![]() ![]() He seems to understand every mystery he encounters, never stopping to consider how strange any of this really is. ![]() Wooden, one note and perplexingly unmoved by the impossible events taking place around him, Reed is the embodiment of everything non-Lovecraftian. Yet while I enjoyed and frequently appreciated the side characters and the often fantastic voice acting given to them, I think The Sinking City’s other large problem is Charles Reed himself. There are enough intrigues and unique characters I wanted to talk to just abandon it, despite it eventually culminating in an ending that falls flat despite its grand build-up. That being said, I was still compelled to see the main story through to its conclusion. But you gotta help me first” process resulting in many of the more urgent missions bloating out to such an extent that lose whatever power they initially possessed. Quests are riddled with the whole, “Sure, I can help you. I firmly believe The Sinking City could have been a much shorter game and it would have greatly benefitted from the more concise experience. It’s a shame that many of these outcomes are so obviously telegraphed by the game, robbing many of this mysteries of any lasting impact. The Sinking City has a neat Deduction system that allows players to draw their own conclusions from the clues they pick up, often times resulting in vastly different outcomes. It’s repetitive, to say the least, but I enjoyed these investigations far longer than I thought I would. Show up at a location, find the clues, see a playback of the events (thanks to some kind of power in Reed’s head), follow the lead to the next location. My problem is they all play exactly the same. There’s some fantastic creative writing on display here, playing with the supernatural elements to make for some stories that are truly unique. Charles Reed will make his way around the districts of Oakmont and solve cases presented to him by a series of colourful characters and truth be told many of these are quite exciting. The Sinking City is a blended mix of third-person shooter and mystery game. And yet, despite all the effort put into making Oakmont so visually representative of the game’s themes, it amounts to very little. Everything feels just unnatural enough to be uncomfortable like a normal town caught between prosperity and ruin at the same time. It’s depressing, omnipotent and enthralling. Whole parts of the town have been submerged underwater, forcing Charles to sail across in a dinghy while avoiding debris. The houses are falling apart, the wood rotting from the water, while mounds of dead coral burst forth from the streets and dead sharks and whales with massive, bleeding chunks cut from their flesh dot the destroyed streets. It’s unlike any location I’ve explored in a video game, a fishing town separated from the mainland that’s been hit by a supernatural flood of some kind. From the get-go, it’s clear that Oakmont is the star of this game. The Sinking City will see you step into the constantly soggy boots of Charles Reed, a private detective who arrives in Oakmont to investigate a string of disappearances he believes may be connected to a series of terrifying visions he’s been experiencing. ![]() That no matter what we as human beings do, it will never amount to anything in the cosmic scheme of things, and I couldn’t help but shake that feeling when playing The Sinking City, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Those are parts of it, yes, but the true horror of his work is futility. The horror doesn’t stem from violence or supernatural elements. Merely ants taking up space that was governed by powers we could never hope to understand. The attempt at trying to understand something so beyond our realm of comprehension that it dwarfs us in importance. It’s much easier to channel these elements and tell a scary story with them, but few manage to delve into what really makes Lovecraft’s work so terrifying: The existential nightmare of it all. In trying to adapt the man’s fiction, many are often drawn to the more outwardly horrific factors such as the esoteric cults, the hideous creatures and the secret organisations pulling the shadowy strings of our society. ![]() I think a lot of people misunderstand what makes HP Lovecraft unique amongst horror authors. ![]()
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