![]() ![]() Where Holmes had his own super-detective skills, Reed has a kind of otherworldly insight he can use to find objects touched by the beyond most levels are built around identifying pieces of evidence and piecing together narratives based on them. Like the Sherlock Holmes games, gameplay and storytelling are interwoven in The Sinking City, with Reed exploring crime scenes, interviewing witnesses, doing research, analysing evidence, and making deductions based on his findings. It’s the unravelling, in fact, that makes it a delight. Many Lovecraft-inspired stories don’t dig this deep into the human stories behind the cosmic ones, and The Sinking City’s mysteries are frequently a delight to unravel. Moreau-style animal interbreeding in the mix, which somewhat hilariously rouses the ire of the in-game Ku Klux Klan. The personal feuds between Oakmont’s citizenry are rich and involving, with interesting characters, solid voice acting, and thoughtful uses of the genre. But Frogwares has written a story upon which to hang these ideas that’s more interesting than most. Tentacled creatures, infectious nightmares, sacrificial cults, mad scientists, cosmic portals - they all make appearances in this slice of eldritch horror. The truth, of course, is much bigger than some missing researchers, and luckily, the story is bigger than Reed.Īnyone familiar with Lovecraftian fiction will be able to list this game’s broad story points before even launching the opening cutscene. Reed is summoned to Oakmont to get to the bottom of the visions plaguing the town, and in the first instance, to locate a wealthy patron’s missing undersea expedition. Players take control of private eye Charles Reed, who - aside from possessing a laudanum habit and supernatural visions - is as bland a protagonist as they come. Welcome to Oakmont, Massachusetts: a coastal fishing town whose grim, grey streets are slowly sinking into the sea, and whose citizens are rapidly sinking into madness. Conceptually, that’s a fun idea in practice, it’s a complete mess, whose messiness would be nearly entirely cleaned up by cutting the open-world elements altogether. Coming to us from Frogwares, best-known for its rather good Sherlock Holmes games, it’s another detective game - but this one’s set in an open-world city, beset by Lovecraftian nightmares and creatures. The Sinking City is a stylish video game, and a game that has no business being set in an open world. But used poorly, it can cramp the style of even the most stylish video game. ![]() How many open-world games in the past five or ten years have benefited from being open world? I mean truly benefited, rather than just adding a few extra hours of gameplay time (that ever-misunderstood concept of “value for money”)? Open-world game design can be terrific for immersion and even storytelling, when used well.
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