The Sinking City is a game that I started playing a year or 2 ago, after picking it up on sale on PSN. I fell off of it last year though. It wasn't that I wasn't liking the game; I was liking it quite a bit. It's just that other games came along that demanded my attention. Games like Alan Wake 2, College Football 25, and Silent Hill 2 remake kept pulling me away from finishing Sinking City. But I left The Sinking City installed on my console, fully intending to come back to it.

But there is a sequel due out sometime this year, and it's being marketed as a full-fledged survival horror game. That puts it firmly in my radar as a potential "must-play". In anticipation of the sequel's release, I wanted to go back to The Sinking City to finish it and review it.

While the sequel to The Sinking City is going to be more strictly a horror game, the original is actually a very different game. While it has Lovecraftian Eldritch monsters, and a madness-inducing plot, it stays more in the territory of a detective noir mystery. Think more along the lines of L.A. Noir than Resident Evil. And that makes sense, considering that most of the developer, Frogwares', catalog is Sherlock Holmes games.

Sinking City is a detective noir; not a proper horror game.

The horror of Lovecraftian racism

I admit, I was expecting more of a horror game. So I was surprised to find that Sinking City is 100% a full-blown detective noir mystery, with only light horror elements. Well, the horror may be light, but the Lovecraft-ness is dialed up to 11, and that includes the racism that was so present in Lovecraft's work. But thankfully, Frogwares is fully aware of this racism, and so the game is self-aware and hyper critical of its racism as well.

There's a splash screen at the beginning of the game that talks about Lovecraft's books being very racist, and that the developers made a conscious decision to include many of those racist elements for the sake of "authenticity". This means that characters who are coded as "black" or as other ethnic minorities are depicted as ape or fish men, and that misogyny is common place. It makes for an interesting approach to a genre period piece, since this is how many white Americans and Europeans really did see Africans and indigenous peoples: as little more than animals. However, The Sinking City doesn't make this a simple matter of perception. These characters really are ape and fish people. It's a literal depiction of how racist white Americans saw the world. But the game goes out of its way to make sure that these characters are not depicted as being inherently inferior to "normal" (e.g. "white") human characters.

Racism is a major component of the game, and sometimes, we get to shotgun Klansmen in the face!

What the splash screen doesn't mention is the way that this would be turned against the player. Right off the bat, the player is made to feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in ways that closely resemble racist bigotry. While there are plenty of characters who welcome the player character and are perfectly friendly towards him, there are also plenty of people who are outright hostile to him. The word "newcomer" is this game's N-word. Even when dealing with characters who are outwardly friendly and tolerant of the player, there is often an undercurrent of tension in their interactions, as if the other characters just want the interaction to be over with, so that they don't have to be seen in public conversing with a "newcomer" any more than they have to.

Frogwares doesn't go so far as to include other more overtly racist allegories in the game. Like, you aren't going to be stopped and harassed by police when the sun goes down, nor are you ever asked to show your papers, or to enter and exit public establishments through the back door. The NPCs' distrust of you as a "newcomer" never obstructs or interferes with your ability to play the game and complete your objectives, which does make the whole thing fall kind of flat. Yet that sense that you aren't welcome is always there, lingering.

We don't take kindly to Newcomers around here.

This past weekend, I put up my review of Gathering Storm, the new expansion for Civilization VI. The overall summary is that I felt very "meh" about the game's headline features, but was actually impressed by how the smaller, more subtle changes really improve the underlying game. That review focused on a lot of the high-level concepts of the game, and was already starting to get rather long (my readers all know how verbose I can be). I decided to cut a lot of my smaller criticisms of individual mechanics or functionality out of that review, and save them for their own separate post.

So now that you all know how I feel about the expansion overall, here's some of my smaller nags and nitpicks (and suggestions for resolving them) that I hope can be resolved by some post-release patches.

Table of contents

• Un-Intelligent Queuing
  • No wishful-thinking in the queue?
• Ugh, now there's even more U.I. issues!
  • "Resume Game" should tell me which game I'm resuming
• Units should require different resources
  • More domestic uses for strategic resources
• World Congress should have a leader who sets the agenda
• We should be able to demand promises before the offending action
• Joint wars should still count as "Surprise Wars"
  Joint wars and joining an ongoing war should cost Diplomatic Favor
• Civs who don't pollute should gain Diplomatic Favor

It's refreshing to see a video game (of all things) take seriously the second greatest existential threat to civilization (after nuclear weapon stockpiles), while governments (particularly here in the United States) fail to even acknowledge that it's real. I was honestly a little bit surprised to see anthropogenic climate change be the focus of an entire expansion to Firaxis' Sid Meier's Civilization VI. Firaxis has been playing very "politically correct" with the game in its past two iterations. Civ IV, if you remember, included slavery as a mechanic that allowed players to kill population in exchange for a production boost, and it included leaders like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zadong. Civilization III allowed collateral damage from city sieges that would kill population, destroy infrastructure, and potentially reduce wonders of the world to mere ruins. Civilization II allowed democratic congresses to overrule the choices of the player. And Civilization: Colonization actually required you to draft citizens from your cities into soldiers to fight wars.

Politically sensitive concepts like slavery, and characters like Joseph Stalin, have been in Civ games before,
but Civ V and VI have played things very safe and controversy-free with most of their content.

