That inexplicable, creeping fear of a monster of godlike proportions has lessened over the years, however, with Cthulhu's rise as a pop culture icon. If you're not familiar with the story itself, you likely at least know the basics, and given that familiarity you feel that Frogwares could have invested in an interesting interpretation of the source material or captured the atmosphere that is all-important to Lovecraft lore.
What you get, though, is another Frogwares detective game, albeit a damp one.
It starts with your character, Charles Reed, arriving in Oakmont, Massachusetts. An ex-army diver and private eye, you've been plagued by visions that led you to the town which has fallen victim to a terrible flood. With the flood came the madness, and a few monsters for good measure. Oakmont is a sinister place, where everyone either wants something from you or wants you to leave them alone. Random acts of violence, disappearances and theft regularly take place, and so you're drafted into solving these cases in exchange for hints towards solving your real goal, finding the source of your nightmares and hopefully stopping them.
Sometimes, in order to find new leads to go on, you have to talk to witnesses or comb through official records in various places such as the town hall or the police station, where you find the right document based on evidence recorded in your casebook. There's been a promise of "absolutely no hand holding", but of course that isn't very player friendly, which is why there's always optional hand holding - via the difficulty menu for the detective portions you can decide how many hints and helpful symbols you'll be shown. Either way, there's still enough for you to figure out on your own.
It's a satisfying loop, but not one that stays engaging over The Sinking City's lengthy runtime. It's fascinating to see cases sprawl simply because you need to find so many sources and solve problems for so many people before they grudgingly come out with the next scrap of information. But it's a very casual adventure for something that had the potential to be so tense. It's relaxing to solve a case here and there, but there's no gripping narrative that propels you forward. The cases themselves aren't even particularly interesting, likely a consequence of the source material which makes it all too easy to find supernatural explanations for whatever has been going on. Additionally, Reed can see demons using his mind's eye, which function as nothing else than a deus ex machina, pointers to a piece of evidence you otherwise couldn't have found.
A warning ahead of the title screen about The Sinking City depicting the cultural friction and prejudices of prohibition-era America builds a sense of anticipation, though ultimately for naught. It's a tall order - Frogwares chose a time period with the potential for so much conflict worthy of comment, already successfully addressed L.A. Noire, for example. Lovecraft's work itself deserves to be re-examined in light of his strong white supremacist mindset, but there are simply no characters that exceed their function as quest givers or conversations that give a lift to the very barebones narrative. Frogwares is good at a very specific thing, which is building micro-narratives that support its detective mechanics, but I feel that with this source material, that particular approach constitutes a missed opportunity.
You fight monsters, but they are far from being horrors from the deep. Everyone in Oakmont treats them like mild annoyances to navigate around, and it's exactly what I did as a player, too. There's a handful of types and you shoot at them and that's about it. The animation quality in The Sinking City simply isn't good enough to support combat. Your melee attacks have an incredibly wide arc, and aiming with any weapon is a very janky affair. Controlling your character feels like moving through molasses, something exacerbated in the game's underwater sequences. It's frustrating because you simply don't have the precision you need to dodge underwater geysers, for example, or to efficiently deal with fast-moving fiends. Classic elements like a skill tree and a crafting screen are there, but neither skills, weapons nor resource management are balanced well enough to be fun. This isn't where The Sinking City's strengths lie, though, which is perhaps why the game advises you that "fleeing is often the better option".
It's a small shame, and this is far from Frogwares' finest. The Sinking City fails on a technical and narrative level, leaving you with an experience that's well short of its potential despite its clever detective gameplay.
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