Frogwares' The Sinking City - that other Cthulhu game

[Zombra]

We'll see if turning all this off makes the game intolerable to play ... wish me luck.

Is it truly incline or will it simply make playing the game a chore because it was designed with said "features" in mind, though?

Yep, would have been nice to be able to play without it, but turning the UI off does indeed make this intolerable to play. I spent about a half an hour in a blundering search until I gave up and turned it back on. Immediately it was revealed that a particular piece of knocked-over furniture was more important than the rest of the knocked-over furniture. Clicking that one critical pixel was 100% required to continue the game, and it was invisible with the UI off.

A shame but despite this fake option, the game still has promise.

 

[Cromwell]

So its shit will exceed all sales expectations thank you epic?

 

[JDR13]

Are we ever going to get a truly great Lovecraft game?

Dark Corners of the Earth

I think it's safe to say that your idea of great is vastly different from mine.

 

[luj1]

True I remember your amazing idea of greatness when you defended Skyrim and Fallout 4, Prey, ME: Andromeda... Throw yourself in a tar pit, quickly.

 

[JDR13]

I won't fap over a mediocre game with you, so then you just start making shit up... how brilliant.

 

[Life of the Party]

Are we ever going to get a truly great Lovecraft game?

 

[HoboForEternity]

True I remember your amazing idea of greatness when you defended Skyrim and Fallout 4, Prey, ME: Andromeda... Throw yourself in a tar pit, quickly.

arkane's prey is good. Don't pit it with the other turd please.

 

[Kutulu]

The Sinking City-CODEX

Seems to work fine.


Thanks Epic

 

[JDR13]

Actually, the recent Call of Cthulhu is really good. Gameplay not, storytelling yes. They understand how to correctly "beat" the Mythos and actually got the psychological aspects of the Horror quite right.

Idk. The opinions seem to vary wildly on that one. I was close to buying it, but I've read too many negative reviews.

 

[Fedora Master]

Subtle. Real fucking subtle.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

The game instead dvelves on creating world where reason and knowledge leads to ruin and ability to look away from mythos to victory. I have already said too much.

Woah, sounds like a world created by the Rothschilds, Morgans and Warburgs.

 

[fantadomat]

So is there a torrent yet?

 

[toro]

I'm triggered.

The first quest is called "Frosty Welcome" and ...

Spoiler

You can choose to accuse Lewis or not. It doesn't make any difference on the quest rewards: you get the same shit.

The big question is: Does this quest have consequences or not?

If Lewis appears again or there is another quest linked to him then it's great.

Otherwise I can see why this game is a letdown: basically you will solve case by case in a linear fashion and there will be no consequences for your decisions.

Hellion Please confirm which is the case.

 

[toro]

Anyway, this is the best Cthulhu game ever because it feels like entering the event horizon of the clown dimension. There is no coming back.

Spoiler

Just imagine clowns with tentacles. The horror.

 

[Hellion]

I'm triggered.

The first quest is called "Frosty Welcome" and ...

Spoiler

You can choose to accuse Lewis or not. It doesn't make any difference on the quest rewards: you get the same shit.

The big question is: Does this quest have consequences or not?

If Lewis appears again or there is another quest linked to him then it's great.

Otherwise I can see why this game is a letdown: basically you will solve case by case in a linear fashion and there will be no consequences for your decisions.

Hellion Please confirm which is the case.

I went with the choice to

Spoiler

save Lewis, and he just sends you a thank you letter at your hotel sometime later warning you to "run away from this foul place and save yourself" or something along these lines. He doesn't make any other appearence, nor is there another quest related to him.

Don't know what happens if you turn him in though.

I recall at least 2 cases later on where your decisions have at least some impact (meaning you select who lives and who dies, and the one who is left alive delivers you a quest later on), but I think most consequences are just that, a few different lore items collected and that's it.

 

[Zombra]

EDIT: [REDACTED]

Getting kinda spoilery here, request you be stricter with spoiler tags. Thanks in advance.

--------------

In other news, without knowing exactly what the options menu items mean, I'm looking forward to playing more tonight, trying compass off, status HUD off, "long distance" interactivity icons off, but "all" interactivity icons on. Hopefully this will mean I can see the interaction points when I walk right past them but not otherwise. Stay tuned.

 

[Hellion]

Getting kinda spoilery here, request you be stricter with spoiler tags. Thanks in advance.

^
Fixed it, I mistakenly thought I had originally put the later sentence as well inside the spoiler tag and didn't even check.

 

[Alienman]

Thank god for that warning, I thought Frogware were racist and haters of fish people, now I know better.

 

[Zombra]

 

[Alienman]

Gill Men is the minority group nobody talks about

Spoiler

Just look at their sad oppressed faces.

 

[toro]

I've put more hours into the game. It's a mixed bag.

The main story seems interesting until now. I'm not sure how much it fits with the Cthulhu mythology but it's pretty atmospheric.

I'm like 3 main quests into the game and they are long but it looks like the game has a main story and all the detective quests have no impact over that overarching story.

But this is not a proper open world game. Almost 20 years after Gothic these guys still don't know how to implement a proper open world.

