The Sinking City 2 Preview
It never went away, of course, but video games continue to build on the foundation of Eldritch horror inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. If not a real renaissance, it’s certainly a trend. It’s not hard to understand why. The Cthulhu mythos is a pre-built platform for cosmic horror. It can range from existential to weird and filled with monsters and gore. The Sinking City 2 appears to stand somewhere in the middle. I played around an hour of the new adventure game and came away pretty impressed and excited for the full release.
Bonnie and Clyde and Monsters Inside
2019’s The Sinking City was a third-person action-adventure game about a private investigator named Charles Reed. Set in the 1920s, Reed travels to a town in Massachusetts to seek the source of a supernaturally caused flood. The Sinking City 2 retains the setting — 1920’s America –, but it’s a standalone story with Lovecraft’s horror as a connective thread.
In the Sinking City 2, there are dual protagonists, a pair of Indiana Jones-like occult hunters named Calvin Rafferty and Faye Bennett. As they often do, a ritual goes bad. Faye is trapped in the Dreamlands. Dissociated from her body, Faye’s spirit resides in an animated mask which Calvin carries as his guide and advisor. The goal is to re-merge Faye’s spirit and physical form.
Familiar Mechanics
Though The Sinking City 2 is still fundamentally about investigating some creepy events, the sequel is more action-focused. Killing worm-gushing monsters with a rifle, shotgun, or pistol is pretty satisfying and delightfully disturbing. At least in the demo levels, gameplay outside of combat was familiar. Solving puzzles, collecting keys, reading bits of lore scattered about, and searching for ammo and other consumables: all standard stuff.
That’s not to suggest that those activities were dull or rote. In fact, exploring the spaces and being ambushed by monsters from the Dreamlands was pretty tense and frightening. On the whole, collectibles and important clues were pretty well signposted. There were a few moments of aimless wandering in search of the way forward, but that was mostly on me. Unlike the first game’s open world, The Sinking City 2 is more “open zone,” and I appreciated the tighter level design.
Dynamic Duo
Frogwares is most known for its lengthy list of Sherlock Holmes adventure games, which are often very good. The developer clearly knows how to craft characters, narratives, and mysteries. As a result, those elements already shine in The Sinking City 2. The shift to a more action-focused design seems to pay off.
As central protagonists, Calvin and Faye have a believable love/hate chemistry, thanks to well-written and acted dialogue. The game’s cinematics are excellent. In-game character models are a little less polished, but not by much. The game’s audio and music seem pretty well dialed in. Still far from release, the framerates were a bit variable, and some load times tested one’s patience, but that’s to be expected this early on.
From the hour or so I played, it feels like The Sinking City 2 does a good job of balancing story, characters, exploration, puzzle-solving, and action. It’s no easy task to harmonize all those elements, but the game is on track to do just that. Despite it being the driving premise of dozens of games, the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft is still capable of inspiring new and exciting titles. I look forward to playing more of The Sinking City 2 when it releases later this year.
***PC code provided for preview by the publisher***
