// KOTAKU — GAMING
The Sinking City 2 Is A Flawed But Fantastic Survival Horror Game Inspired By Modern Resident Evil
Very few games gross me out. Frogwares’ recently released Lovecraftian survival horror game, The Sinking City 2, is one of the few things I’ve played that truly made me go “Bleh.” It’s a game filled with nasty worms, disgusting growths, and buckets of slime. And I had a fantastic time making my way through this creepy adventure, even if Sinking City 2 features a few too many combat encounters.
Out now on PC and consoles, The Sinking City 2 is a standalone sequel to 2019’s The Sinking City. You won’t need to play that game to understand the sequel, as Sinking City 2 features a new cast of characters in a different New England-area city and tells a fresh story unconnected to what happened before.
And it’s not just the narrative that is disconnected from the first game. Sinking City 2 is also a totally different genre. The original game was a narrative-heavy, detective-themed adventure game with some light (and not very good) combat. Sinking City 2 ditches that style of game and instead is a third-person survival horror game clearly inspired by Capcom’s recent Resident Evil remakes.
At first, I wasn’t sure if developer Frogwares could pull off the genre shift, but after a few hours I was too scared, and too busy nervously counting bullets and health items, to even remember that the studio’s last game wasn’t a survival horror. In other words, Sinking City 2’s shift to Resident Evil-like action horror is a big success.
A huge reason for Sinking City 2’s success as a survival horror game is that every handcrafted level in the game looks properly disgusting and creepy. The game’s setting, Arkham, Massachusetts, is a city being swallowed by the sea, and with the rising waters come thousands of grotesque, unnatural worms.
These critters quickly start to animate the dead and become one of the main foes trying to stop playable protagonist Calvin Rafferty. They’re hardly the only nasty bit of cosmic horror you’ll face across the 10 hours or so it takes to finish the game and most of its smaller side missions, though. I’ll leave those other nasties as surprises for you to stumble upon in the dark.
Of course, you might be wondering, “Hey, why is this Calvin guy hanging around a dead city sinking into the sea that is also filled with worm zombies and monsters?” Well, he’s in love with a woman who is stuck in a creepy, magical coma after a spell they tried went wrong, and now he’s trying to save her before the answers he needs get buried beneath the ocean. You know how it is.
To save her and himself, Calvin is forced to travel on foot and by boat across a few key locations in Arkham. All of these places suck to visit, but make for great horror game levels, including a creepy hospital and a dilapidated nightclub that contains a nasty main star that needs your help.
All of these locations feel big enough that getting around them takes time and grabbing a map is helpful, but none of them are so big that they feel empty or boring to explore. The nightclub in particular does a great job of using tight corridors, ambushes, and different levels to really push you into places that most people would avoid. But you need that key or gear or lever or whatever odd item is demanded to unlock the path forward.
Like Resident Evil, Sinking City 2 fills these levels with the aforementioned critters and undead. You’ll need to manage your ammo and health items carefully as the game often tosses more enemies at you than you’ll be able to handle. Running away is often a good strategy.