019
    2
    Confusing story line, unnecessarily long gameplay, confusing game mechanics.i rather play call of cthulhu four times in a row then this.game is not optimize properly. I literally have to push my self to play this game.in this vast open World there is absolutely nothing to do.NPC doing funny **** kinda takes away all the seriousness about this game.
  7. ecelum
    Jul 1, 2020
    0
    EPIC doesn't care about it's playerbase or anything but money. They scrapped paragon, and now they've scrapped save the world. Don't waste your money buying any of their games - it likely will never be finished, and they will let the playerbase slowly dwindle and die.
  8. Borreh1973
    Jul 24, 2019
    1
    This game sucks. Gameplay is complete failure. Try playing with an xbox control in a PC that is running big games (AC Odyssey is an example) and you will cry in pain when you die because you are an imbecile and don't hit a creeping bug with a shovel.
    I took my money and tore up with this game. I could not get a refund. I tried but wasted my time trying to like this piece of trash. Waste    This game sucks. Gameplay is complete failure. Try playing with an xbox control in a PC that is running big games (AC Odyssey is an example) and you will cry in pain when you die because you are an imbecile and don't hit a creeping bug with a shovel.
    I took my money and tore up with this game. I could not get a refund. I tried but wasted my time trying to like this piece of trash. Waste of money and my time with the download and the game. I gave up and uninstalled after 20h forever lost and headache gained.    … Expand
  9. Hologram
    Jun 29, 2019
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. It is all very important that you have been working with the organisation and to be able that you will not have to wait until the end of the game to be submitted by the end.… Expand
  10. Ashenkhar
    Jun 27, 2019
    0
    This game would have been far superior on a non-Epic games platform.
    1) No cloud saves.
    2) No achievements. 3) Epic store only (see 1 and 2) Basically, this dumpster fire was rushed to market so that Epic could have another exclusive under their belts. Too bad these guys sold out to Epic. This is the type of AAA game that will be $19.99 in a couple of months... except, since it's    This game would have been far superior on a non-Epic games platform.
    1) No cloud saves.
    2) No achievements.
    3) Epic store only (see 1 and 2)

    Basically, this dumpster fire was rushed to market so that Epic could have another exclusive under their belts. Too bad these guys sold out to Epic.

    This is the type of AAA game that will be $19.99 in a couple of months... except, since it's an Epic exclusive, they'll probably price gouge until it comes out on Steam.    … Expand
  11. Lother
    Nov 7, 2021
    0
    The more I played, the more it devolved into pandering, progressive woke nonsense. Every checkbox is ticked here and shoved in your face:

    - oppressed illegal immigrants that did nothing wrong? check - rich individuals who wont share their wealth with the poor? check - charitable individuals redistributing the rich one's wealth to the poor? multiple check - secret homo relationship    The more I played, the more it devolved into pandering, progressive woke nonsense. Every checkbox is ticked here and shoved in your face:

    - oppressed illegal immigrants that did nothing wrong? check
    - rich individuals who wont share their wealth with the poor? check
    - charitable individuals redistributing the rich one's wealth to the poor? multiple check
    - secret homo relationship heavy handedly shoved as an afterthought you discover from a photo and never mentioned again? check
    - women's rights movement? check

    The game also clearly bashes you over the head with what the creators think is the correct moral decision(the PROGRESSIVE one) in each instance. You're given stupid choices like: expose a clearly evil person part of a dark cult by poisoning the food they distribute to the poor in order to gain members or simply leaving her alone. I mean, seriously, what the actual F?

    Oh and the gameplay is pretty clunky and just annoying. You run out of ammo so damn fast then have to scrounge for more. It's not like you can AVOID monsters, most of the time you do have to fight them and they take so many hits to go down. What's the point of giving the player supposedly better and better weapons if those don't 1-shot weaker enemies? 4-5 shotgun blasts to take down a giant, same for rifle rounds.....huh?

    I only gave this a chance because it really did start out very promising and had SOME elements from H.P. Lovecraft done well. I should have suspected the level of wokeness when the game went exclusive to Epic for so long.

