The Sinking City 2

Зазвичай я не роблю предзамовлення на ігри, ця - стала виключенням. Пройшов за 13 годин, в які розробники, окрім приємної (нехай і РЕзівської) механіки і геймплею, вплели прям дику кількість творів Лавкрафта. Вона лінійна, але на останній катсцені волосся встає дибки навіть там, де ти про нього не знав. Розробникам - повага, в моїх очах виросли настільки, що будь-яку іншу їх гру я буду чекати, і з великою долею вірогідності - передзамовляти. Враховуючи, що вона коштує на 30% менше ніж всі ААА - це просто дикий мастхев для всіх любителів хоч одного з жанрів, які тут присутні. P.S. Для тих хто очікував такого самого геймплею, як і в першій частині - погані новини, це робить гру іншою, але поганою - точно ні. Категорично рекомендую

Best lovecraftian game I've ever played. Highly recommend.

Sinking City 2 is a genuine step up in many way from the first game, but for those hoping for a direct sequel in genre and gameplay, you come out of this a bit disappointed; but for the story it tells its changes make sense [ Note -my playthrough was completed on Restless Slumber difficulty and Evidence Hints turned off, so your experience may differ ] Pros: - Gunplay and Controls have seen a massive upgrade. Everything feel tight and responsive, eliminating the cluck and awkward that often the plagued the first games -Story feels far more focused, spinning a tale that has more urgency and stakes, that is (in my opinion) my interesting and engaging -The more traditional Survival Horror style Gameplay is incredible well executed, each level feeling well thought out, with interconnecting pathways, well placed enemies and resources - Incredibly well crafted environments and atmosphere, helps keep its Lovecraftian setting interesting and iconically cosmic horror, in this apocalyptic version of the infamous fictional city of Arkham Massachusetts - Combat is both fun and challenging, allowing for memorable encounters and Boss Fights; and like traditional survival horror is also optional, giving the player the choice to fight or save resources and run - Perks are available to give small bonuses to multiple aspects of gameplay - Each level has side quests (or Investigations) that are highly rewarding, often giving the player extra resources to use or upgrades for your weapons and inventory Cons: - The Open World style level design has been completely omitted, opting for a traditional survival horror layout. this may upset fans of the original game, as the sprawling city of Oakmont and its colorful citizens were a big part of it identity and drew many people into the first game. i myself being fairly disappointed by this change as well - Combat, while fun, can sometimes feel really brutal, making some encounters more frustrating especially in small spaces where dodging and running away maybe more difficult without taking a lot of damage -Side Characters are not as interesting as they were in the first, mainly due to the story focusing heavily on the 2 protagonists and their mission - Resources are limited and will require diligent management to keep your inventory stocked, even then you may still find you yourself scrounging for ammo and crafting material. adding a level of stress that some may not enjoy - Dialog and Voice Acting can be hit or miss, mostly with line deliveries sometimes feeling off. However important moments are well acted and do deliver the emotion that is needed - Objectives also may not be super clean as to what needs to be done, and may leave players wandering and feeling aimless Even though this game diverges significantly from the first entry with some drastic changes to to its genre and gameplay, its still a more than worthy and wonderfully crafted entry that, fans of the original Sinking City and of Survival Horror in general should give a look and be willing to give a chance. Hell, the games very existence is kind of miracle, as Frogware managed to finish it in the middle of the Ukraine War with most of their staff being drafted during production. So please give this game a chance and you may just find it was worth it.

I absolutely love the fact that instead of hollow repetitive open world of the SC1 we got a tight survival horror where the city is just a single location. I enjoy this game a lot.

