![]() ![]() ![]() There is however a "how to play the game" menu section with some summaries about certain bits of the gameplay, and that helped.Īt The Sinking City's heart is an investigative game, where you pull various facts gleaned from dialogue, documentation, and physical clues and assemble them by combining them in a "Mind Palace" tab of the in-game management. Playing on the PC I'm sticking with the controller as I dislike third person games with the keyboard and mouse combination, but I do feel that the early tutorial style section could have been a little more specific about how you go about certain tasks, and for a pure console player it might get a little claggy as you start off. Interactive objects are highlighted when you get up close, although there's sometimes confusion over objects which you can examine and pick up, or only examine, which got a little frustrating when you felt it should be possible to collect the object for later reference. As you play further, you realise that Charles is having disturbing visions and dreams, and therefore this may have been deliberate to encourage the spooky atmosphere, but honestly felt like glitchy NPC management to me. NPCs litter the environment as well, and during my play glitched in and out of existence when I looked away and then back. This is a shame, but given the tightness of the environment, and the need to push the player into using the boat to navigate some of the areas, making it a "true" open world would probably have been impractical. Flashbacks of third person navigation in tight city streets brings up visions of Assassin’s Creed as well, although there's certainly not the ability to go anywhere, many arbitrary boundaries exist, leaving you unable to climb obvious ladders, or climb over what look like simple fences. The abandoned look has hints of fallout (without the airstream tech), or even the more recent Vampyr in its Victorian London. Walking round the city is reminiscent of many games past. The map is laid out with street names which are required to track down some of the locations of side quests where letters and in-game documentation list addresses by junction and so on. Large chunks of the map are underwater, necessitating the use of a boat which is automagically present at any pier for you to take a trip in to another pier. Once into the basics of the game you're given a hint about "hobo signs" on various buildings and objects which indicate inhabited buildings, material and ammo stashes, and buildings to avoid. Oakmont is an open world map that in part has been procedurally generated to save time during development, and uses the Unreal Engine for the core system. ![]() These refugees give a disturbing feel to the now locals with their genetic heritage and distinctive "look". ![]() The city has seen an influx of refugees from the nearby town of Innsmouth, which has been burnt to the ground by the government for unspecified reasons. Contacted by a mysterious gentleman he is directed to the city of Oakmont Massachusetts, which does not appear on any maps, and is cut off from the mainland by the sea and a flood that has semi-submerged the streets, leaving large areas only traversable by boat. In broad strokes, you play Charles Reed, an ex-Navy sailor turned Private Eye, who is beset with disturbing visions and dreams. The Sinking City is an investigative horror game, combining several different styles of gameplay and environments, and set in the weird and grim city of Oakmont, flooded and inhabited by similarly gruesome creatures. It's kind of traditional to quote HPL when writing up anything Lovecraftian, and this game is certainly that. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. Reviews // 20th Jul 2019 - 4 years ago // By Benedict Daniels The Sinking City Review ![]()
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