    Don't play this, play Eternal Darkness, a perfect adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft themes. Oh how I wish they would just make a remaster of that instead.    … Expand
  12. hoanns
    Jun 6, 2020
    4
    Solving cases is okay, but the badly made 'open world', clunky gameplay and awful npcs make this game too unimmersive for me to play. Shame, could've been an intriguing game if they developed it properly.
  13. M7AMD
    May 21, 2023
    2
    this game is terrible. the story was somewhat appealing but the way these developers decided to go with it is so bad and boring, first of all who the hell thought the open world was a good idea?! most of the game is running through the streets and alleys in an empty and doll world, even the idea of fast traveling was terrible.

    i liked the first chapter of the game, but it slowly dragged    this game is terrible. the story was somewhat appealing but the way these developers decided to go with it is so bad and boring, first of all who the hell thought the open world was a good idea?! most of the game is running through the streets and alleys in an empty and doll world, even the idea of fast traveling was terrible.

    i liked the first chapter of the game, but it slowly dragged without exciting things happening.
    overall i do not recommend it i had to force myself to finish it

    2/10    … Expand
  14. F1_is_WWE
    Oct 8, 2022
    3
    In The Sinking City, Frogwares attempted to take the point and click mystery gameplay of their second line of Sheclock Holmes games (The Testament Of, Crimes and Punishment, The Devil's Daughter) and merge it into an open-world thrid-person shooter in a Cthullu horror setting. They failed in all respects.

    The first line of Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes games consisted of ordinary point &    In The Sinking City, Frogwares attempted to take the point and click mystery gameplay of their second line of Sheclock Holmes games (The Testament Of, Crimes and Punishment, The Devil's Daughter) and merge it into an open-world thrid-person shooter in a Cthullu horror setting. They failed in all respects.

    The first line of Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes games consisted of ordinary point & click gameplay. You search for clues on the screen, you combine items in your inventory to solve puzzles, and you play minigames. In their second line of games, Frogwares added the deduction screen - you now had to take various conjectures and deduce the culprit on your own. They were praised for this innovation and their games received high scores. But Sinking City does away with most of this mystery gameplay. Because it is a third person shooter, you don't have a cursor on the screen - so you don't actually search for clues, you just walk around the crime scene and click on all highlighted prompts. Neither do you have an inventory to solve puzzles, and there are no minigames. The deduction screen returns, but you don't actually deduce anything - it's only purpose is to provide you with different "moral choices" (which, of course, don't impact the story). The only time you actually use your brain is when the game tells you to search an archive - you will have to pick the correct archive to search (out of ~10) and then pick the correct categories to serach (out of ~4). That's it. And this is on the hard "detective mode", mind you.

    The shooting isn't terrible, but it is outdated. It reminded me of the first Mafia game, in that it is very floaty without any snapping onto cover or anything. Occasionally you fight humans, mostly you fight monsters, of which there are 4 enemy types and 2 boss fights. The only challenge will be in conserving your ammunition. There are also aquatic sections where you dive through the depths, these are very short and simple.

    The story is awful. This is a mystery game where half of the mysteries are solved because of a confessional letter conveniently dropped at the scene of the crime. The other half of the mysteries are solved because your character has a superpower that allows him to see what exactly happened in the past. You will examine the scene of the crime, arrive at a dead end, then use your powers to re-construct the scene of the crime where you will see the bad guy say "haha, now that I killed him, I'm going to go to my hideout at 321 Baker St. where no one will find me muahaha". And then you go there and find him, the end. The overall story is about a monster who is trying to destroy the world. You likewise don't have any initiative or figure anything out, you just go along and do whatever people tell you. There are some choices you make that don't affect the plot. At the end you are given 3 endings Mass Effect style.

    The open-world fails because traversing it is boring. To compare Sinking City again with Mafia, in Mafia by the time you finish the game you have pretty much memorized the city because it's that fun to just take time to drive around. Here you only have 1 boat, which is slow to drive, and it can only take you around half the map. The other half you just walk on foot. Nothing interesting happens, no little events pop up like in GTA, you just walk around the empty streets and that's it. As if they realized how awful their design is, the developers added fast travel locations on every few street corners. And the presentation is just as rushed as the design. All characters read their lines without any emotions. Numerous fade-outs where they didn't bother to animate. Just a very cheap game overall, a quick cash-grab.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

76
#76 Most Discussed PC Game of 2019
20
#20 Most Shared PC Game of 2019

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
71

Mixed or average reviews - based on 47 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 47
  2. Mixed: 30 out of 47
  3. Negative: 0 out of 47
  1. Games.cz
    Aug 19, 2019
    60
    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.
    Read full review
  2. Softpedia
    Aug 15, 2019
    80
    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.
    Read full review
  3. Game World Navigator Magazine
    Aug 2, 2019
    66
    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]
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