The Sinking City - The Worst Game I've Ever... Liked? (Jimpressions)

I’ve heard what you said but I still kind of want to buy it. But I’ll wait for a price drop. $84 on the Aus PlayStation store is a little high for me.

I think between this and stuff like Samurai Shodown and Vampyr, the $40-$50 price point needs to make a comeback. I thought this would be a fun, lower price purchase, but when I saw it for FULL PRICE? I know $60 gets me the whole game, no parsed out DLC or "rooooooooooadmaps," but it just doesn't have it at that price. Still intrigued and highly sympathetic to adoring what something wnats to be rather than what it is.

Dr. Judge, Private Eye

So you might not think it's good, but you have to respect it. I can get behind that sentiment!

Trevor Bond

I knew you'd give this game a 100 out of 10 once I found out there was an unlockable plague doctor uniform... ;p Giggles and guffaws aside I actually restrained myself from buying this right away. I have already been (and still am) playing a considerable number of other games this month, and I have a tendency to get so optimistic and excited about the prospect of a new Lovecraftian themed game "getting the source material right this time" that I throw all caution out the window and preorder it. I did exactly the same thing with the last <i>Call of Cthulhu</i> game and, well, that turned out the way it did... :/ Instead I've chosen to tentatively watch one of my favourite twitch streamers play it instead, at least for the time being. What I've seen so far seems very entertaining and imaginatively conceived by the devs. I certainly can't deny that they've treated the source material some proper care and attention. A flooded and struggling city with a diverse and tragic population is a great premise, and the monster designs I've have the pleasure to see so far have been wonderfully grotesque and creative - they remind me of some of good latter-day <i>Silent Hill</i> enemies. I also find the Innsmouther refugees and the Throgmorton's an interesting touch, a subtle nod and acknowledgement of Lovecraft's rather hatefully bigoted worldview. I don't know if I would want to play this myself though. I'm sick to death of psychic investigation mechanics in games. More importantly I have yet to feel entirely engrossed in the setting. Watching the aforementioned streamer's playthrough I never really started believing in the world, all the menu navigation and cluttered UI kept reminding me that "no, this isn't a real horror story, Ben, this is a video game - send your character to X place then go talk to Y person, Ben, this is a video game..." etc. And although I was praising the serious mythos-nerd pleasing references, the games Lovecraft cred is a little on-the-nose. I saw footage of the protag's first encounter with the so-called wylebeasts in the opening investigation, and he didn't even acknowledge it until he went to speak with Throgmorton and said something along the lines of "so, yeah, ummm.. there's some pretty weird creatures here" - hardly the paradigm-shifting revulsion and horror most of Lovecraft's main characters express at the kind of inconceivably alien abominations they are prone to encountering. Those criticisms aside (I'm afraid I've read Graham Harman's <i>Weird Realism</i>, an excellent literary criticism book on Lovecraft's work, more times than I can recall) I am enjoying watching <i>The Sinking City</i> so far. It just lacks a certain jouissance, a literary grasp of what made Lovecraft's stories so compelling and atmospheric to me. The only game that has ever managed to be properly Lovecraftian in my humble opinion was that point n' click title <i>Darkness Within: The Pursuit of Loath Nolder</i> - and that wasn't even technically a Lovecraft game! But it definitely shared that same spirit of isolated, inhumanly mysterious and terrible aspect that marks Lovecraft's best work.

Freakish Uproar

This sounds like a great game to just cheat in to circumvent some shit mechanics, so you can enjoy the atmosphere and the world. Haven't had a Lovecraft game I enjoyed in forever, since Dark Corners of the Earth.

Hansbert Emmer

This is pretty much how I feel about Days Gone, yeah it's got a lot of unnecessary stuff in it(why does fast travel require fuel? seriously?) but at the same time it's a game that was clearly with so much love and care by Bend that I couldn't help but be enthralled the whole way through and it's easily in my top 10 for this year. Same deal with Mars War Logs and Technomancer, both somewhat broken games that I love.

RedBedroomRecords