Still Wakes the Deep: A Unique Horror Experience
Going into Still Wakes the Deep, I was confident in my ability to withstand the horror cliches that I knew were about to come my way. But, instead of just dealing with your typical chase scenes and jumpscares, The Chinese Room decided to pull something out of its sleeve that I hadn’t experienced before—the most traumatic dialogue and voice acting I’ve ever heard in a horror game.
You play as Caz McLeary, an electrical engineer on the Beira D oil rig running from the law and some stupid decisions. Despite his past mistakes, Caz is a breath of fresh air for a few reasons: he’s likeable, funny, and quite pragmatic when making life-and-death decisions, which happens to be what I value in a protagonist. But the best part of playing as Caz is that he’s already been on the rig for a while, so you don’t have to worry about getting to know your co-workers—meaningful relationships have already been established. Still Wakes the Deep skips the usual slog of tutorial-like character introductions and just throws you into the meat of the story, and all of the interactions feel natural and worthwhile.
Amnesia: The Bunker, its psychological horror pushed me over the edge too much for me to even think about playing it again. Whereas Still Wakes the Deep strikes a good balance between horror and action, which meant I wasn’t constantly petrified. Venturing outside the rig gave me a break from the monster’s terrifying antics as I dealt with the adrenaline rush of jumping over broken walkways, reacting to quick time events, and clambering over rusty pillars, all while terrified of plummeting into the icy cold ocean below me.
My time split between inside and outside the rig was just right, so I never got bored or overwhelmed with either. This impressive achievement helped make Still Wakes the Deep feel very concise. I never found myself grumbling over pointless action or horror, which felt like it was added to pad out the run time.
Still Wakes the Deep also looks superb. I spent a lot of time taking pretty pictures around the rig, even when I was on the verge of death. The loading scenes between major locations never lasted too long (most of the time, I was just happy to have a break), and I only experienced one black screen towards the end. There’s also a lot of settings to customise, almost all of my advanced graphics were scaled to the highest option with no issue on my RTX 3070, and you can also remap keyboard bindings or adjust controller settings easily.
I also really appreciated the granular accessibility settings. There are tons of options for subtitles and interface appearance as well as three kinds of colour blind modes (deuteranope, protanope, and tritanope). For me, the motion sickness adjustments were a lifesaver. I always scale down the FOV and while the head bob and roll may seem very realistic, it was just too much for me to handle while also staring out on a rocky sea.
If you can bear with the emotional toll and terrifying moments, then Still Wakes the Deep is an experience that I couldn’t recommend more highly. Its unsettling monster and horrific setting are elevated by something that’s rare in horror games: meaningful relationships with other characters. (Sadly, your friendships don’t tend to last long.)
