Still Wakes the Deep review – The Thing, but on a Scottish oil rig in the 1970s

PC, PlayStation 5 (version played), Xbox; The Chinese Room/Secret Mode
This horror game creates great atmosphere with its acting and visual design, but is regularly brought to its knees by uninspiring gameplay

The premise here is a genre classic: one day, workers on the oil rig Beira D hit something with their drill they shouldn’t have, and soon, a nameless horror descends on the ship and picks off the crew one by one. When it happens, Glaswegian electrician Cameron “Caz” McCleary is already on his way off the rig, fired from the remote job he fled to in order to dodge the police after a serious scrap at a bar. It’s his work boots we step into as he desperately searches for an escape.

While the team that made Still Wakes the Deep is almost entirely different from the incarnation of developer The Chinese Room that made its previous hits Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, all share high visual fidelity, realistic sound work and affecting acting as their trademark. Still Wakes the Deep’s setting is probably the most realistic oil rig in any media to date, down to hundreds of little hissing valves and a labyrinth of perilously groaning metal staircases. Even without an encroaching horror from the deep, this isn’t a place to tell health and safety about, and the rig is without a doubt the game’s most outstanding character.

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