”Get to fuck, and when you come back, fuck off again”

Finally playing a game that isn’t voice-acted by Americans feels like surfacing from water for air.
Enjoyed this so much I played it in one sitting, probably because my favourite genre is “Guy In a Crumbling Facility”, to an extent where I’m certain they copied the homework of not only Infra but the HBO Chernobyl TV show in the game’s opening hours. Easy to bemoan the incredibly 2010’s cat-and-mouse horror gameplay during the moments you’re skirting around an enemy - as well as the fact that the entire game is hyper linear with a constant throughline of the game design yellow paint carrot-on-stick. There were certainly points where I went ah fuck this again when met with another Uncharted climbing sequence, but I felt that the entire game was paced very consistently, and the dialogue was pitch-perfect I love Roy and Caz.

Still Wakes the Deep really is only a short hop away from The Chinese Room’s prior A Machine For Pigs in schema, it feels to me that they were able to put what they learned from that project to task and lean into their strengths to make something that comes across as more whole, even if it took them surrendering A:AMFP’s fun thematics for something closer to a BBC One Original Drama.

Small notes:
-A shame that they couldn’t get Jessica Curry back on the soundtrack, which only ended up kind of middling here if I’m honest!!!!
-The rig was incredibly well-realised, I loved that you could see it bend and warp and shake in the wind and against the waves
-When the Horrific Otherworldly Entity is kind of beautiful to look at I really like dat.
-Maybe it’s just because I got motion sickness a few times, but the game feels like it could have been a VR game? The way the character’s arms respond to the environment was so Boneworks
-Enjoyed seeing real 70’s health and safety posters dotted around, they go so dumb hard
-It's not funny but I find it very funny that oil rigs have a "Mud Handling" facility

A compelling horror yarn with a gorgeous rendition of a Scottish oil rig. It’s a shame that despite its sprawling setting, you may as well be walking through a long, twisting corridor: you’re barely given room to explore, and never once have to question where you’re running to as you’re being chased. It destroys most of the tension, though it can be fucking creepy when it’s firing on all cylinders!

If you dig first-person horror games and have Game Pass, playing it is a no-brainer: it’s a memorable, five-hour romp. We only wish it lived up to its unique, dreary setting.

Still Wakes the Deep is another great work from developer Chinese Room. I loved Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and, while this isn't quite up there with it, it is still a very solid game and one of the best story driven games of 2024.

If you like Lovecraft and The Thing, make sure to play this as it takes a lot from both. Of course don't expect any complex gameplay systems, this is a "walking sim" at heart, but exploring the beautifully rendered enviroments of the Beira oil rig and its terrifying otherwordly elements is plenty fun even if sometimes way too linear for my taste.

Overall Chinese Room only needs to prove themselves with a gameplay dense game, because writing, sound, visuals and voice acting are absolutely strenghts for the studio. In this sense, Vampire The Masquerade 2 will be a crucial test for them.

SCOTLAND FOREVER!!! Nah, but seriously though, played it through Xbox game pass and thought it was a neat horror game (We don't get a lot of horror games that take place on an oil rig.). Some gripes:
- Really short horror game, beat it in less than 2 hours. Didn't ignore looking for notes, picking up the phones or talking to the crew.
- Gonna have to agree with another reviewer here, wish they added a bit more context on what this eldritch monstrosity was. Unless there was a piece of lore that I missed that mentioned that digging at this oil site had some bad juju and the company just dug anyways despite the warnings. Seriously anything that would of gave this a bit more context to imagine what type of monster this is (Dormant within the earth or it came from space.) would of bumped my grade a bit higher.
-Didn't really care that much about the side cast.
Despite that, I hope they can pull off an interesting experience for Vampire the Masquerade 2 whenever that comes out.

Still Wakes the Deep is a game of two halves. One is rote, with slow climbing and stealth sequences, dull monster encounters and "puzzles". The other half though is breathtaking – stellar voice performances and direction, juiced-up fidelity and set pieces, and an incredible sense of place aboard the oil rig. Despite my frustrations or boredom with that first half, the strength of the game's presentation and environmental design do a LOT of the OSHA-approved heavy lifting on this one.

