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

The premise here’s a style basic: someday, employees on the oil rig Beira D hit one thing with their drill that they shouldn’t have, and shortly, a anonymous horror descends on the ship and picks off the crew one after the other. When it occurs, Glaswegian electrician Cameron “Caz” McCleary is already on his method off the rig, fired from the distant job he fled to with a view to dodge the police after a severe scrap at a bar. It’s his work boots we step into as he desperately searches for an escape.

Whereas the crew that made Nonetheless Wakes the Deep is sort of fully totally different from the incarnation of developer The Chinese language Room that made its earlier hits Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture, all share excessive visible constancy, practical sound work and affecting performing as their trademark. Nonetheless Wakes the Deep’s setting might be probably the most practical oil rig in any media up to now, all the way down to a whole lot of little hissing valves and a labyrinth of perilously groaning steel staircases. Even with out an encroaching horror from the deep, this isn’t a spot to inform well being and security about, and the rig is no doubt the sport’s most excellent character.

That is additionally most likely probably the most Scottish recreation you’ll ever play, proper all the way down to a staggering quantity of swearing. Every little bit of dialogue is a improbable instance of how pure conversations ought to sound, each when Caz is speaking to his few remaining colleagues and when he’s considering of the occasions that led him to the Beira D. However since it is a quick recreation, of about six hours, there merely isn’t sufficient time for character work past perfunctory introductions. This makes it tough to really feel a lot for them, and the ham-fisted gadget of a number of characters in a row calling you on the telephone simply so you’ll be able to hearken to them die on the road doesn’t assist.

That is considered one of The Chinese language Room’s most interactive video games, and has you doing far more than simply strolling round and issues. However its gameplay design has one huge drawback: me, the figuring out participant. Each gameplay gadget in Nonetheless Wakes has been utilized in many video games earlier than: the primary time I noticed yellow paint splattered on to a ledge that I used to be presupposed to seize on to, I couldn’t assist however groan. After that, the yellow is all over the place. It’s the yellow tarpaulin exhibiting the place to climb, and the yellow rim on the bullseye I can bounce by. The Beira D turns from an intriguing labyrinth right into a easy parkour course.

When enemies make an look, Caz can’t battle them. As an alternative, he should sneak previous. Areas are affected by crouching areas and objects to throw as a distraction, typically in rooms that I cross a number of occasions earlier than I’ve to start out hiding in them. Ideally, this could be a supply of pressure, however simply because it does with its navigation, the sport tells me what’s coming (and going: at one level a rig employee actually yells throughout a big, echoing room that the monster is in truth leaving) so clearly that there’s not a lot left for me to do as a participant however comply with the trail.

I used to be dissatisfied to understand that the sunshine of my headlamp didn’t trouble the monsters, making sneaking round extremely straightforward. Or I’d fumble a bounce for purely camera-related causes and must hearken to McCleary swear as he falls to his demise time and again, feeling the stress dissolve. The ever-present need to assist the participant out contrasts with the necessity for a horror recreation to depart us at nighttime generally. At any time when the phantasm broke, I used to be left with a recreation I tolerated with a view to see what occurred to a personality I wasn’t notably connected to.

Nonetheless Wakes the Deep succeeds in creating an atmospheric portrait of an everyman with no particular abilities simply attempting to remain alive in probably the most inhospitable atmosphere possible – however there aren’t sufficient actual scares or participating moments to make it memorable past that.