(Eldritch In The Oil) Still Wakes The Deep
Defenseless survival horror games are kind of a dime in a dozen, still many out there despite it being niche. But few as engrossing, terrifying, and edge of the seat as this. If I may even add, it's a game that made me want to toughen it out. Especially with where it's taking place: which is an oil rig.
The atmosphere is thick, visual and audio design is phenomenal, so are the voice actors. It has quite a lot going for a short package, I mean, makes sense since it is coming from The Chinese Room. But the crazy part is, they're known for making walking simulators, the gameplay here isn't half-bad, and that's probably due to Sumo Digital's involvement as well.
Prologue just let me go by, part of the time I did kind of struggle with knowing the characters, I ask too much regarding the writing and storytelling. That was a mistake in my part because what follows afterward is nothing short of grueling, monstrous, and terrifying for them.
Caz has his day start off with a letter from his wife, which says she can't deal with being separated from her and the kids before putting him to an ultimatum. Eventually I get to the bottom of it, realizing he punched someone, and the law is after him. Which is why he took the job on the rig.
Thanks to his close pal Roy, both of them work in a rig close to the Scottish main land somewhere in the North Sea, everybody here speaks in Scottish accent and the subtitles has to give me the English interpretation while they also speak in Gaelic half the time. Caz gets along with everyone, except for his boss, who fires him after finding about his situation. Not wanting that noise in his rig.
Before he leaves with the helicopter, a drilling exercise went wrong and suddenly the entire rig start to experience huge tremors from below. Some people already died by falling into the ocean, including Caz himself, who survived after a crew got him out, barely surviving Hypothermia. But the worst was to come, he postponed his leave by checking out the damage, most of the crew in the cafeteria started dealing with their own problems. Things seemed pretty grim.
Raffs screaming and hounding inside a sink pod, the look of the rig's structure and everything around it helps the immersion that I'm running around a facility that is huge, but also seems like it'll fall apart easily. Which it did. Railings, bridges, I had to jump 4 meters off to grab ladders.
There's a mechanic involving holding the right mouse button for the ladder, and pressing the left for doors, objects to interact, and in case another tremor happens, pressing both right and left to hold on. Not as easy as it sounds, kind of on-rails for design, but the tension grew because the level design made things much more unsettling as I sight the mess this place has become.
Like, the U.E. engine is pushing my 7700 XT hard. So after switching to FSR3, I played this at Epic settings with FSR set to quality and frame generation enabled. I went from 35–50 FPS to 140FPS at most. That helps with the high refresh rate, and with little effect to visual quality.
I shouldn't forget the sound design, it amplifies the dredging atmosphere of being on the ocean, on top of a large structure where metal clanking, strong waves of ocean pushing around, and then there's the unsettling stuff, the eldritch things just shown latching on top of the driller, hearing them howling. It gets creepier when you see more of it inside crew deck.
Even more so when I get inside engineering, where one of the crew members goes full schizo, and for some reason, my screen has these porous smearing looking things. That changes direction when Gibbo moves elsewhere, while I'm moving through tight spaces and swimming through the water.
I was scared at first, because of a hint that says I should hide inside lockers. Wait, was this like Alien Isolation? It didn't get there yet, but this was build-up, especially after seeing a dead crew-member on the ladder, but not after I saw what Gibbo looked like in a short flash. On his torso side, like he's some blob of a flesh, but he was gone quick. I thought I was going to die.
In the short span of time, everything was established. The palatable tension, the need to be aware of the environment, and the storytelling that goes involving just simply doing easy puzzle solving, which doesn't really make it any interesting. There are shortcomings to the gameplay.
So my best guess was that this was a strong narrative game with hand-holding, but it does have sections at times when I need to figure out how to get through certain areas. Especially when the monsters are lurking about. Not everyone is Gibbo, no these guys are psychotic, and worse, they look exactly like The Thing with the tentacles hanging about.
More tight spaces, more climbing, platforming around, and then after crawling in the ceiling vents, like the unique ways of linear exploration while seeing the environmental storytelling before the scariest part of the gameplay comes. And that being, I have to hide and run around them. Make no mistake, this game goes 2 to 11 instantly if I'm not being careful. But even more annoying is Caz's boss, who has no problem with the ship's situation and things all will be under control.
I was beginning to feel like the hand holding was fading away, and I was left to figure out what to do. Objective indicator shows me where to go, which helps, if not, I can look at the map for each area. But nothing scared me more when I had to go around one of them before escaping with a close call.
Still Wakes The Deep adds rich storytelling, especially about Caz's family from flashbacks, and him trying to help his friends escape this horrible ordeal while he watches in absolute terror as everything around him falls apart. There's so much depth to it, the premise especially is so well-played out even. Exceptions being the super linear nature, QTEs, and the short length.
Moments like being told to go back to the engineering to fix the generator creates further agitation, I just got out of there. Another guy who called later said he got the lifeboats ready, but have to climb back up, I laughed, but I felt his pain the same time. Though, nothing as messed as this one.
Poor Caz, he just wanted to do his time, fix the leccy and go home afterward. Lass couldn't see greed being the cause of their downfall. Also, screw oil companies.
