Still Wakes the Deep

Sometimes I pickup these "Walking Simulator" horror games just because I know theyre gonna be a short, cinematic experience with great graphics. Nothing too challenging, nothing thats gonna take a lot of time to finish, just something nice to look at and sit back with a controller and play through for an evening. I wouldn't play non-horror "Walking sim" games cause I feel like that really would be too boring, but having the Horror influence keeps it from being too uneventful I guess.

So I got Still Wakes the Deep, the premise looked interesting. Trapped on an Oil Rig, spooky things happen. Good enough for me.

As you would expect, the game takes place on an Oil Rig. But the first surprise is that everyone is Scottish. Constantly cursing and talking in that Scottish dialectic, it actually adds a lot to the game and helps it become more memorable than it maybe otherwise have not been. Funnily enough even the subtitles are not using the actual Scottish dialect, I guess because it would still be too hard to understand for Americans, so its instead re-translated to more American sounding phrases.

Not much happens at first, you go the cafeteria, talk to some people, then you go off to the decks walking past workers and have a meeting with your boss. Your boss isnt happy with you, and fires you on the spot.

But throughout all these first moments the most striking thing is the graphical presentation, its an Unreal 5 game, and I played it on maximum settings, it looks pretty great. Awesome weather effects, the details on everything especially the textures are amazing, its fun to just go up to objects and stare at them, so the graphics and presentation are a real highlight here.

But before long of course disaster strikes the Oil Rig because the boss gives demands to Drill even though workers were worried that its not safe. Here starts the actual game. Its a lot of very linear segments traversing through the Oil Rig thats falling apart, light platforming sections where you press simple quicktime buttons to grab onto ledges or walk across beams, no real intense platforming its more on-rails and very forgiving and simple, You go back and forth to segments of the rig, and the game isnt structured like some kind of open-ended world where you can go back from areas you just came from. No, its very, very linear. Its structured in level segments, so at the end of a level it will say Exit to so and so, and you cannot return once you leave. Very simple straight forward game design, its not like a Metroidvania with backtracking or anything.

There are some other odd inclusions like sometimes having to use a Heater to warm back up, not sure what the point of that was besides just being immersive I mean its fine but left me wondering if it would ever develop more, if the game would have like heat mechanics or anything but no its just a few times in the story you sit down by a heater and thats it.

There is the infamous yellow paint splattered all over the game showing you where to go, something modern games have been doing for awhile now, I'm not complaining about it here, I guess it makes sense in context of the Oil Rig and it does help to reduce pointless downtime, it just further shows how linear and simplistic the game is though, which is fine because I guess no ones playing this for an actual engaging gameplay experience but more like a sort of interactive movie kind of thing.

After some platforming segments, very simple puzzle segments like simply flipping a switch or turning some valves, you get to the first monster scene. In some lower area of the oil rig with tight squeezes is a guy called Gibbo, except I never even saw him , I just heard him and managed to get by him without ever seeing him. Then its back up to go through more linear sections of the rig going through rooms, finding more people to talk to and going around the rig doing various tasks like turning on a generator or trying to find a lifeboat. The game has a consistent pattern, you go through these trivial platforming segments, run through linear segments to the next area, do a very simple puzzle here and there like turning some valves or just interacting with machinery, then sometimes encounter a very short monster segment, usually just one room where you have to crouch past the monster a few times and repeat.

You have a sort of companion throughout the game, a cook called Roy who is a diabetic who locks himself up in the kitchen of the rig, you go to him a few times back and forth trying to figure out a way off the rig, first its to get to a lifeboat, but once you get there it just breaks off and gets ruined.

Another monster segment is in the laundry room, the monsters are usually these big balls of flesh with tons of tentacles flying all around, and they usually have a gigantic human face. Its not really scary or horrifying its moreso silly and kinda goofy. It almost reminds me of Skibidi toilet of all things... like its not awful or anything, its just a bit silly looking. The only real mechanic the game has besides walking and interacting with machinery is you can sometimes rarely pickup random objects and throw them to distract the monster, thats about all there is to the games mechanics. There is no inventory or collecting or keys to use, even. You can sprint, but it might be the slowest sprint I have ever seen in a game. The guy apparently is like a gold medal Olympic athelete, with how much he can jump across ledges and climb across beams, but he sprints like hes 400 pounds. Its fine, I get it, they dont want you to just sprint through everything and its a more slower paced game, it just looks funny thats all.

