00:00The Sinking City 2 had me anxious before I booted it up for the first time,
00:05and that had nothing to do with the cosmic horror in store.
00:07I'm a long-time fan of Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games,
00:11and I really enjoy the open-world investigation of the original The Sinking City,
00:15in spite of its clunky combat.
00:17The news that this sequel would focus on that survival horror,
00:20frankly, isn't what I was hoping for.
00:23But one of the great cosmic unknowables lies between what we think we want
00:27and what we actually want.
00:29So far, I'm pleasantly surprised to be loving the drippy tentacled survival horror
00:34in The Sinking City 2.
00:40The sequel shifts the action from Oakmont to Arkham.
00:44Like the first game setting, this city is also under the grip of a supernatural flood,
00:48completely submerging the many streets between buildings,
00:51the water bringing with it tentacle horrors from the depths
00:54to infect and destroy surface dwellers like the fedora-wearing Calvin Rafferty,
00:58who's come to town to hunt down Faye, his missing wife.
01:02This city, after all, is where they fell in love.
01:05The Sinking City 2's wife-hunt survival horror premise isn't the most original in the world.
01:10In all things, this is a genre-savvy outing,
01:12and having played both the Silent Hill 2 remake and the Resident Evil 2 remake to death
01:17in recent years, I'm right at home from the moment Calvin wakes up in the local university's Waterlog
01:22Library Annex.
01:23Soaked in darkness, Calvin has a torch that can light the way forward.
01:27On the hunt for a mysterious book, I push forward through any doors that aren't locked,
01:31pulling up a map screen now and then which is helpfully annotated with nearby pickups and points
01:36of interest, and switches its rooms from red to blue once they've been appropriately scoured for goodies.
01:41My goal lies upstairs, and, pleasingly, the map isn't perfect.
01:45Broken walls and rubble can block off passages that at first seem viable on the map,
01:50while at other points, partial collapse can connect new pathways through rooms.
01:54Cautiously, I move through the shin-high water, ripples as Calvin moves forward putting me on edge,
02:00and some wonderful gnarly set dressing doing much the same.
02:03This library is infested with thick, leech-like worms, and dead bodies that they're doing
02:08something to litter the hallways.
02:11With glistening terrors aplenty, the sinking city 2 offers up some stomach-churningly good horror.
02:17Before long, the ripples in the water aren't coming from Calvin alone.
02:21A bloated human, or former human, twitches towards me, pus covering its body.
02:26Playing on normal difficulty, I end up unloading most of my handgun clip to down the monster in a panic,
02:31feeling thoroughly resource-starved as I creep towards the library's upper levels.
02:36Then, I'm jumped by a small spindly monster that knocks me back down over a balcony,
02:41splashes a quick retreat, and awakens more bloating shamblers.
02:45This time, I take a breath and aim at the monster's pus clusters.
02:48They pop, and finally, I feel like my peashooter has some impact.
02:53The clusters reform, and I burst them with another bullet to finish them off.
02:57The next one I stagger takes a knee, and I run over to stomp on it while it's down
03:01to conserve ammo, and end the encounter with impact.
03:04Soon after, I'm leaving the library behind,
03:07navigating the flooded streets on a tiny motorboat in order to reach the Devil's Reef Hotel.
03:12A curious detail for all those familiar with the Oakmont branch.
03:15A block gate forces me to deter into a church,
03:18fighting, and sometimes running through its graveyard full of spider-like spindly creatures
03:22that I only briefly encountered before.
03:25Ready to jump at Calvin and claw at his face,
03:27the strategy of dodging out the way at the right moment from the first game persists,
03:32their flubbed pounce opening them up to a good stamping,
03:35or better yet, sending them hurtling into one of the many bear traps
03:39the resident of Arkham seem keen to leave around the place.
03:41To be fair, with the size of these monsters, mousetraps wouldn't cut it.
03:45It's here at the church I finally get to put my detective fedora back on,
03:49to puzzle through a Lovecraftian mystery.
03:51With the floodgates locked, I have to explore in and around the church to puzzle it out.
03:54Picked up clues can be placed on a mind map investigation board
03:58and connected together freely to infer solutions.
04:01Though you don't need to do so.
04:03Only a couple of clues are required to find the code,
04:06and it's up to me whether I continue my investigation to uncover the true mystery
04:10behind the strange church, a mysterious trident, and an obelisk puzzle in its garden.
04:15I'm only pushed to do so as reaching its end is part of my demo.
04:18Otherwise, I'd be free to progress to the hotel.
04:21In typical Lovecraftian fashion, the answers I get just raise more questions.
04:26And I'm curious how optional sections like this will square with Calvin's larger quest.
04:30But with resource rewards and upgrade currency for Calvin's nightshade mask,
04:35a weird blank face mask that Calvin has for some reason,
04:38up for grabs for correct solutions,
04:40they're worth puzzling out even if only to twist the cosmic to your own end.
04:46From there, I'm skipped ahead to play through the beginning of a much larger, twistier building,
04:51the Akeley Memorial Hospital.
04:53Still rattled with the tentacled, the bloated, and the wet,
04:56there's also weird science afoot that suggests a broadening of the Lovecraftian mythos at play
05:01within Arkham Street.
05:03Here, the labyrinthine halls that I slowly open up through finding keys and opening up bolted doors
05:08are sometimes blocked by strange, slicked, curved metal mirrors
05:12that will only open up to specific faces.
05:14That MacGuffin that Calvin is here to collect lies behind a similarly high-tech lock,
05:19which combines science with runic symbols,
05:21having me combine both at charging stations to suck up energy into a prism device.
05:26I only get to work part of my way through this goal before my demo is over.
05:30Yet this location doesn't just up The Sinking City 2's strangeness,
05:34but suggests how sweeping and maze-like some of the game's later levels could get.
05:38This, I'm told, is about midway through.
05:41It's high praise to compare The Sinking City 2 to the modern takes on Resident Evil 2 and Silent Hill
05:472.
05:47This definitely feels a bit rope-ier, especially when it comes to combat,
05:50though later weapon upgrades promise a smidge more punch.
05:54But as ever, this is Frogwares absolutely locking in to punching about its weight.
05:59And to be honest, I didn't expect pivoting from the investigation-focused original
06:03to survival horror would work nearly as well as my two hours hands-on
06:06with The Sinking City 2 has shaped up.
06:08The studio definitely knows its stuff when it comes to developing in this new genre.
06:12It's a mechanical pivot that still won't be for everyone, though.
06:16While it's great to see investigation elements make a return,
06:19the emphasis on survival horror will still turn away some of those
06:21who are only interested in the mysteries.
06:24But it does further delineate the studio's cosmic horror series with its Sherlock Holmes one.
06:29And it works well for me, because I just so happen to also really like survival horror
06:33as well as a good mystery.
06:35This combination of both feels a little forbidden,
06:37but I won't be able to resist cracking it open to peer in once more
06:40once The Sinking City 2 releases later in 2026 across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X and S.
06:47So, will you be picking up this sunken survival horror game?
06:52What do you think of Frogwares' genre pivot?
06:54Let us know and stick with GamesRadar for the latest on the greatest games of 2026.
06:591626.
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