Game review: Still Wakes the Deep (Xbox Series X)
As a fan of British developer The Chinese Room since Dear Esther, I was intrigued by how the studio would handle the rather cliched "horror on an oil rig" premise of Still Wakes the Deep.
Horror stories set in remote outposts are hardly unique. The Thing (From Another World), Alien, and the Alien rip-off TV movie The Intruder Within, all use this variation of the haunted house story. Most recently, Amazon's The Rig, a British TV show about a Scottish oil rig under attack by a supernatural force, eerily parallels the plot of Still Wakes the Deep to the point that you have to wonder if someone was taking notes.
Set in the mid-seventies, Still Wakes the Deep has players take on the role of Caz, Cameron McLeary, an electrician on his first offshore job. With trouble back home Caz's mate Rob, the rig's chef, got him a job on the Beira D oil platform off the coast of Scotland in the unforgiving waters of the North Sea.
The game doesn't shy away from the stereotypical. The Beira D is falling apart and run by an arsehole, Rennick. The rig's union rep "Trots" suggests industrial action, citing the rig's safety issues and the rapid expansion of North Sea drilling as a good reason for a strike.
With Caz's issues back home coming to Rennick's attention, Caz is sacked on the spot. Of course, just as he is about to board the chopper back to the mainland it all starts to go off, likely something to do with the issues that the drill was having earlier in the day.
At no point during the unfolding catastrophe does the plot go for the cheap and easy link between drilling for oil and environmentalism. That's not what the story is about. Like The Chinese Room's Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Still Wakes the Deep is a melancholy tale of loss.
The game isn't quite the walking simulator that the developer's (still excellent) Dear Esther or Everybody's Gone to the Rapture are, but it's close. To avoid players getting lost, the game uses the traditional yellow object mechanic to guide them through the sometimes-maze-like innards of the Beira D North Sea oil rig.
The game relies heavily on its narrative but adds in some tense jumping and climbing elements. Coming across lockers with the prompt "HIDE", along with otherwise useless objects that you can pick up, drop or throw, foreshadowed the game's later cat-and-mouse mechanic. Whilst avoiding and hiding from the terrors unleashed on the rig makes for some frantic gameplay, it's not in the same class as Alien: Isolation or the Outlast games. To be honest, it feels a bit underdeveloped; like it was supposed to be a bigger part of the game.
Even with help, a few times, I found myself confused as to where I was supposed to go. Veering off the path that the developer had laid out caused repeatable glitches and a tendency to get stuck in the scenery. The controls, as well, were not always as responsive as they needed to be in frantic underwater situations. Sometimes, the game inexplicably bends the rules, subverting your control for narrative reasons.
The game looks fantastic, both the environments and characters. The Beira D has been meticulously modelled. I've never been on an oil rig, so I can't comment on its authenticity, but it certainly looks correct. The game allows players to experience living on the North Sea, a terrifying thought in itself, by mixing with the crew before things start going wrong.
During the game, you get to visit most of the rig from the rain-drenched deck and spartan accommodation blocks to the cavernous, submersed pontoons of the huge structure. The rig would seem to be of the semi-submersible type, with the player called upon to adjust tension cables and ballast tanks to stabilise the platform.
With the aid of a few notable crew members that would realistically be in the hundreds, the player's main task is to escape the rig so Caz can reunite with his wife and two daughters. Caz's backstory is told via flashbacks triggered by injuries during the game. Of course, it's not as simple as a journey from A to B as the rig floods and Caz fights through the chaos under the guidance of other survivors.
The game can be completed in an afternoon. Whilst an excellently put-together experience, it's not one that I could see myself repeating any time. Maybe, like I have with The Chinese Room's Dear Esther and Everyone's Gone to the Rapture, I'll revisit it in a few years. The lack of immediate replay value makes the game perfect as an Xbox Game Pass game. Subscribers to Microsoft's game service can install the game, play it and uninstall it having more than got their money's worth.
Still Wakes the Deep is an absolutely essential play if you have an Xbox Game Pass subscription and are interested in playing something a bit different. It's not a full-priced game, so fans of The Chinese Room's previous efforts, or horror games in general may be able to overlook the lack of replay value for what is otherwise a great game.
Verdict: 8/10