Some other point in the game has you outside on the rig with a giant monster grappling all around, this is another short segment where you just crawl around past him, going through containers weaving around him. If the monster sees you and touches you , you die in 1 hit, and reload at a very nearby checkpoint. Its not a hard game or anything, although I did die a few times, mostly due to just being lazy and not sneaking very good. But there isnt actually that many monster/gameplay segments, maybe only like, 5 total in the 4 and a half hours it takes to finish the game.

Then its more going through the oil rig, needing to climb down to turn the power back on, there was one sort of basement area with a monster where I got stuck in a crate and the monster got stuck in there with me, seemed like a bug, I kept throwing a hammer at him and every time it made him grow bigger and then he magically was outside the container, that was just funny.

The game has a few chase segments which are more cinematic than anything, usually just running down a straight hallway, with a few twists and turns as some big face monster chases behind you, you can click in the right stick to look behind you which is a nice feature, but theres no real skill involved.

Later on in the game theres some swimming segments where you have to jump down into some pit area and unlock the leg winches or something, the swimming is pretty disorienting with how slow you move. At one point I got an achievement for drowning? Like okay haha.

As you play through the game your character seems to start to lose his mind, the Oil Rig gets deformed with all sorts of mystical organic monster organ and guts which when you get close to it make this trippy screen effect like its radioactive, your character gets phone calls from his Wife but its all just in his head, it has a real psychological aspect to its narrative which does help keep it interesting and creepy. All sorts of cutscenes about you and your wife and child, getting a job at the oil rig, theres some sort of background criminal plot how you beat a man and have charges against you, your wife has ups and downs in your relationship and stuff. Kinda typical standard stuff, really, but helped drive the narrative along. Like I said previously, the Scottish vibe helped it stand out more.

Towards the end of the game the Oil Rig twists and turns into more crazed almost Lovecraft type stuff, the rig its self is like morphing into this mystical organic monster power or something, purple and pink veins and organs all over the place some more final segments swimming around the Rig as it fills with water, a chase sequence through the cabins by the Boss now morphed into a giant face monster which was again, kinda just funny,

Around the end of the game you go to find the cook companion , Roy, up in some shack on the roof, but turns out he dies from not getting Insulin since hes diabetic. The confusing part is shortly before you get to him, you can actually pickup an item called Roys Insulin - whats the point of this? Seemingly nothing. You cant use it, you cant inject him with it, it changes nothing. Just really confusing why that was even added to the game. Your character finds Roy and immediately just starts crying that hes dead, despite you having the Insulin? I didn't really get that.

Then the game pretty much draws to a close, everyone you met ends up dying one way or another, the main woman Mcleary is the final one and she realizes the only solution is to blow the whole oil rig up to prevent the monsters from spreading to the mainland, but she then dies and passes you the lighter to do it yourself. You agree with her thats it the right thing to do, walk a short distance into the main source of the outbreak,throw down the lighter and the game ends, you wakeup momentarily inside your house with your wife but then open the main door and jump back into the ocean - end credits.

Its a decent experience, its just very linear, theres not much to the gameplay, most of the game is spent slowly walking around the Oil rig with not much happening besides some kinda boring platforming segments with kinda clunky control's and quicktime event segments, the few times you encounter monsters its not really scary and it doesnt last that long, like maybe 2 minutes per  monster segment, The game is really held up by its premise being set on an Oil Rig, and by the Scottish cast and voiceacting, the actual story isn't that amazing either its more kinda just mundane family drama, Its just a great premise for a game but the execution here isn't incredible, it overall just makes for an okay, lukewarm experience, mostly because you can finish it in one sitting, and the graphics are nice to look at, and its not very stressful to get through or anything.

6/10