I really wish the horror elements were explored just a bit more, as the monstrous element is kept fairly foregrounded through the story but it's not particularly frightening or scary beyond the initial "reveal". It's a bit like they thumbed through the rolodex of Horror Themes, stopped on "body horror", and decided to explore no further. There's distended flesh and viscera a-plenty here, but towards the end, it becomes a bit of a homogenous slurry and loses a lot of its staying power. Likewise, the encounters with the creatures themselves are repetitive from-the-jump, consisting of little more than throwing something to distract a monster and hiding in a vent, repeated ad nauseum.

So it should once again speak to the strength of the incredible voice performances, script, and visuals that I still came away really enjoying this. The story is well-crafted and presented wonderfully, with the protagonist in particular easily being the best performance I've heard this year. This is my first experience with The Chinese Room's ouvre, so it may not come as a surprise for others, but this feels far more of a game for fans of narrative and walking sims than for those fans of strictly horror games.

Spent a lot of time going back and forth on 3-stars or 4 for this one, but the strength of its ending sealed the deal for me (though I admit, games like this make me reconsider my no-half-stars scale).

Estava eu tranquilamente passando pelo catálogo do Gamepass quando vi esse jogo que lançaria dali algumas semanas. Passado esse tempo, entrei no backloggd e vi uma Review da @Rebeccaecaeca destruindo o jogo e pensei, ei! não deve ser tão ruim assim!

É. É bem ruim. Bem bem ruim. É triste que você percebe haver muitas pessoas talentosas por trás do jogo, os gráficos são lindos, o design de muita coisa é bem satisfatório mas é SÓ isso. História, ausente. Personagens, inexpressivos. Até a dublagem do jogo em inglês e a legenda em Pt-Br ficaram deixando a desejar.

O level design desse jogo parece uma piada, eu como amante de um bom level / game design me senti OFENDIDO com o funcionamento do jogo.

Olha, você caiu! Agora, ande em linha reta por mais 20 minutos, lembre-se que em TODA oportunidade de cruzar algum tipo de passagem, você VAI TER que apertar algo pra se segurar ou pular, pois não sabemos como preencher o espaço do ponto A ao ponto B.

Tinta amarela por todo lugar, é sério, você tá andando reto e tem uma alavanca na sua frente (que em toda vez que aparece você precisa clicar, segurar, e então apertar alguma tecla, esperando que a animação seja feita), essa alavanca é amarela. Aquela outra coisa que você precisa mexer ali também é amarela. A borda em que você se segura é amarela. As janelas são amarelas pra mostrar que você pode mexer naquilo, as portas são amarelas, os dutos de ar são amarelos, eu tô me sentindo a porra do HeyTails aqui.

Fora que eu fiquei mais da metade do jogo pensando, ok, um 6/10, 5/10 pra esse jogo tá bom. Daí chegou o final do jogo e puta merda, existe uma perseguição que ocorre a 2 metros por segundo, existem monstros que te perseguem de longe pra ter certeza que você vai alcançar a porta / corredor a tempo de acontecer alguma animação e você estar seguro novamente.

Pensei que seria um suspiro ao gênero, infelizmente deveria ter permanecido no fundo do mar.

EDIT: Enquanto eu jogava, minha internet caiu e eu segui o jogo dessa forma, agora eu fui ver a lista de conquistas e percebi que não peguei conquistas padrões da história, tipo zerar o jogo ou passar da metade dele. Obrigado, Gamepass!

An excellently crafted horror experience. The oil rig setting is fully taken advantage of to create tension, full of navigating tight and dangerous spaces, dizzying heights, mechanical or electrical whatsits, and more. The visual design of the space is very effective at making it feel like a real lived-in workplace... for the most part.

There is perhaps an overreliance on game-y level design elements that break the immersion a bit. It goes beyond the usual "yellow paint = important" flair, with one room in particular you walk into full of hidey-holes to avoid monster detection before there's any monster there, making it obvious what's going to happen in a couple of minutes.

