These fucking pieces of shit. Hope they go broke.
Too bad about a potential Styx 3 though.
Too bad about a potential Styx 3 though.
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Frogwares' The Sinking City - that other Cthulhu game
- Thread starter himmy
- Start date
It's $25 on Origin and their store. As said above though, their store isn't DRM free like they say it is.
Luzur
Good Sir
i like how most famous YT'bers started this game and then gave up after a few episodes.
Ok, they must have lowered the price recently. It was $50-$60 at release.
Yeah, I heard about the Frogware launcher. It's pure bullshit that it's not mentioned in the description.
Bony Hands
Literate
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2020
- Messages
- 36
Sucks that Frogwares can't seem to catch a break. They're self-publishing their next game, so I hope that goes well for them.
newtmonkey
Arcane
They really did blatantly lie in their press statement. When you go to their site and check the system requirements this is listed at the bottom:
"Internet connection: required only on game launch"
LOL "we only use DRM on our DRM-free game every single time you play it"
I dunno, it's cheap right now, but I kinda want my games in one place. You don't think it will pop up on GOG soon anyway? I kept having bad luck with that and bought some games on steam like just before they went on GOG and I don't want to do that again, it's super annoying.
Considering they're suing their publisher and have posted about the legal issues, pointing people towards their website and a store I never heard of before, I wouldn't bet on it coming to GOG soon. That said, wtf do I know.
Since it's DRM free just back it up and never worry about "Gamesplanet" again. GOG's DRM free status doesn't matter much unless you're doing that anyway.
This game has a lot more combat than I expected for a Frogwares game. It's not bad, though early on with resources extremely tight it's kind of annoying not knowing which quest will send you to a house with half a dozen big monsters in it versus those with 2 baby monsters. Not asking for a difficulty rating or anything, but more hints in dialog maybe. It looks pretty gorgeous for a AA game a lot of the time, and either patches fixed the bugs and performance issues or most of the complaints were about the console versions. I love the detective stuff, very well done (I guess as you'd expect). The tone and ambiance is just perfect. Highly recommended for people who think a detective survival horror game sounds up their alley.
Personally, I loved not knowing what the hell I was getting into. It was great being scared out of a mission area because I could legit not handle it. No level scaling.
But I am the kind of guy who is happy to backtrack for an hour if it serves the atmosphere of such a well realized setting.
gerey
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2007
- Messages
- 3,472
I think the game really misses the point of Lovecraft (but then again most Lovecraftian games do). The supernatural ought to be used sparingly, if at all - and when humans do stumble upon it, the results should lead to death or insanity. Also, the fact these games try to cram in as many Lovecraft stories/themes as they can is equally annoying.
And yes, I'm very much aware why developers don't take such an approach, fighting humans and insane humans gets boring - yet the protagonist mowing down eldritch abominations left and right quickly removes any horror element they might represent.
I wish they had taken their cues from Alien: Isolation. There is one (or more) eldritch abominations roaming about, and your best bet is not to attract their attention - or the player can choose to use them against the more mundane opposition they encounter, because fighting them head on is a death sentence. Even TLOU's approach could work, where fighting humans is brutal and dangerous (or at least it ought to be), and is centered around flanking and ambushing when stealth fails, while tackling the more exotic enemies involves sneaking around, trying not to draw their attention.
Or if the player wants to fight off the eldritch abomination, they must research how to defeat them, incurring a heavy penalty to their sanity in the process.
Personally, I loved not knowing what the hell I was getting into. It was great being scared out of a mission area because I could legit not handle it. No level scaling.
Yeah I mean I just died a couple times and then said oh well and did other cases, it's not a huge deal. Would just be neat if there were more context/dialog clues telling you which cases are "early" cases. I tried to do "Fool's Gold" before the second main quest and it was funny because Fool's Gold had a huge monster and like 5 smaller ones, while the next main quest had two little guys.
