Quick Look: The Sinking City

All these wet cities lately!

East needs an adventure Playdate

The main character in this game has the most distracting, popped coat collar ever.

Also: @warrenjdiaz:

You might want to step up your game, bot. Last one I saw said it averaged a hundred dollar an hour.

This game reminds me a little bit of Vampyr. If you like the combination of this time period mixed with paranormal stuffs I recommend checking that game out! (Also it's on game pass for pc)

Good to see Frogwares stretching beyond its usual Sherlock Holmes series.

Bioshock's Rapture can only dream of being this damp.

I was waiting for this.

I also really hope this ends up on Game Pass

This looks really good and has gone on my list. I will wait for it to fall from $60 but... I'm intrigued!

I hate bad line reads. If you’re gonna pay all that money for voicework you can at least make sure you direct the actor a little.

this isnt on steam btw, epic store exclusive on pc

The Unfathomable Jank.

Just to confirm what Alex said, Mind Palace is a term that’s not Lovecraftian in origin. It is a method of storing memories. Basically people create a imaginary space like a house or palace inside their heads and then populate it with objects (which could be paintings, pieces of clothing, furnature, basically anything), each object is added when a person adds a new thing they want to remember and therefore it tends to be an object that strongly symbolizes that memory so it makes it easy to recall. This method of memorization can apparently work really well, so long as the person using it sets aside the time every day to walk through their mind palace and recall each object to keep things fresh in their head.

I’m sure I’m over simplifying here and getting a few things wrong, but that’s the gist of it.

I was hoping games like Hellblade would take some of the stigma off charging a $30-$40 price point for games with AAA trappings, but without the execution to fully pull it off. But here we are with this, Vampyr, and even Samurai Shodown all still charging $60 despite being content or polish poor.

That having been said, this one's definitely on my radar as I'm ALSO the snob who beat Alpha Protocol 3 times, so I'm used to wading through a bit of muck to get at treasure.

Makes me want to revisit Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners.

One of the best games this year despite the jank. The game's mechanics stay simple but the story goes (lovecraftian) places, and you have the choice to do some pretty shocking things.

Great Quick Look. I'm a big fan of videos highlighting those under the radar releases. Game looks neat, though definitely unpolished.

As someone who has been reading a lot of Lovecraft lately, boy this doesn't nail it. Especially things like the dialogue (and the VO on top) are painful.

I know it's a game and it has to be different and all, and feature combat and things like that, but it's just not well executed. More subtly would go a long way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphid

I'm glad to see another person who saw the similarities! Vampyr is fantastic

Who am I? “ok ok ok ok”

As someone who has read a fair bit of Lovecraft I honestly don't think the source material is all that great. Not quite sure where Vinny got the line of impossible angles from because a good 90% of Lovecraft stories center around the narrator commenting on things he can't see, of sounds and noises that encroach on his "sanity" until he typically goes insane.

That is a hard thing to adapt into a video game I imagine. Most people think of tentacle faced monsters when Lovecraft is mentioned but a great deal of his short stories are simply people going mad because they come in contact with "something." It's typically very nebulous and unclear.

My favorite short story of his is probably The Colour Out of Space.

Yeah Vermont callout

Lovecraft knew it. The Old Gods been changin' that climate for centuries. Millennia, perhaps.

I don't about Vampyr, but it definitely reminds me of Ethan Carter, only with more intrusive UI, more jank, and a higher budget…

…on the other hand, it looks like it has a more coherent story rather than just individual bits that are just Lovercraft-inspired.

Well now I want this game but in the Dishonored universe instead of this Dishonored look but with the public domain nautical horror.

The protagonist looks like if Hugh Grant grew up as a Victorian orphan.

It's certainly not a straight adaptation like say a Witcher would be. But I would say for example Eternal Darkness is a game that nailed the feel in the insanity, Old Gods lore, dialogue and atmosphere of Lovecraft vastly better than this game does. Even across all the time periods and subject matter that game nailed it.

