The PS5 version of The Sinking City doesn’t fix much of the game’s issues, but nonetheless makes some pretty reasonable improvements on its first release.
When it was first released, The Sinking City from developer Frogwares discovered the following solid thanks to his in – depth coverage of Cthulhu Mythos and an exciting research game. However, too long the game got into strong legal controversy that saw the game listed from online sources, with Frogwares currently urging fans not to buy the game on Steam. Now, The Sinking City also released for the PS5.
The Sinking City sees the player take over the role of Charles Reed, a 1920s private investigator from Boston who is sent to the city of Oakmont, Massachusetts to witness the strange events and horrific scenes of the residents. Taking ideas from the works collected by HP Lovecraft (but by removing the brutal racism of his work), The Sinking City closely linked to cosmic terror, powerful gods, and bodily transmogrification.
Click on the button below to quickly start this article.
Those planning a major overhaul of the original game are going to be left in the cold with the PS5 release, as The Sinking Citywider issues are still in place. The game is clunky a lot of the time, with its thin world, empty characters, and less fully-formed ideas still common two years on from its first release. His combat is still weird, especially down to his weird AI that could see human NPCs overshadowing the player fighting Oakmont’s fearsome beasts and engaging with him the monsters.
Nevertheless, there is a bit of brilliance here. The Sinking CityA plot about Lovecraft’s work may not be a plot, but it succeeds in mixing several stories together in Castle Rock-esque smorgasbord. It certainly manages to capture a powerful sense, too, from the flooded streets of Oakmont and oceanic growth through to politics between the groups at Oakmont, Innsmouth, and the recent entrants to the city. . Lovecraft fans will no doubt find it The Sinking City be a comfortable place to visit.
While the combat isn’t solid, the actual detection work is enjoyable in a way that very few games are capable of capturing. The Sinking City it throws out the world’s traditional captures of easy-to-follow map tokens, instead forcing the player to use their own intuition and in-game archive to find locations and solve mysteries . It works well, using Reed’s preternatural abilities to see past events in a way that would be used later in games like Twin Mirror.
The horrible elements of The Sinking City handled well too, both in terms of the most visible units and the granular level wylebeasts that are the main enemies to the game. The wylebeasts are pretty rough to look at, from tiny rat-like creatures to tent-covered monstrosities. Fighting may be a fight, but at least the enemies are embarrassing.
While the PS5 version is not a remake of the game’s 2019 release, there are a few improvements to the overall experience. In particular the loading times are greatly reduced, which will be a relief for those who have suffered a slow travel of the launch version, while DualSense support adds a bit of nuance in terms of controller feel. Nevertheless, it would be nice to get a better boost in terms of graphic quality.
This leaves the PS5 version of the game in a similar place to its original release. The Sinking City one of those flawed but sometimes brilliant games that has a lot of ambition. It may not reach the heights of other cult classes recently as Greedfall no Vampyr, but it has the combination of cosmic horror and infectious detective pulp.
The Sinking City out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One. Screen Rant was provided with PS5 download code for the purposes of this review.
About the Author
