{"id":100203,"date":"2019-09-13T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/sinking_city"},"modified":"2019-09-13T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T21:00:00","slug":"review-the-sinking-city-a-solid-port-for-this-lovecraftian-detective-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/09\/13\/review-the-sinking-city-a-solid-port-for-this-lovecraftian-detective-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Sinking City &#8211; A Solid Port For This Lovecraftian Detective Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/2f4309980e60c\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/2f4309980e60c\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div id>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"The Sinking City Review - Screenshot 1 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99067\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99067\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"The Sinking City Review - Screenshot 1 of 5\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Despite being a writer whose work has divided so many &#8211; especially when it comes to the legacy of his problematic views and the running theme of \u2018otherness\u2019 in his poems and prose &#8211; HP Lovecraft remains the go-to inspiration for anything remotely Gothic or tinged with thoughts of mania and delirium. Naturally, it&#8217;s only mere minutes into the opening cutscene that our grizzled and damaged antagonist &#8211; private investigator and perpetual hat-wearer, Charles Reed &#8211; steps out onto the deck of a ship and spies a squid-headed leviathan drifting in a miasma of madness.<\/p>\n<p>For developer Frogwares, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/sinking_city\"><strong>The Sinking City<\/strong><\/a> isn\u2019t just taking inspiration from Lovecraft\u2019s vast bibliography. It\u2019s a full-on ode, filled to the depressed gills with references to characters and ideas from across his poetry and novellas. Much like how Stephen King\u2019s <strong>The Dark Tower<\/strong> novels melded many of his previous works into one interconnected multiverse, this pulpy mix of investigation, third-person shooting and survival horror happily cherry picks characters from across Lovecraft\u2019s work and plonks them into the same, rain-drenched city off the coast of Massachusetts.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"The Sinking City Review - Screenshot 2 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99064\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99064\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"The Sinking City Review - Screenshot 2 of 5\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>It goes without saying, the Ukranian developer isn\u2019t quite as deft with such amalgamation as King, but despite being a wholly unoriginal idea &#8211; a grizzled, 1920s PI searches for answers to his own nightmarish visions &#8211; the end result is something that\u2019s both clunky <em>and<\/em> unexpectedly engrossing. It has its bugs, and it falls into many a cliche at times, but you\u2019re left with a psychological investigation that\u2019s unafraid to present the divisions and prejudices of the author and his characters in a way that represents the era of its setting without bias.<\/p>\n<p>And while the studio hasn\u2019t produced a game for a Nintendo console since the Wii back in 2004, it\u2019s spent the years in between honing its skills in the genre of slow-paced, third-person investigations. As rough as they were around the edges, its most recent (and final) takes on Sherlock Holmes &#8211; 2014\u2019s <strong>Crimes &amp; Punishments<\/strong> and 2016\u2019s <strong>The Devil\u2019s Daughter<\/strong> &#8211; showed real promise when it came to combining complex investigations, interrogations and case building. And while The Devil&#8217;s Daughter had more action elements than its predecessor, The Sinking City represents a broader attempt to do more than just combine leads in your mind palace.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"The Sinking City Review - Screenshot 3 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99068\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99068\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"The Sinking City Review - Screenshot 3 of 5\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>So it makes sense that at its core, The Sinking City is all about investigation. As a beleaguered investigator drawn to the flooded city of Oakmont &#8211; an area that\u2019s seemingly unmappable and almost impossible to find which has all but derailed any attempts at relief aid &#8211; you find yourself attempting to solve your own mental trauma following your service in the Great War. With multiple districts to explore &#8211; including by boat in order to reach areas cut off by the seemingly supernatural floods &#8211; you&#8217;ll begin to piece together a connection between the flood, the nightmarish visions and the eldritch horrors that infest the city.<\/p>\n<p>As you investigate more bizarre crimes, witness macabre sights and fight monstrous creatures, your sanity will begin to fray. Represented as a bar next to your health, the world around you will begin to distort and warp, the further you slip into the realm of Cthulhu and co. You\u2019ll see apparitions and otherworldly hallucinations as you transcend from mild mental degradation to full-on psychosis. As an investigator touched with a certain amount of supernatural familiarity, Reed can also use his Mind\u2019s Eye (read: Batman\u2019s Detective mode) to follow the imprint of crime scenes after he\u2019s collected enough clues. In a similar vein to <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pushsquare.com\/games\/ps3\/remember_me\" class=\"external\">Remember Me<\/a><\/strong>, you can even rebuild events then follow trails and clues in order to discover new leads.