The Sinking City Remastered

If you like a thinking man's game, this is a good one for you. Way more than just a shooter, you have to aquire clues to make conclusions and solve mysteries...but there is some shooting to keep it fun! It really moves slowly and is easy to get overwhelmed with side quests

This game could be much better with higher budget.. but honestly, it does what it does quite well. And it just drew me in completely.. I wonder how it ends.. 20 hours in now :)

I'd say this the clear second best Lovecraftian game, that I've played, behind Bloodborne. Incorporating a multitude of Lovecraft's stories, from direct references to neat little nods. Detective work is pretty standard fare but works really well in the setting and the flashback mechanic where you piece the event together was fun touch. Early on I was expecting to get annoyed with having to go to the various archives (news, police, city hall, hospital) but it's actually great for character immersion. Overall the writing that's there is solid and better than the usual overdone cliches of the genre and the environmental storytelling is really good, especially in the side quests. The city was a great idea and the atmosphere is top notch, although it could have gone further with the various factions considering how many macabre lookin cultists are openly walking around. Most of the music is good and fits, it's pure bliss when that smokey noir jazz track hits while wandering the city and I wish there could have been more songs like that. Combat is nothing great but can be a good and/or satisfyingly tense time. I discovered early on you can essentially stunlock enemy attacks, save for the largest baddie, with melee to save on expendable resources. Hopefully in the sequel they cut the size of the map in half and make each district more varied in appearance because while what we got is aesthetically great it's way too massive to the point of visual redundancy when the size serves no purpose beyond infrastructural realism. You can only enter a handful of places per zone and most of the interiors are copy-pasted with only minor variation, the first side quest interior I went into was an exact copy of the first main quest residence. The fast travel system also suffers because of the size when you're forced to re-walk/jog through familiar neighbourhoods with nothing to do instead of being able to just open the map and travel to previously discovered places.

What an absolute fumble this game is. It has so many good things, like the sleuth work mechanic, the strange visions, the city itself looks interesting, a bit of crafting mechanic. This could have been a magnificent Lovecraftian detective game, but all it managed to be is a run around simulator. Here is the nice long list: - The controls are horrible. - The enemies are laughable. - No sneaking. - No direct button to crafting menu. - Detective work altough interesting, it is shallow and there is no thinking involved from the players side. - NPCs, pop in and out of view on the street. - Crafting is dumb. Put spring and alcohol together to get medkits? - Game time is used mostly to run around in the city, back and forth between points of interests. - Lore breaking. Innsmouth residents, all of them were a member of EOD. It's in their nature as they are the children of Dagon. They are not individuals in any sence, especially after transformation. - There is no good loot to look for, just a handful of skins. Fast travel is horrible as well. You can't just travel to a phone booth (travel point).. NO! You have to go to a both first to be able to travel to another booth. - Side missions are empty shells of fetch quests with a bit of story spun around it. All in all, this game just falls between a multitude of chairs. Shooting, crafting, detective puzzles, open world. It missed all of these. I would've wanted to go through the story, but I just gave up, when the whole game revealed itself as a walking simulator, where you have to go back and thorth points of interests. Like going to a place, finding a clue, then going to the librabry to search for info, then going to another place, finding clue, then going to the police station to find info, then back to another place... Just steer clear of this one. What an absolute joke!

So if you are familiar with Lovecraft's short stories in general you will see a lot of references. Its sort of like Disney Land, like, everything associated with the creator has been consolidated into one small area. That makes it kind of fun. . .For anyone else, well, you will have to rely on your judgment. The only real criticism I have is the color pallete. Everything is very muted, very drab, its all browns, greens, and greys, there is also a lot of clutter which doesn't help anything. I really wish they had worked with a greater spectrum of tones and hues to lend vitality and contrast to the environments. The open world is nice, exploring it isn't nearly as exciting as it should be