Having enjoyed Sinking City 1 a lot when I tried it on Steam a few years ago after devs Frogwares got control of their game finally, I was looking forward to 2 even with the clear departure it was taking from the start, doing something I had kind of hoped from SC1 in taking more inspiration from Resident Evil 2 remake than the clunky combat & resource management of their previous game. It is slightly sad that SC2 has only the vestigial remnants of its previous investigation systems, but they made a really good RE-like survival horror game, with excellent metroidvania levels, with that classic resource scarcity, great atmosphere, combat that punches above its weight even if it's not as juicy as the RE series has, it's still really great-- --If I were to have negatives, number one is how annoying it is to tinker with Unreal Engine every time to get it to run okay and not look broken. Probably quite a few of my 22 hours were spent on just tinkering with engine ini lines, going back-and-forth launching the game, clearing the shader cache, seeing if I reached something that looks at least slightly on par with RE2R (albeit blurrier) and not running at 15 frames a second. In the end, I had to swallow my pride, play with DLSS+framegen at an awful 60 (=30 in reality) fps, on high settings with a few more performance-memory tweaks, and got it to run consistently. At least Nvidia Reflex helped quite a bit with the latency, just be aware that it's broken on "auto", only at 2x framegen does Reflex work. I don't even need framegen to play Cyberpunk at a locked real 60fps which looks great. Man, why can't we get settings where games can look as good as say RE engine games from 7-1 years ago as well as run as well as they do? That's UE5 for ya. My other criticisms are minor punditry nitpicks. The dialogue is a bit out of place, your main character is established as having already some knowledge of the occult and having a history doing dark rituals with another main character (none of these are spoilers, you hear/read these in the first 5-10 minutes of the game), but come gameplay, and he talks out loud like an innocent stock character who is surprised by the things he sees-- He's been 3months surviving the flood, I expected a bit more of a jaded dry burned out delivery, like a Max Payne who's not surprised by anything at this point. Ending also had them say out loud certain things I kind of wished they would have conveyed more visually to us, but overall I didn't mind the ending, pretty classic Lovecraftian stuff. But that's not a big deal, it's not constantly in your face, for the most part you just silently explore the excellently crafted environments where you hunt for clues and keyitems, dodge and fight enemies and scavenge for resources. The devs made really nice locations to explore, from a Hotel, to a Hospital, to a Fishmarket, each with great looping gatekept design, nice progression of upgrades and weapons and enemy introductions, though the very last area seemed to tease a new enemy which I was very mildly disappointed weren't introduced and we fought the same roster of enemies instead. The rifle upgrades also felt like they came surprisingly late where you're not going to get too much use of them anymore, hunting for those rifle "feats" is going to be painful for the extra points to spend for the new game stuff where just like in RE games you can unlock new skills, weapons early and infinite ammo for them for future playthroughs. The last location overall felt maybe a tiny bit rushed now that I think about it, It's still cool, but the hint of a new enemy we never see, and also the location makes no use of evidence gathering and linking felt a bit weird, it had the bones of being another last area before the final boss, but they made it a lot more limited. A small detail that's neat, there's a lot of optional dialogue that you trigger mainly if you look at certain things and linger for a bit, you can miss a lot if you just run through areas and don't stop and look, that dialogue also didn't suffer from my previous gripes above. SC2 doesn't win prices for novelty or breaking the mold, it's very much inspired by RE2R, SH2R, DSR and all of their successes, but it could have been easy to make an annoying game that takes the wrong lessons from those as well, instead SC2 is I'm going to cheekily say a tiny bit superior to RE games in that at least there aren't those gimmicky sections where you're suddenly playing a different game, elaborate QTEs or forced stealth sections which Capcom keep littering into their RE games. BTW, if you get the Premium Edition you get an extra "mission", a Manor with its own self-contained story, you unlock a new weapon in it that you can then use in the main game, I'll say the Manor is again a really well designed location, a fun small Lovecraftian story, it's just again a solid 2-4 hours of great survival horror gameplay. It feels a bit weird to have day 1 a separate mission you kind of have to pay extra for, for any AAA company I'd frown on that, but here when the base game is cheaper than average and the premium only bumps up the price to standard levels, and the game is by a smaller self-published AA studio who have had some enormous struggles and relied on Kickstarter backers to help get this done (credits had like maybe 30-80 devs listed and then backers were 90% of the rest of credits), the extra mission seems more like it was something they did for backers and less to be scummy AAA devs who carve out content to make an easy buck. Anyway, outside of UE5 being UE5, the game's overall excellent, there's not much I can say that isn't a copy of praising say the RPD or Spencer Manor and equivalent well-crafted locations to do your surviving in, the combat's great though not as good as AAA studios can pull of, there's good replay value like in most RE games or Dead Space, Silent Hill etc, but it is fun to have a classic Lovecraftian setting for once in this well established genre, pretty well realized one as well.

SLAVA UKRAINI <3

I hate to say it but this game didn't live up to my expectations as I hoped it would. The pacing isn't great if you ask me first and foremost. the way upgrades and finding weapons work didn't feel great. in fact you sometimes find upgrades before you even get the weapon. WHY DO YOU HAVE IT DESIGNED THAT WAY. TWO the story is mid tier at best and its not even cliche. The whole idea is your trying to wake your girlfriend from the "dream" but it goes from waking her to CHASING MONSTERS WHO STOLE HER BODY. That is all it becomes and THERE are way to many monster closets in this game. atmosphere didn't feel tense like the first one did. The investigation mechanic is absolutely GARBAGE. You litterly take clues and just draw lines to them that is all and it feels like a pointless mechanic. There's no real encouragement to explore other than getting more ammo healing or inventory slots that's all. I liked how there were side areas and side stories to explore in the first one but nope nonexistent in this one. Its like they want you to go from a to b to c to d back to b back to c back to d then moving on to the next major story section. The doubling back felt more like a chore than actually apart of the story. Last but not least every boss fight was pathetic they didnt even feel like fights it was just run around in a circle shoot while waiting for the supply boxes to refresh if your low on ammo. the final boss fight felt like a dead space 3 rip off the way they laid it out. Half the game didnt even feel like an eldritch horror game at all. The game felt like they tried to do a parasite rip off of resident evil. the base enemy was basically zombies and thats it. I expected better than this.

I love this game. so what if it is not open world, and looks like resident evil? why are these stupid people who cannot form their own opinion, type the same negative review? are they against new things? despite this game being, looking and performing good? there are more games that have similarity in them. (gta, red dead redemption, mafia - need for speed, forza, crew motorfest) ... is the game "repetitive" because you travel on a boat and open gates? I think the negative reviews are the result of global decline in iq. where teachers are unable to teach kids the basis, and they grow up to be stupid af and cannot form opinions so anything different or new that feels good to them, is automatically a threat.