There was a period of time in video game releases when fans of the horror genre were experiencing a drought. It was a major concern because the internet actually believed that the era of great survival horror games was dead, favoring action games as horror titles.
Although those games have their own audience and charm, I am happy to be living in times when the genre is back to its incredible roots. And titles like The Sinking City 2 contribute to that.
Developer Frogwares originally released the first game in the series back in 2019, and it was an interesting title. It sought to combine survival horror titles with investigative mechanics, while throwing players into the backdrop of Lovecraftian horror from the 1920s.
The Sinking City 2 does all of that once again and with grace. Translating Eldritch horror into a video game is not an easy job as compared to tackling zombie horror. Because the best parts about this subgenre are always tucked in the literature behind it.
The Sinking City is literally ‘sinking’
Regular mortals come into possession of the knowledge behind powers beyond comprehension, and then things start falling apart. That’s the usual gist behind H.P. Lovecraft’s world of horror.
So I was kind of skeptical to see how something like that would be handled in The Sinking City 2’s narrative and general gameplay. After having spent a good deal of time with the game, I can confirm that it’s worth paying attention to.
The Sinking City 2 starts off with story beats that make it seem like players are being dropped in the middle of an ongoing plot. This will probably be jarring to people who did not play the first game, giving the impression that the games are connected.
But don’t worry, The Sinking City 2 is completely an isolated experience from the first one. This game takes place in Arkham City in the 1920s, which has been experiencing a supernatural flood.
The protagonist has a knack for adventure
Players step into the shoes of a character named Calvin Rafferty, whose whole design definitely seems to be a callback to Indiana Jones. Right from the get-go, we are bombarded with the impression that this guy’s life is entangled with adventures of the occult kind.
The game starts with Calvin trying to figure out a way to save Faye Bennett, who is his partner as well as a significant other. Faye has been in a coma of supernatural nature, and Calvin is trying to wake her up from it.
The matter of what kind of events led to the current situation of our protagonists is not explained to us. It is something we eventually have to piece together by progressing through the game.
This is something I really liked as it gave me leeway to not immediately concern myself about the overarching eldritch horror elements. The city of Arkham is mostly abandoned and perpetually sinking in water, very similar to certain towns in H.P.Lovecraft’s stories.
The map is quite fun to explore
Calvin navigates through these treacherous waters on a boat, trying to track down leads on a cure for Faye’s situation. Similar in vein to many other iconic survival horror games, the city is our playground.
There are locations to explore and secrets to find, but these things aren’t handed to us right away. As we progress through the game, the whole sinking city slowly unlocks in bits and pieces.
I was constantly moving between locations to solve small puzzle pieces. Things like going the extra mile to backtrack and unlock a special chest just so that I can be rewarded with useful items.
These moments did not feel like a chore because the game can be played in the usual linear fashion. But the opportunity is certainly there for the completionists and hardcore fans of the genre.
Revamped game design as opposed to the original
The Sinking City 2 completely ditches the stealth systems from the original game in favor of a more action-oriented approach towards every encounter. And quite frankly, this works very well for the rest of what this game offers.
For the fans who love scavenging in-game notes, The Sinking City 2 sports an investigation tab in the menu. It allows players to string informations, sort of like a minigame, making the regular process of piecing the lore together even more fun.
Combat in The Sinking City 2 is very reminiscent of titles that made this genre what it is today. Firearms are your best friend, but you must learn to conserve, as ammunition is not found in abundance.
Calvin is an expert at combat situations
Calvin is also quite experienced with hand-to-hand combat, as he gets access to stomps and punches when not aiming with the gun. But you cannot simply rely on melee for most of your encounters, as numbers will always overwhelm.
It took me a few deaths to realize that the game also provides a very effective dodge button in order to get around situations. Calvin is quite nimble with his toes, and dodging at the right time can increase your advantages in fighting back.
Enemies can be made to stumble and fall flat quite easily if players manage a well-timed dodge, allowing for a stomp opportunity. Your biggest enemy throughout the game, however, will be the storage system.
Inventory management is tricky
Inventory management is one of the most fun aspects for a lot of survival horror fans, and The Sinking City 2 does it very well, a bit too well, I might add. Early game storage management will be quite a hassle because you are not provided with a lot of grid space.
I was able to find storage upgrades that helped a lot just by progressing through the story, but The Sinking City 2 has a tendency to bombard players with items to pick up every two minutes.
I could chalk it up to my own faults in mismanaging the inventory. But it very quickly got to a point where I was starting to find way too many items to pick up with no storage space to keep them.
What makes this harder are the enemies. You are constantly forced to switch your strategies in the face of different kinds of creatures. Regular infected humanoids typically charge at you like zombies, but there are other creatures that make dodging absolutely mandatory.
Luckily, as I mentioned earlier; there is some leeway in perfect dodging. But this isn’t your usual zombie fare; the outbreak in this game is of eldritch nature, so the enemies keep coming back up.
The game has a lot of enemy variety
It gets especially harder when they don’t stay dead for too long. It’s fairly common in survival horror games for enemies to come back to life in the same spot where you downed them last time. But in The Sinking City 2, Arkham has been infested by Slithers.
These are massive worm-like creatures that infest corpses and reanimate them. While the game allows players to stomp and kill most of them, there will often be situations where you will not be able to completely eradicate them.
This situation reciprocates to the corpses, which keep coming back even after you have downed them multiple times. It suffices to say that The Sinking City forces running away from a lot of encounters.
With limited ammunition and bare minimum inventory space, things got really hairy for me early game. I constantly found myself being cornered by endlessly rotating corpses once I reached an objective trigger point.
But complaints aside, I am happy to report that The Sinking City 2 is loaded with enemy variety. Survival horrors in most cases forget to work on this particular aspect, but this game avoids that thanks to the eldritch nature of the narrative.
Graphical performance and conclusion
When it comes to the graphical performance, I was quite sceptical about trying the game on PC. Modern games tend to release with performance issues, even on the best-performing rigs.
However, such was not the case, as Sinking City runs pretty well on modern hardware. Even when the settings are cranked up to the highest figures, I was able to squeeze out satisfying framerates on my 9060 XT, Ryzen 7 7700X, and 32 GB of RAM.
One thing deserves to be noted: if you are planning to check out the game on your computer system, the game might deceive you during its initial boot-up. Sinking City 2 takes its time building up the shader cache, as is a thing with almost every modern game.
During this process, the CPU will be tested for its stress limits, which will make it heat up quite a bit. But no need to worry since it cools down almost immediately as soon as the shaders settle down.
The Sinking City 2 is a beautiful example of how well the survival horror genre is doing in the landscape of modern gaming. Especially when certain other types of games are constantly striving to innovate while caught in the middle of discourses.
This is why we are giving it an eight out of ten, and we hope to see more in the future from the amazing people at Frogwares, contributing to the horror genre.