I am kind of surprised how quickly the various monsters have come into play, and how every quest location has a handful of them. Given the source I expected to be fighting fishmen, and given Frogwares usual style I expected the monsters to be rare. I guess they were going for 50/50 Sherlock Holmes and Silent Hill, when I expected 70/30 or something.
Reasonable.
How I see it: Frogwares' previous game was Devil's Daughter, published by Bigben Interactive i.e. money grubbing shovelware jockeys. DD (the very first Frogwares/Bigben game) had a ton of stupid action minigames to break up the investigation gameplay, because Bigben were trying to sell to their stupid ass trailer park console/mobile market, and reviewers panned it for that reason. Sinking City was also published by Bigben, but this time they said, well customers hated all the minigames, so take them out. We can't just have a pure detective game because $$$, so what are we going to have instead to sell to dumb people? Instead of shoe shining and chimney sweeping minigames they settled on combat, and I suspect pressure from Bigben meant that the combat had to be everywhere.
Of course this could all just be my prejudice against Bigben talking.
newtmonkey
Arcane
Thanks for posting this. I went and bought it from Gamesplanet and it is indeed a DRM-free download.
Finished this. Like a lot of games it was way too long for how repetitive it got, but the story was good enough to get me to the end. The side quests are actually pretty good, so I did most of those too despite the repetition. I just skipped the "collect all the mystic tomes" type ones. Anyway... the combat is what it is, I wouldn't say I enjoyed it or hated it, it's just there. The detective stuff is great but once you've done it a hundred times it starts to wear on you. One of my biggest issues with survival horror games is the "spend supplies to kill stuff to find more supplies" loop that feels pointless, and that's a big factor in this game. The crafting also seems mostly pointless, just lots of menu clicking for no particular gameplay reason. Also the open world was mostly window dressing, and the cases are rather linear, so like a lot of open world games I think it would have been improved with a more Deus Ex approach of a sequence of smaller but still open areas.
The game's great atmosphere and writing keep you engaged though, despite all these issues. Nothing is bad in the game really, just gameplay mediocrity and story/ambience excellence mixed together. You know if that's for you. Ending annoyance:
The game's great atmosphere and writing keep you engaged though, despite all these issues. Nothing is bad in the game really, just gameplay mediocrity and story/ambience excellence mixed together. You know if that's for you. Ending annoyance:
the game ends with Deus Ex: Human Revolution style "pick a button" stupidity. You make a bunch of choices throughout the game, and it would have been so much better if those choices decided which of the three endings you get. Instead no matter what you did you pick one of three buttons, and can even load your last save to quickly see them all. Bleh.
orcinator
Liturgist
Gave it a try. Mostly a mistake.
You meet the King in Yellow, an ape man, a fish man and kill your first eldrich monster within the first 10 minutes of the game, if the term "Lynchian" reefers to something that combines the mundane with the macabre this game would be a combination of the bizarre with the utterly boring, I call this completely new trend: "poorly written".
I expected the combat to be shit, and it was but I had some expectations for the puzzles and they turned out to be just as shallow if not more.
If anyone besides the graphics slaves had any talent this could have been passable but it's just bad on every level besides the short-lived novelty of 3d lovecrafts.
You meet the King in Yellow, an ape man, a fish man and kill your first eldrich monster within the first 10 minutes of the game, if the term "Lynchian" reefers to something that combines the mundane with the macabre this game would be a combination of the bizarre with the utterly boring, I call this completely new trend: "poorly written".
I expected the combat to be shit, and it was but I had some expectations for the puzzles and they turned out to be just as shallow if not more.
If anyone besides the graphics slaves had any talent this could have been passable but it's just bad on every level besides the short-lived novelty of 3d lovecrafts.
lightbane
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2008
- Messages
- 10,198
It's called "ludonarrative dissonance" according to journos. Just wait until you meet the PC-friendly couples and Cthulhu's daughter!
Is this game or the new Call of Cthulhu game better? I'm looking at my backlog and it's yuge and I'm wondering which game I should prioritize. Lots of mixed opinions in this thread, anyone have played them both and can tell me how they compare?
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