1) Many quests locations are available for "visit-only" meaning that you can visit them but the quest triggers are not enabled which means that it makes absolutely no sense visiting locations for which you don't have a quest assigned. Fuck exploration.
2) Quest sequence breaking ist verboten. I had one of the most annoying experience when I had to search a specific store in an area. I combed the entire area but the door was enabled only once I went to the City Hall and searched for that specific company. Fuck exploration.
3) The town is lifeless and the NPCs have no schedules. I don't know why the fuck they bothered with the open-world implementation (it doesn't matter if the world is dead) except as a tool to waste the players time. Fuck exploration.
4) The world map is simply atrocious because it's a puzzle It doesn't make sense geographically or topologically. It's just a mess that you have to navigate. Fuck exploration.

The combat is another can of shit: almost all combat mechanics are broken, clunky or unresponsive. I cannot prepare for encounters because when combat starts I'm fighting with the controls and the camera instead of the monsters. It's luck based gameplay

And the cherry on top of the shitcake is the broken save system: you can save anytime but the game will not save your actual position or the quest current state therefore on reload you will spawn in some predefined phonebooth but also quest items will respawn. This can be exploited in two ways:
1) go to a new area, die and get respawned into the closest phonebooth ... it's much faster than searching each phonebooth,
2) go to the quest location, loot stuff, save, reload, go to the quest location, loot stuff, save, reload ... you can do this a lot if you don't ever finish the quest sequence.

Honestly, this is one of those game where you feel like swimming in shit because you know there is a good a game somewhere below the surface but my God! you have to work for it.

 

[fantadomat]

I have played for a few hours and the game feels like shit. The game is an open world one with a lot of running/swimming around. The town is cut in to a few neighbourhoods which are cut in a few sections,all that is put apart with flooded streets. You have to get on to boat and drive it to the next not flooded area. The main characters is very slow even when running,it makes traversing tedious. The main thing that puts the game down is the atmosphere and the level design. The game feels like on of those shitty asset flips,you go around and see the same five assets everywhere. Most of the indoors levels feel like something from Dragon age 2,i have traversed the same three story building 20 times by now. Most of the quests are "locate the place on the map,go there,look around/pick a letter with interesting story,fight the monsters that spawn". I haven't really seen any deviation from this formula. The combat is garbage,most monsters enemy kill you in one/shots,that just spawns you at the nearest fast travel point,then you go and try to kill them again. I would recommend lowering the combat difficulty to easy because it is useless mechanic,it just waste your time. There is also a retarded crafting mechanic,which means you just click a button in your inventory,you could just create bullets mid fight that way . Also you have a limit on the resources/ammo....which is retarded. I am yet to go low on anything,they are constantly found in containers that respawn regularly,oh and you get them for completing quests.........which makes the quest rewards useless because most of the time you are full on everything,thus you get nothing form it. Oh and you must be really lucky to find any side quests. They are not indicated on the map or in anyway noticeable while exploring,i just bump in to some npc that turns out to have a quest,there is no way to recognize it from the other garbage npc that constantly spawn/despawn itself in front of you. Oh and the "RPG" elements are a joke.

Only good points is that it have some interesting writing in it.

At this point it seems that EPIC managed to snag itself all the garbage games from steam.

 

[toro]

I have played for a few hours and the game feels like shit. The game is an open world one with a lot of running/swimming around. The town is cut in to a few neighbourhoods which are cut in a few sections,all that is put apart with flooded streets. You have to get on to boat and drive it to the next not flooded area. The main characters is very slow even when running,it makes traversing tedious. The main thing that puts the game down is the atmosphere and the level design. The game feels like on of those shitty asset flips,you go around and see the same five assets everywhere. Most of the indoors levels feel like something from Dragon age 2,i have traversed the same three story building 20 times by now. Most of the quests are "locate the place on the map,go there,look around/pick a letter with interesting story,fight the monsters that spawn". I haven't really seen any deviation from this formula. The combat is garbage,most monsters enemy kill you in one/shots,that just spawns you at the nearest fast travel point,then you go and try to kill them again. I would recommend lowering the combat difficulty to easy because it is useless mechanic,it just waste your time. There is also a retarded crafting mechanic,which means you just click a button in your inventory,you could just create bullets mid fight that way . Also you have a limit on the resources/ammo....which is retarded. I am yet to go low on anything,they are constantly found in containers that respawn regularly,oh and you get them for completing quests.........which makes the quest rewards useless because most of the time you are full on everything,thus you get nothing form it. Oh and you must be really lucky to find any side quests. They are not indicated on the map or in anyway noticeable while exploring,i just bump in to some npc that turns out to have a quest,there is no way to recognize it from the other garbage npc that constantly spawn/despawn itself in front of you. Oh and the "RPG" elements are a joke.

Only good points is that it have some interesting writing in it.

At this point it seems that EPIC managed to snag itself all the garbage games from steam.

I agree on almost everything you said however I have plenty of sidequests.

Also I guess they fucked up the resources spawning therefore they put a limit on how many crafting resources you can carry. An outstanding move which basically destroyed the game's economy ... not to mention that there are no stores in the entire game (until now) therefore you cannot buy shit.

 

[fantadomat]

go to the quest location, loot stuff, save, reload, go to the quest location, loot stuff, save, reload ... you can do this a lot if you don't ever finish the quest sequence.

No need,the loot respawns with leaving the area. I noticed that i could loot the same crate like 20 times if i exit the building and entered it again. It worked with the building that was having the worshiping fishpeople leather quest.

 

[fantadomat]

I agree on almost everything you said however I have plenty of sidequests.

Oh i have a few,doesn't mean that they are easy to find. My first job was finding all the fast travel points,so i managed to snag a few. Now i am cleaning up the leather quests and going to sleep. Still intend to finish this piece of shit tho,nothing better to do this days .