The Sinking City 2, like its predecessor before it, starts out well. It stays dedicated to creating the Lovecraftian world by building lots of detail and nuance with graphical victories and visuals to soak in. After the first hour or so I was well into what the game was giving me, and I couldn’t wait to keep pressing forward so I could submit myself to the demented wash of the game’s story and influence. Unfortunately, as I continued to progress, the opposite happened. Monotony, a tired story, atrocious voice acting and irresponsible writing left me bored and wondering why I was bothering at all. Just like the first Sinking City, I left feeling unfulfilled once I completed the game, but for differing reasons.
The Background — 8/10
Staying completely spoiler free, I wanted to like this game. The first Sinking City did some things well, and focused on an RPG-style of approach. This worked to a point, but the game failed when it came to its action sequences. If the first game had focused more solely on RPG rather than action elements it could have worked. The Sinking City 2 is the opposite in this regard, focusing on action and totally eradicating RPG elements. And just like the first game, it’s a pretty mixed bag in this regard. I have never played a great Lovecraft-inspired video game in my life, and I’ve played quite a few. It seems like an amazing concept for video games, but for whatever reason there hasn’t been a single developer in history that has been able to correlate a Lovecraft story into a truly excellent gaming experience. The Sinking City 2 developers decide to go full-on Resident Evil with inventory management, and even has save rooms with stash boxes to double down on this idea. Not that this is a game-breaker, but it certainly doesn’t make SC2 any better, either.
The Story — 5.4/10
It’s a Lovecraft-inspired tale which is all you really need to know. Lots of water, fishy-type beasts, worms and slithering things galore — you know what you’re getting before you even start playing. Maybe this is part of the problem with the plot, but gamers won’t care about this, and neither did I. There’s a tale of love that is the crux of the story, and while I found it serviceable for a video game, I also wasn’t blown away by any means. Nothing in the story surprised me or caught me off guard which became a problem as I progressed. I found myself grinding more than experiencing, and that’s always a turn off for me personally. I didn’t care about the main characters and their motivations to push into the next levels, but whatever, it’s a game, and I don’t necessarily need these types of things to keep me completely interested. It helps, though, and SC2 did little in the way of wowing me with storytelling. In fact, the best parts of the game from a storytelling perspective is when you encounter little radios where the DJ will recite passages from Lovecraft stories. The development team for SC2 would be smart to invest in some writers of their own that could generate at least a fraction of what makes Lovecraft’s writing compelling.
The Graphics — 8.2/10
This is where SC2 shines, and it’s consistently fun to traverse the levels and look around at the detail. You could tell the developers took some time in this area, and it shows. Waters crash up against rocks and splash with pristeen detail, dark and light patterns clash with each other creating tense environments, facial movements shift and pull with each word spoken and enemies look menacing and threatening. The graphics couldn’t look much better in SC2, and they will definitely pull you in. Having said that, I can’t help but mention that most modern games seem to spend most of their time on neutral things like graphics so they can ignore all the other factors that make games good, so while the visuals here are pretty stunning, they seem empty amidst all the other problems of the game.
The Gameplay — 4.3/10
Actually playing SC2 was a bit of a slog. Lots of developers seem to go wrong in this department, so as a seasoned veteran gamer, I’m going to give developers some advice: if you’re going to have an action game, give me some freedom of movement. Throughout this game I was shoved into tight spaces and corners and confronted with half a dozen enemies. Apparently the developers figured it would be scary to not give me any ammo, press me into a tight spot, then not let me move away from my attackers. How this is fun for any gamer is lost on me, but this type of scenario isn’t scary or tense, it’s just dumb and boring. The character movement is bordering on tank-style as well, so when you’re trying to move away from an enemy to create space and you die because the game won’t let you move away, well, how is this scary? It’s not. One of the more obnoxious points of the game is when the enemies stand in doorways. Many times I’d be trying to flee a room so I could race down to another room and grab some ammo, but the enemy would just block the doorway. Huh. Ok. I wasn’t able to brush past or even punch the enemy to get them to move (punching is an action in this game which made this more irritating). There were far too many times I felt I had to just let myself get killed so I could restart and try again. How fun is that? The gameplay in SC2 is generally tired too, and it sparks no interest in replay-ability. SC2 is basically this: get the thing, trigger the enemies, backtrack, fight a boss — over and over and over again. If you haven’t been confronted with this type of game 2 million times already then you are not a gamer and should not be reading this review. This game was a slog to get though, not because it was challenging, but because it was derivative of literally thousands of games before it. The inventory management is pretty standard and doesn’t deviate from the formula Resident Evil gave us 30 years ago — when you run out of space, you run back to the item box, rearrange things, etc. It’s fine, but isn’t exactly original. When you collect clues you can arrange them in order which worked pretty well. The puzzles are pretty simple overall, and again, didn’t feel like they were all that different than what Resident Evil has been doing for decades. We get it, Sinking City 2: you like Resident Evil a whole lot.
Voice Acting and Writing — 1.5/10
This is where the game really takes a shit. So many modern games mess up in this department, and SC2 clearly didn’t care about how their characters were written. The dialog in this game is some of the worst I’ve heard in a while, and it took me out of the experience many times along the way. The main character of Calvin is so laughably bad that it started getting on my nerves after a while. He’s full of lame one-liners like “bring it on!” and “that’s what I’m talking about!” and “now we’re talking!” Right. Very Lovecraft-ian. I mean, what are we doing here with this dialog? Have these writers ever even bothered reading a Lovecraft novel? It’s hard to stomach, and by the time the end scene with Calvin and his love interest happens I couldn’t have cared less if he lived or died. Calvin is an empty shell of a meme, and how gamers are supposed to get wrapped up in the story of a total bimbo of a character just doesn’t add up. It’s a sloppy attempt at modernizing a classic theme, and a very empty-headed one at that.
The Music — 5/10
Meh. Like 98% of all video games I play, the music is painfully average “fright” music. In SC2 it doesn’t deviate from the video game formula — totally forgettable. The music gets ramped up when something happens, and it generally tries to pander to human emotions, and of course, fails in that capacity. If you truly like being scared you don’t need music cues, and SC2 tries to patch its lack of writing ability with amped up musical stabs to try and dramatize things that aren’t scary. I turned the music off, as I do almost always.
Woke-ism — 8/10
Woke themes in SC2 are, thankfully, relatively non-existent, however most of the knuckle-dragging zombies are black. I guess the developers felt they had to crowbar their inclusive agendas somewhere, and they chose to make them cannon fodder. Doesn’t make sense at all when you consider the lore of what this game is, and it’s hard to imagine any self-respecting black person would appreciate this choice, but again, it’s pretty light overall. Still noticeable, though.
Conclusion and Rating
While I didn’t ultimately enjoy the first Sinking City because the RPG elements ended up being boring, I didn’t end up enjoying Sinking City 2 because the action elements and writing were boring. Neither game seems to have a firm grip on what it is or wants to be. SC2 drowns in repetitiveness and extremely poor dialog writing. As you progress in the story the enemies never change, Calvin’s bad dialog doesn’t change, the wonky controls never change — you’re just stuck in a loop of mediocrity and uncreative motives. Beautiful graphics don’t equate to games that can be played, and The Sinking City 2 would have been much better if the game’s developers had reversed their priorities. The Sinking City 2 isn’t a bad game, it’s just another game filling up the vast digital space of gaming libraries, nothing less and nothing more.
The Sinking City 2 Overall Rating — 5.2/10
Occasional Feel Good 