It’s the late 1920s, and a supernatural flood has left Arkham decayed, disturbed, and desolate, with Lovecraftian horrors abound. The game sets me off as Calvin Rafferty, an intrepid adventurer, who has lost his wife, university professor Faye Bennett. In a failed attempt to perform the Ritual of Dreaming to enter the Dreamlands, Faye’s consciousness gets trapped there, and I am left to my own devices. So, like every devoted jacket-wearing videogame husband (Ethan Winters in Resident Evil 7, James Sunderland in Silent Hill 2, and the eponymous Alan Wake) who has lost their wives, I dive deep into trying and bringing her back.
There have been very few games bold enough to have attempted a genre change. Fallout and Yakuza are the most renowned among them. For the Sinking City, jumping from a detective-style action adventure (read our review here) to a survival horror takes a lot of gumption. The sequel brings in a new protagonist and a change in scenery as well, having moved on from Oakmont to Arkham. Does the risk pay off, or while trimming some of the fat, Frogwares slices into the viscera of what makes a true Lovecraftian tragedy?
But before we do that, I think it’s best to remind you of a particular reality. This is not done in any way to influence your feelings about the game but to shine a light on the plight of the developers who are in a country beset by war. Their efforts to defend themselves and struggle to go ahead with their lives, when making this game, should not go unnoticed.
Cosmic Penny Dreadful
The flood has brought in the Slither, a plague of slimy worms that burrow into corpses and puppeteer them into fatal violence. You explore smaller hub-sized maps, scrounging for crafting items and puzzle clues, while fighting eldritch beasts. It’s a constant juggle – as ammo is scarce, and enemies are around every corner. Sometimes I stood my ground and fought, and sometimes I ran off from the unrelenting horror – to a safe room for some fleeting respite, to save my progress and unload my limited inventory. The Resident Evil vibes are unmissable.
The first few levels – Annex, Church, Fire Station, Printing House, and the Hotel – are connected and within the same hub area, making it feel like a well-handcrafted open world. You can backtrack to these areas, for good reasons, when you are there. But after one cutscene and an easily skippable warning, that agency would be lost. You are then pushed towards standalone levels – the Hospital, Fish Market, and the Badlands, which are not on the main map of Arkham. You will be left in the lurch if you don’t manage to find time to craft certain unique items – like the stock of a shotgun. It would have added a lot to the flow of the game if all these locations were connected. The disjointed feeling of the latter half of the game affects the pacing a lot. I wish all the levels could have been on the first main map itself, all reachable by boat, just like the first game in the series.
Every room that I entered, I learnt to shine my torch to count the number of corpses. With a little bit of mental math, I would try to ascertain how much ammo I would be short when the slither finally reanimates them at the most inopportune moment. Boils would sprout on their shambling bodies – although a tad late into an attack – giving you a clear indication of what to shoot to take them down. Every so often, I would be a little more courageous. Especially after spending some Dream Essence – a collectible item that would unlock talents, like dealing more damage when low on health. Long exploration phases dripping with quiet unease will be punctuated with brief moments of violence, where you will frantically be swapping to the gun with the most ammo and back pedaling to get a better lock at the weak spots.
Slithering Away
At times, the game will force you to face waves of enemies in a small place you can’t escape from – ammo will spawn repeatedly in those brief moments, but you will need to be on your feet to avoid dying repeatedly. Those chaotic moments are often outshined by the quieter ones that the game throws at you. A sudden shadow as you are climbing the stairs, or an odd noise down the dark hallways. At its best, its thick atmosphere is almost cloyingly claustrophobic. Finding an arcane key in the wild and remembering with fear the road you need to take back to its appropriate door.
No level overstays its welcome – and the enemy variety, although a little low, manages to keep the combat fresh enough to keep you engaged. By the time you stop fearing the slug-infested corpses, the lightning-fast razor-teethed harvester hurls itself at you before you can flinch. The spitters try to take you out from a distance, and the deep ones can slice you up with their devastating claw attacks. The bosses too are quite well done. I will try to keep this spoiler-free, but it will be a shame not to hint at the return of the juggernaut – a massive writhing pile of human body parts fused into an unholy abomination. Its maw, stretching from head to torso, is wide enough to swallow a human body whole.
The Good, the Bad, and the Macabre
The UE5 powered visuals are a treat! Flooded roads, crumbling buildings and the rotting flesh from an alien world are there in front of your eyes in all its glory. The rain patters lightly on every surface, the fog slowly envelops around you, and the light from your torch illuminates a room just enough for you to be wary. While the locations and interiors are packed with so much detail, there is a clear lack of it in facial animations. Cutscenes feel stiff, and the voice acting dramatic. The pulp noir feel does not come across that well and could have been designed better. Calvin also feels oddly calm in the face of incomprehensible terror.
The Sinking City 2 trades off a lot of the detective magic that made the first one endearingly flawed. The clue board is reduced in complexity and so is the story. Unlike the first game, there are no witnesses or cases. It’s all in the pursuit of a singular goal. The motivation of the weird characters you meet along the way feel one-dimensional and not gripping enough to be remembered. Some beats of the story feel rushed and unfinished – just teetering on the horizon of becoming something greater. There are some QoL changes that would be welcome as well – if this game receives a patch. More stacks of collected items in your inventory, drop items without discarding them permanently, and the ability to directly craft when viewing the storage box in a safe room.
Real Talk
The Sinking City 2 left me with mixed emotions. The developers nail the world design, lore, and audio incredibly well, but the erratic nature of its level connectedness, lack of actual investigation, and staccato story flow will keep you painfully confused. It left me with a sinking (pun unintended) feeling about all the things it could have gotten right to make it a stalwart in its genre. As a sequel, it goes two steps forward but takes one step back. Frogwares’ The Sinking City 2 might feel a little rough at the seams, but it’s a bold step in the survival horror genre. The game betters its combat, scares, and atmosphere from its predecessor and manages to hold on to its dark linear narrative till the very end. A confident sequel that begs for the adage: third time’s the charm.
Final Score: 77/100
Disclaimer: PC code provided by publisher for review purposes, without any riders. The Sinking City 2 released on August 18 for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam, Epic).
