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Also, Oakmont is home to a few corporateįamilies who rule the city behind corrupt politicians - the parallels are For example, there are different races in Oakmont and Made me view many of the themes presented as implied representations of To explore, Oakmont successfully managed to connect with me and in particular The university campus, central church and manor district made me excited about a city no wise person would dare set foot in. There are also clear differences between the rich and poor districts, and the landmarks also feel easily distinguishable, making it easy to memorize them. About half of Oakmont’s streets are flooded and require Reed to navigate them in a boat, Venetian style. In terms of atmosphere, however, Sinking City has its charms. Conversely, when in an infested zone where monsters spawn and massively attack, NPCs nearby don’t respond at all to the combat they’re a witness to. All wandering NPCs run away yelling a complaint about Reed’s mental state if the player points a gun at them. There’s one type of newspaper agent present in every district, speaking a single line that repeats, and their newspapers can’t be bought or read. Once inside a building, it becomes evident that even the main locations have copy-pasted interiors.Īlmost worse than this is the lack of interactive NPCs to be found in Oakmont.
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Many houses in Oakmont look the same, and the number of properties that can be interacted with or explored is quite small. Other problems arise due to poor design of the explorable space. I found myself generally fast-traveling between main locations and I avoided being sidetracked since there’s little value in exploring the city beyond the main cases - the sidequests feel like an excuse to get the player to see more of the city and I soon began ignoring them completely. The open-world Oakmont of this third-person action-adventure detective title is an interesting attempt to make investigating crime scenes feel more sophisticated, but it doesn’t manage to effectively capitalize on the experience. Sinking City‘s overall linearity (despite the particulars of each case) means that there’s not much satisfaction in playing detective since everything will fall into place anyway - fingering a culprit isn’t about guilt or innocence, it’s more about weighing the moral implications of the verdict. One side effect of this system is that there’s not one ‘correct’ conclusion to a case, and the outcomes chosen by the player don’t have much impact on the story. In an earlyĬase, I had to intuit whether a murderer was hallucinating during his crime, or Player must interpret the results and come to possible conclusions. Palace’ Frogwares is so fond of - clues are found at crime scenes and thisĮvidence can be linked to create a deduction. Mass hysteria has been gripping the town, so Reed tries to cure himself of his visions while trying to solve Oakmont’s woes as well.Ĭity’s story is told episodically, with every section being a case for Reed Sinking City‘s main character is ex-marine Charles Reed, now a private eye with supernatural visions that lead him to 1920’s Oakmont - a mysterious city in Massachusetts, flooded by a seemingly endless deluge. TheĬhange of universe did pay off, though, since City pulled more than a few unexpected Sinking City was one of my most anticipated games of 2019,Īlbeit being a risky pick since I’m not familiar with Lovecraftian novels. Lovecraft-inspired tale about a doomed city, uses modern cinematic storytelling, has a well-put-together narrative and feels similar to Frogwares’ successful Sherlock Holmes titles, yet these different components fail to come together and overall it’s… a hot mess with great writing? WTF “The Sea” impregnated someone’s wife? HIGH Phenomenally designed moral choices.