I personally think his writing is great in his best stories (if of a specific style) and the publishing realities of a lot of it is lost now (there's a lot of his writing out there in collections he never even wanted to publish and he unfortunately didn't live too long or well at that).

I mean, it is basically a genre now. This is more like an adaptation of those board games than his stories. But this is just hokey and poorly done to me. Not saying the game can't be some B game fun I suppose but not looking great.

Color Out of Space, At The Mountains of Madness, From Beyond, Dunwich Horror and the Lurking Fear are all recommended (the latter would clearly make a nice game plot to work off).

A few things that bothered me about this game as someone who followed it through it’s development. First, building interiors are repeated so often that it becomes really noticeable a few hours into the game. Second, and I admit this may be caused by the fact that I played on normal, but there is no tension in the encounters at all. Once you learn that all of the chests respawn all of their crafting materials after you fast travel, it makes enemies more tedious than anything. A few grenades and the shotgun were all I needed to get though the back half of the game. That said, I did enjoy the game and will probably follow whatever else Frogwares develops next.

Oh, so they’re playing the definitive jank edition of the game. I heard it comes with all the pre-order jank.

This is the Vampyr of 2019

@bathala: Amen! Always the best content on the site :)

Yeah, I'll play this at some point.

I'm of the opinion that the game encouraging you not to engage in combat absolutely excuses it being not-so-great. If you make it fun to shoot Cthulu in the face, people are gonna want to shoot it in the face. It harkens back to old survival-horror days of tank controls and bad aiming.

@humanity said:

not sure what you're reading, people faint a lot in lovecraft but the sanity stuff doesn't actually come up that often. the impossible angles are from the climax of Call of Cthulhu, probably his most famous story, so not really an obscure reference on Vinny's part.

@nomiconic: Huh well the impossible angle thing didn't stay with me as much as people being driven insane at the discovery of the city and what it entailed. I guess we all take away different things from the stories.

As for what I was reading? From the collection of short stories I read some of the madness is implied while other times it's quite literal. In Dagon it most certainly sounds like the narrator is going mad towards end. In the Facts Concerning the Later Arthur Jermyn the title character is driven to suicide by burning himself from the truth he has learned of himself, which can be interpreted as madness. Herbert West it is implied the character is mad. The Hound is another story where a character is exposed to a being he does not comprehend and it is eating away at his sanity. Rats in the Walls, The Outsider.. Shadow of Innsmouth could be argued has the narrator going mad towards the end as he describes his desire to live among the Deep Ones. Haunter in the Dark is another of his stories much like the Hound - sought after by something monstrous and indescribable, losing sanity.

Like I said some of it is up to interpretation, but madness is a very core theme in a lot of his stories. Either madness or blinding terror that consumes all senses.

Anyone think the main dude sounds a bit like Alex?

Looks like a neat little thing I'll pick up on a sale someday.

This looks interesting. Too bad it's only on the Epic store so it doesn't come out for another year.

Edit: I wonder why they covered this, but not the other Lovecraftian game (It was called Call of Cthulhu- but not to be confused by Dark Corners of the Earth which is an older one) that came out not too long ago that seems at least of similar quality to this one. Weird.

They got Paul Giamatti for this game huh

Yeah, looks like the kind of thing I might check this out in a sale a year and a half from now. It looks somewhat interesting but its not feeling worth EGS nor $60 at the moment.

thumbnail looks like things went bad for ole detective inspector Jenks

'Professor Dough', eh? Looks like I've found my new rap name.

@trelution: A completely straight-laced, practical-effects-on-a-budget attempt to introduce the Cthulu mythos in the sequel to 'Contradiction', without any warning whatsoever, would surely make for an amazing QL and game.

JENKS: If I did this...

*throws up horns of rock*

...would it mean anything to you?

ACOLYTE: Mmmmggrrrllllfrrgll!!

The one thing that kept impressing me through this QL was the pure atmosphere of this game.

Perhaps later on...

This looks really good.