The animation work of the characters you encounter are great, but for the monsters it's absolutely superb, with physics-enabled procedural tendrils that make their movements organic yet unnatural.

The audio design is atmospheric and immersive, and of course in true fashion for The Chinese Room, the writing, voice acting, and music are pitch perfect and fittingly emotional.

Sí te gusta la literatura de H.P Lovecraft, deberías de jugar Still Wakes the Deep. Por supuesto, no esperes mecánicas jugables complejas, es un walking simulator de manual. Sin embargo, explorar la plataforma petrolífera de Beira con su sonido, sus efectos visuales, el doblaje de los personajes, la historia y sus elementos desconocidos que parecen sacados de otro mundo te harán agobiarte y sorprendente a partes iguales.

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‎| ‎Historia:‎★★★★✩ | Jugabilidad:★★✩✩✩ | Gráficos:★★★★✩ | Sonido:★★★★★ | RECOMENDADO
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Still Wakes the Deep is a game I wish I loved a lot more than I did. I'm a huge fan of both SOMA and the film Underwater, so I'm a big fan of otherworldly horrors from the bottom of the ocean. However, the way Still Wakes the Deep is structured feels like the game is so heavily at odds with itself.

The gameplay is perhaps the worst offender here, being almost entirely on rails with one set path you need to follow. This is fine since more than enough games are linear, but it's so on rails that the game often feels like it's holding your hand. You get constant button hint messages (with Hints disabled), and the level design makes you feel like you're on a train more than an actual world. Puzzles and stealth are also mind-numbingly basic, scared to challenge the player at all and even including some mechanics that may as well be wasted.

Meanwhile the story, a point many people seem to be giving praise, didn't work for me. Part of that came down to not relating heavily to the struggles of marriage, but there's a lot more to it than that. The entire experience feels very haphazardly paced, with flashbacks and dialogue sections randomly dropped in between spending 80% of the game fixing parts of the oil rig. So many things also feel unresolved. I can't go into it too much as to avoid spoilers, but questions such as the origins or nature of the enemy you're dealing with are left unexplained.

It's a real shame because I'll admit that the story started to captivate me later on, though it wasn't until about 20 minutes before the credits rolled. The game's ending is pretty solid with a nice portion of emotional moments, but these are too little too late.

Even visuals were a bit of a mixed bag. Some locations in the game's latter half were stunningly beautiful, showing the terrifying beauty of this mysterious beast you're dealing with. However, many of the environments are in service to the level design, making the world a little less believable than I'd like. I don't expect an oil rig to be clean and tidy, but I don't imagine it looks like an arbitrary maze.

I genuinely believe Still Wakes the Deep would've been a much better game if they opened up the levels and let go of your hand once in a while. The player is not a lost child needing to follow its mom, they're a person wanting to experience a game. If you don't let them actually experience it and feel engaged with the world, it's more like a movie. If you want to make an interactive movie that's fine, but going halfway with basic stealth and puzzle mechanics feels like trying a little then giving up partway through.

If you have a deep connection with interpersonal conflicts found within marriage then you might get more out of this than I did, but Still Wakes the Deep is too often lost within its own identity, and feels uneven in its execution. I'm notably less optimistic about VTM: Bloodlines 2 after playing this, but I welcome The Chinese Room to prove my doubts wrong.

I found this game to be deeply affecting. It's worth noting up front that, mechanically, it's very simple. In fact, I expect that many people will find it dull! It's basically just a walking simulator with some simple platforming and equally simple stealth sequences. However, if that's what you WANT (like I did), you might find it well suited for exploring this game's gorgeous environments and unfolding its beautiful, tragic story.

The biggest part of the story revolves, naturally, around the lovecraftian horrors that have taken over the oil rig. It's a survival story in which you and your crewmates try to survive -- or perish and become another danger to be faced. This ties well with the personal conflict of the story, one that I keep spoiling as I try to review. Whoops! Suffice to say: I found it affecting and well executed.