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"The Sinking City Review - Screenshot 4 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99063\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99063\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"The Sinking City Review - Screenshot 4 of 5\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Staring into the supernatural abyss doesn\u2019t come cheap, and your sanity meter will start to drain the longer you spend using your other sight. Thankfully, if you flee certain horrors or deactivate your Mind\u2019s Eye, your sanity will start to replenish, but that regeneration does take away from the long-term impact of the things your experiencing. And while your investigative abilities attempt to keep things interesting, the same thing can\u2019t be said for combat. It takes an age to aim any ranged weapon and melee attacks are wildly inaccurate, leaving you with the impression you\u2019re playing an old <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/resident_evil\">Resident Evil<\/a><\/strong>. Enemy designs are creative, but there aren\u2019t that many variations and you\u2019re left wishing for something with the dynamic threat of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pushsquare.com\/games\/ps3\/dead_space_2\" class=\"external\">Dead Space<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>While it\u2019s got many of the less-welcome hallmarks of a modern double-A game &#8211; voice acting that ranges from strong to scenery-chewing; character models that can\u2019t sync with their voices; janky character movements &#8211; Oakmont itself, and as a result, the rest of the game, effectively exudes a sense of slow corruption and rot. With buildings slowly being claimed by coral growths, structures that have become half-submerged and local citizens embalmed in a persistent melancholy, it evokes the likes of Silent Hill and Rapture; a vessel that\u2019s fallen from grace and into a lesser state, much like its antagonist. There\u2019s always a sense of unease at play, and there are some genuinely shocking moments further into the story, but it\u2019s not particularly \u2018scary\u2019 for the most part.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"The Sinking City Review - Screenshot 5 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99065\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/99065\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"The Sinking City Review - Screenshot 5 of 5\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>One of the elements that really helps The Sinking City stand out on Switch is the attention and care that\u2019s gone into its porting process. Rather than simply pushing it onto new hardware and hoping for the best, the studio has carefully optimised the build to facilitate a mostly stable 30fps (with the occasional chug). Assets and character models have been retooled to free up space and processing power, but it\u2019s not as big a change as you might think. Some character models have a little more blurring than others, and effects such as water have been re-optimised to avoid sections where you navigate by boat sending the game into a sodden crash.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, the Nintendo Switch version benefits from all the changes Frogwares has rolled out following the game\u2019s launch on other platforms. If you\u2019ve played The Sinking City before, you\u2019ll notice how gunshots now have improved audio (especially noticeably when facing a nightmare creature indoors), while the downtrodden crowds in Oakmont now move with more believable behaviours. It\u2019s these quality of life changes that really make a difference, especially for a game all about investigating new locations and dialogue-based clues. It also runs smoothly for the most part in both handheld and docked modes, so you don\u2019t suffer any additional sacrifices for using one mode over another.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>While it\u2019s carried over its fair share of clunky elements in the transition to Nintendo&#8217;s console, The Sinking City on Nintendo Switch is a fully-featured and mostly well-optimised port. The mixture of psychological horror and detective skills is a positive step beyond the developer\u2019s previous work on Sherlock Holmes titles, and while its sanity mechanic doesn\u2019t quite hold up to the likes of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/gamecube\/eternal_darkness_sanitys_requiem\"><strong>Eternal Darkness: Sanity\u2019s Requiem<\/strong><\/a>, and it&#8217;s not without bugs, it offers an enjoyable if not particularly scary descent into madness and delirium.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite being a writer whose work has divided so many &#8211; especially when it comes to the legacy of his problematic views and the running theme of \u2018otherness\u2019 in his poems and prose &#8211; HP Lovecraft remains the go-to inspiration for anything remotely Gothic or tinged with thoughts of mania and delirium. Naturally, it&#8217;s only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}