Civilization V and VI have dialed back from such concepts and leaders, as well as other "politically sensitive" topics in favor of diversity, inclusiveness, and a more rose-tinted vision of human history that tries to pretend that things like slavery, colonialism, opium wars, and the Holocaust didn't happen. I get it. They're going for a more optimistic vision of humanity that celebrates our achievements while overlooking the incalculable amount of [often unnecessary] suffering that came at the expense of many of those achievements.

So to see Anthropogenic Global Warming not only be included -- but to be the headline feature -- is surprising. I mean, I don't think it's a politically or culturally sensitive topic, nor should it be to anyone else if we lived in a rational world. It's the reality that we live in -- plain and simple. Nevertheless, it's a brave and important gesture from 2k and Firaxis. Anthropogenic climate change is certainly the second greatest threat to human civilization after our frightful stockpile of nuclear weapons -- or maybe an asteroid impact, but that is exceedingly unlikely to happen. It's an issue that needs to be a part of the cultural conversation, and it is perhaps the biggest price that we (as a civilization) are going to pay for the hubris of our unsustainable growth. It's a problem that every nation in the world needs to face, and solving that problem should be part of any game that attempts to simulate or systematize modern politics.

Anthropogenic climate change is one of the most serious problems threatening real-life civilization.

That is why I'm rather disappointed that the actual implementation of global warming in Civilization VI: Gathering Storm is a bit lackluster and un-apocalyptic.

The greatest existential threat to civilization is civilization

Climate change in Civilization VI: Gathering Storm just doesn't seem to be quite as devastating [globally] as it is in real life. Basically, raising the global temperature will have three effects.

• Increases the frequency of weather-related disasters,
• Melts polar ice caps,
• Floods certain coastal tiles.

Many disasters are trivially managed by leaving a builder or two (with 1 charge) to repair pillaged tiles.

The melting of the polar ice is actually a benefit, as it provides easier routes for naval units if canals aren't available or useable. The other two will cause problems for every player, but I've found them fairly easy to manage (at least on the Emperor difficulty that I usually play on). Disasters will typically pillage tile improvements and districts, but a severe disaster may also outright remove improvements, and may even kill points of population.

...

Civilization VI's new expansion "Gathering Storm" has been out for a week now, and I've been trying to play it as much as I can. There's a lot of new features, and several genuine attempts to change how the game is played -- with varying degrees of success. I wanted to take some time to share some of my initial experiences with the game, in the form of some tips that I have for playing with the new features and rule changes.

Disclaimer: I'm writing this less than a week after the expansion came out. I've only had a chance to play a few games, and I'm not totally well-versed or experienced with the new mechanics and rules. I may get some things wrong. If so, feel free to let me know in the comments!

...

Cities: Skylines has always been a game that takes some different approaches to city builder gameplay. The base game explored how a city's geography can influence the development of the city, and also put a particular emphasis on designing efficient transit infrastructure by allowing the player incredible freedom to construct your own roads, highways, and interchanges, rather than relying on prefab ramps and over/under passes. None of these concepts were new to city builders, but Skylines added nuance to them and made them much more active elements of gameplay.

Its newest expansion DLC, Natural Disasters, follows suit. This is a very difficult expansion to review because its content - by its very nature - is random and unpredictable. Natural disasters aren't new to city builders. Disasters were a popular component of the old SimCity games, as many players enjoyed building up their beautiful metropolises only to unleash earthquakes, tornadoes, meteor impacts, and even alien invasions and dinosaur attacks and watch it all burn. Now Skylines has support for this fan-favorite SimCity feature, but it takes this commonplace feature in some new and interesting directions.

Installing early warning and detection systems will give you advance notice when a disaster is imminent.

Most notably, Cities: Skylines' take on disasters puts emphasis on preparation for disasters, rather than on the chaos of the disaster itself and the clean-up in its aftermath. Like with its SimCity forebears, disasters are something that you can toggle on or off in the game's menu, and you can also adjust their frequency. When enabled, you'll encounter disasters of various flavors ranging from forest fires to lightning strikes, to tsunami and meteor impacts. You'll have to make sure that your city is protected by preventative measures, and that it's protected against these eventualities.

Early-warning systems like firewatch towers, weather radar, and space telescopes can warn you about forest fires, storms or tornadoes, or even incoming meteors (respectively), and can mean the difference between your citizens having enough time to evacuate, or half your population being buried under rubble. You'll need evacuation shelters for you citizens to escape to, and each shelter needs to built long enough in advance for it to be stocked with supplies of food, water, and other essentials (which must be pulled from your city's economy or imported). And lastly, you'll need radio towers to warn your citizens to get to their designated shelters.

Building emergency shelters, stocking them with supplies, and planning evacuation routes will protect your citizens.

You can also create planned evacuation routes similar to bus routes that will pick up residents and take them to a shelter. I had some trouble getting these routes to work properly though. The fact that the buses are dispatched when an evacuation is activated means that they often create a log jam on your roads as they all funnel out of the shelter. I also had issues with the buses apparently not picking up people who were at more distant stops on the route, since the areas along the route that were far from the shelter never managed to evacuate. Maybe there's some trick to getting these routes to work properly that I just haven't found yet. But this does highlight one problem with the expansion: its new systems are not very well documented or explained...