An oil rig off the coast of Scotland is not an obvious setting for a first-person survival horror, but after playing Still Wakes the Deep I am certain it is one of the scariest. The game’s environment is so immersive that just standing at the edge of a rain-swept deck and staring at the North Sea thrashing below left me with a feeling of isolation and unease.
It is Christmas 1975 and we play as Caz, an onboard electrician who faces the double whammy of being fired and threatened with divorce on the same day. Those problems quickly become trivial when an enormous otherworldly entity invades the rig and leaves the crew battling for survival.
The Brighton-based developer The Chinese Room specialises in atmosphere and storytelling, so it will come as no surprise that both elements are this game’s best features. It draws inspiration from horror and science-fiction heavyweights including HP Lovecraft and John Wyndham to create a sense of impending doom. Plus there is a dose of grotesque body horror ripped from John Carpenter’s The Thing for good measure.
It is not all misery, though, as a cast of voice actors give superb performances, bringing plenty of humour — mostly through foul-mouthed insults — and depth to the game’s relatable characters.
But unimaginative gameplay frequently undermines all this. Caz is tasked with locating other survivors and fixing various parts of the crumbling oil rig to boost everyone’s chances of escaping, but the objectives are overly simplistic. They usually involve just strolling from one corridor to another, jumping across the odd platform and finding a switch that needs flicking on. There is not much room to explore away from the prescribed path either, meaning that large portions of the game feel simply like a guided tour, albeit one with monsters and a clear aversion for health and safety rules.
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Facing enemies in a game should never be underwhelming, but most encounters here are mundane. Each confrontation with a foe takes place in a specific area on the rig where we must use hiding places, such as in a locker or behind a piece of fallen debris, to sneak past unnoticed. It’s all very repetitive and uninspiring. But despite this less than riveting gameplay, Still Wakes the Deep does enough with a compelling narrative across its punchy six-hour runtime to make amends.
★★★✰✰
Available from June 18 on Xbox Series X/S via Game Pass, PS5 and PC
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