Starts out pretty good- rpg points for investigating crimes scenes in different ways, it even appears to have an open world of sorts for you to wander the areas. Then at some point the investigations start shrinking, most of your points(which you can't max out) are useless, and you're railroaded from location and cutscene to location and cutscene in a very linear way. The game does maintain a good Lovecraftian feel, and makes some decent effort into (optionally) descending into madness, but The Sinking City definitely does it all better. Graphics are acceptable but strangely limited, things like repeated character arm gestures as they're talking. Worst is probably not having any type of chapter replay, since there are multiple possible endings, but you literally have to replay from the start to do anything different. Also not a fan of hide-and-seek insta-die sections, but that's on me.
I'm kinda new to horror games, so I kinda suck at them. This was a well done one. It seems to have taken the better bits of a lot of horror games, mainly Resident Evil, but without a lot of the baggage, like inventory management. A healthy does of cinematic cutscenes. Graphics are good, and for the most part, gameplay is too. The open world street areas feel very accesssible, like you can pop into random areas for nice small optional setpieces.(like the church) A couple nitpicks- some advanced abilities seem to elude me- don't think I ever got the "kick" prompt(which would be ideal after you pushed a zombie away), the "run and stealth a zombie" never seemed to work(tried it twice and it missed). Having to aim to fire instead of also having a hip-fire option made it a bit frustrating when a zombie is on your ass and you are super-zoomed in just trying to shoot it away.
Best part is when John Scorn kicks open the vaginal trailer door with dual lightsaber-shooting AK-47's and yells "It's Scornin' time!" But seriously, this is a different kind of game. More of an experience. Every frame of this game is like an H.R.Giger painting, and that's an incredible achievement. Surprisingly, except for a few Engine stutters, it runs like a dream on my aging RX580. You will feel in awe and increasingly disgusted as you progress. There's an interesting choice you can make in Act 1 that I wish happened more throughout the game. Just...another solution for a puzzle. One negative is the "lights" puzzles. They are an order of magnitude higher in difficulty than any other thing. I highly recommend using a walkthrough for just that part, I could discern no easy way to figure them out. Some complain about the combat, and it is indeed pretty clunky/slow, but I feel it's appropriate for the game. I mean, just look down at your body in the game and you can see you are all sorts of (increasingly) f'd up. Could also use a basic photo mode to tweak all the gorgeous screencaps too.
Old school point-and-click isometric. I like the nods to Alien, Aliens, and Dead Space. Nice backgrounds, although being so dark sometimes I couldn't see my character when I entered the room. I think I only needed a walkthrough for a couple of parts, otherwise most solutions were pretty straightforward.(or you just kept clicking everything with everything) The atmosphere of dread and disgust was tops. Wasn't big on the cartoony look of the people with the environment being so realistic, but I'm sure that was a limitation on graphics. Plus those parts are pretty limited. LOVED the spinal surgery part, looked nice and painful! Interface could use some enhancement, as well as...any accessible settings. And as much as it breaks the immersion, a basic tutorial on how the interface works would be welcome.
Phantom Liberty is a fantastic expansion- like Witcher 3's expansions, you can see how they improved everything, from the graphics and level design to the elaborate quests that are much more complex. It does come at a bit of a cost though, as framerate will suffer most in Dogtown. Still perfectly playable on my old RX580.(with FSR, of course)
The visuals are incredibly beautiful(no surprise they are the best of the series) with Steampunk European-style architecture locations dripping with delight.(Oscar's new form is a delight) There are even multiple options for "taking in the view" with introspection areas or even just extending the train loading sequences.(ssds be so fast now!) I was very surprised my aging RX580 handled it all on max settings with only a handful of framerate hitches. While it is kind of open-world, freedom is fairly limited but enough to soak in the atmosphere. Camerawork is an extension of what was done in Syberia 3, but much improved. It does sometimes get akward when it doesn't move the way you want, or fast enough for your character, but it is meant to be cinematic/natural. Takes some adjusting. The "points of interest" dots work fairly well, it's too bad they couldn't come up with something that seemed more natural and less artificial-looking, but that would probably end up frustrating players. While there are a few decisions that radiate, the game is meant to be a fairly straight narrative, very much like an interactive movie. The themes are reasonably mature, and while the war/persecution parallels are pretty obvious, the focus is on the emotion of the characters, which I'm glad comes across very well. Puzzle-wize, most are pretty easy, though most of the war stuff I looked up out of laziness. Steampunk mechanical puzzles are the most enjoyable, of course, so that itch gets scratched!
Very short but very well done side scroller. Great art, and the storybook element is excellent, with nice fourth-wall-breaking. I'm assuming they couldn't think of enough string-related puzzles to lengthen it, but better too short than too long. I'll admit I had to look up a couple of solutions but only because I suck at timing/platforming games.(and was impatient)
The artwork is definitely the best part of the game, and I can definitely see the Miyazaki-influenced ideas and imagery. The general story is simliar to Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, with a lone female hero trying to fight a miasma that's killing everything. But strangely, she's kind of a jerk to some people, judgemental, even attacks somebody to steal something of hers. Kind of an unusual approach, and especially the ending, which will feel like more of a letdown but is kind of reflective.(I had to look up whether I had somehow picked a "bad" ending but there's only one) Some nitpicking about slow repeated animations, and I wish they could have dialed down the narration, or ideally found a way to eliminate it completely so it would be more a piece of art with visual storytelling.
I somehow missed this game initially, even though I had played classic LucasArts and Sierra point-and-click adventures. The darker, creepy atmosphere was a great change of pace. Some great grotesque stuff without going overboard. Puzzles and interaction are fairly standard for this type of game. I'll admit to using a walkthrough occasionally just because of impatience, but I think I could have figured most of them out. I had this game on Amazon Games, but it crashed even with fixes. This GOG version runs perfectly though. Two negatives- the movement is atrocious, you right click and your character clumsily slides around the invisible barriers, often missing things and "locking" into stairs you didn't want to go to. I almost gave up on the last puzzle as it required semi-precise timed movements. The other negative is the main voice actor, he is pretty bad. It's like they went to a small community theater and picked the guy that overacted the most. Keep your hand near the ESC key so you can skip his often-repeated dialogue when you are clicking around the screen.
