TOWN WHERE LOVECRAFT LURKS ROUND EVERY CORNER
The Sinking City: Deluxe Edition
(PlayStation 5, £53.99)
Verdict: Both great and ghoulish ★★★
Persona 5: Strikers
(PlayStation, Switch, PC, £54.99)
Verdict: Heart stealing ★★★★★
LOVECRAFT? Then you’re going to love this.
Sorry. Bad joke. But it’s true: for those who enjoy the work of fiendish horror maestro H.P. Lovecraft, The Sinking City is, mostly, a beguiling experience. It’s not based directly on one of his stories, but it may as well be, it’s so full of reference and care.
You are Charles Reed, a 1920s detective who is losing his grip on reality, solving mysteries in a city whose grip was entirely loosened by a great flood months before.
He’s a likeable, honest sort of chap. The streets he has to wade through are anything but: this is a place of degradation, conspiracy and strange, skittering noises. The Sinking City is a masterpiece of atmosphere.
Especially now it has been upgraded for PlayStation 5, making it faster and better looking than before. And this isn’t just your usual upgrade. Last year, The Sinking City was removed from stores during a legal battle between its makers and the suits. Its return is a most un-Lovecraftian happy ending.
However, it should be said that The Sinking City hasn’t received the upgrades it needed most.
When Reed sticks to his investigative work, the game is great. Whenever he has to do other things, from shooting at eldritch nasties to getting around the city, it can feel tremendously clumsy. Unfinished, even.
The Sinking City’s ambition is its downfall. It tries too much, when it should have stuck to what it does well. Lovecraft himself might have reached for a particular word here: maddening. n IF YOU want your sanity testing even more, consider the very fact of Persona 5: Strikers. This game is a sequel to 2016’s Persona 5, but it’s not Persona 6, because it’s actually just more Persona 5 — the same look, the same characters...only with a different way of fighting battles. Got it?
That may make Strikers sound disposable. It’s not. Whether you’re joining them again or for the first time, it’s a joy to be in the company of Joker, a dimension-hopping Japanese teenager, and his fellow, er, Phantom Thieves of Hearts.
And the new, more frenetic battle system suits the sugar-rush world of Persona perfectly.
Besides, amid the high kicks and high jinks, you soon realise that there’s a proper story here: of loss, and of artificial intelligence.