The Sinking City

At the end of the day, it was the story that got its hooks into me far more than the action. The adventure it takes you on paired with the atmosphere are what set this apart. Well, at least differentiates it from the rest of the BioShock wannabes.

With an exquisite plot, plenty of intrigue and mystery and very detailed scenarios, The Sinking City can however fall short when it comes to some aspects of execution, namely a control system that doesn't quite feel natural and some visual performance issues, which should not stand in the way of those willing to do some Lovecraftian horror detective work.

The Sinking City on Nintendo Switch is a surprisingly solid port of a game you probably didn’t expect to see on the Switch, and offers the kind of dark, contemplative mystery that Nintendo’s console was lacking.

The Sinking City does atmosphere and immersion really well, and we like that a lot. It doesn’t do its combat and handling as well, though, or it would be getting a higher score.

Once again, we are still waiting for an extraordinary adaptation of Lovecraft's works. Despite having a fairly successful visual section with excellent influences of Victorian literature, it is not quite well executed as a videogame especially for its many technical errors.

The Sinking City on Nintendo Switch is an excellent port with an intriguing narrative hook and Lovecraftian visual style let down by clunky combat and an empty open-world.

While it’s carried over its fair share of clunky elements in the transition to Nintendo's console, The Sinking City on Nintendo Switch is a fully-featured and mostly well-optimised port. The mixture of psychological horror and detective skills is a positive step beyond the developer’s previous work on Sherlock Holmes titles, and while its sanity mechanic doesn’t quite hold up to the likes of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, and it's not without bugs, it offers an enjoyable if not particularly scary descent into madness and delirium.

The Sinking City succeeds at its main areas of focus which are exploration, investigation, atmosphere and storytelling. All of those likeable elements are kept intact on Switch and while visual impact is overall expectedly lower than on other platforms, the promise of a preserved artistic direction is kept for the most part by Frogwares. It is still perfectible however in its implementation of combat and overall controls, which still do feel rather janky at times. At time of writing, this feel of roughness coating what is otherwise a good experience at core, holding it back on Switch as much as on the other platforms, even if some extra work went into the audio department to make things feel more authentic.

Playing The Sinking City on Nintendo Switch means going down to some compromises more than the PS4 and Xbox One edition: a couple of exclusive features, not very significant for the general experience, are not enough to compensate for a gameplay still too raw by current standards.

Prominent amongst the PC gaming streaming scene currently, The Sinking City is a very good game that was awkwardly converted to run on the Nintendo Switch. It was unsettling for me to sit down for hours on end to review. It also launched during a stretch where a lot of new games are releasing to challenge my attention. But I’ll probably revisit The Sinking City during quieter times, and when it’s hopefully been patched.

The Sinking City is a faithful adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft´s universe. As in other versions, some mechanics are pretty interesting and make it an interesting adventure, but this port to Nintendo Switch has many technical flaws and the open world structure feels "empty", long loading times aside.

A title like The Sinking City is hard to judge. Thematically and narratively, Frogwares has hit it out of the park. Technically, it’s mostly a miss. These two aspects are in direct conflict with each other, which results in an adventure game I’m trying to forget, and an experience I never will.

The Sinking City both sinks and swims. Delivering a good mystery within a picturesque yet grotesque hellscape, while also held back by visual ramifications and tricky combat engagements.

The Sinking City is founded on an unbalanced mixture of action and adventure, with an enjoyable gameplay in its investigative section and clumsy combat, duct taped together with some sort of open world survival elements.

The Sinking City reveals itself as a lackluster Lovecraftian tribute that's all wet.

The Sinking City features a genuinely interesting story and setting but is let down by performance issues and very poor combat controls. Traversing the city is often a chore and will have you hitting more dead-ends than a night of speed-dating. The Switch port is the worst way to experience the game and I can only recommend it to the most die-hard Lovecraft fans.

No matter how frustrating the combat became or how broken the environments turned out to be, I loved doing case work and figuring out obscure deaths or uncovering secret organizations within this peculiar game world. Given all the downsides, this is a game that is difficult to recommend, especially at full price.

Overall, The Sinking City is a fairly okay detective game, with an intriguing supernatural mystery taking place in what is obviously a lovingly-crafted environment. It does some interesting things such as using bullets for currency, causing the player to have to weigh the options of fleeing from or killing a threat. The sanity effects caused by being in disturbing situations or using Reed’s investigation abilities too much are cheesy but mainly unobtrusive and add a charm to the game I did not expect. Nonetheless, even with these fun aspects, the significant technical problems and boring traversal of Oakmont make me hesitate to suggest the Switch be your chosen platform for visiting this doomed town.

After looking at all the evidence, I must say I almost enjoyed The Sinking City. There is a solid game here buried under technical problems and tedium. The interesting characters and quirky protagonist were almost enough to keep me interested, but sloppy combat and plentiful walking eventually wore me down. This is a paranormal call I recommend walking away from.

The Sinking City on Nintendo Switch is extremely rough around the edges. I understand the lack of hand-holding when examining clues and evidence, but the fact of the matter is the game is so terrible in nearly every other aspect, that I wanted my hand to be held to get through it quicker! The Sinking City is the type of game that will appeal only to the most hardcore of H.P. Lovecraft, or noir fiction fans. Everyone else will be left wondering how so much could go so wrong in what really is an excellent idea for a game. Like the visions haunting Charles Reed, I’ll be seeing this one in my nightmares for quite some time.