Lo and behold the Great Old Ones! And the Ape-Men! And Lovecraft's "Bodysnatchers". Wow! This game covers almost every Mythos that Lovecraft has created. But, sincerely, it doesn't.
Given my love for Lovecraft's writings and works inspired by his tales and stories, this review might be somewhat biased.
The Sinking City takes us to the, well, sinking, city of Oakmont and we get to play as the sicklish Carles Charles Reed, a private eye from Boston, who has terrible headaches and a severe case of hallucinations.
Instead of taking his meds, Mr. Reed believes that going on an adventure to the hard-to-get-to Oakmont is a far better idea.
This slow paced detective tale takes us through ~20Hrs of gameplay and interesting stories. The clue and archive investigation is rather fun and, unlike other reviewers, it's rather intuitive.
The enemies are the same 4 or 5 sprites repeated over and over, from the first mission, to the very last. That is a blessing, however. The fighting system is awful, resulting in cheap deaths and bad aming or reach. It's unnerving, when compared with other fighting systems in this day and age.
The Graphics are based on Unreal Engine 4, but at times, details seem to vanish and NPCs share the same faces too often. It's "okay".
Even though the open city scenario is too large for the game, it is awesome to walk around its decaying walls, if you like games for the sheer experience of walking and walking senselessly, just checking the views. It is a pity that such streets are empty, because they have such potential, to hide more creatures, more enemies, more missions or artefacts.
As a Lovecratean experience, it has everything in its perfect dosis: mystery, horror, blood, and ancient beings. Oakmont, is a dark, damp, solitary, mad, lost, beyond forgiveness place. Just like Lovecraft would love.
As a game that was brought by a smaller studio in Ukraine, awesome! Keep working and perhaps future efforts will result in surely better games!
