3/5 ★ – MPT's review of Still Wakes the Deep.

Still Wakes the Deep has one of the coolest concepts i’ve seen in a long time, and the game around it is good (but not great). a horror game set on an oil rig in the North Sea which strikes an obscure, powerful creature is an incredible basis for a game. the wholly original, isolated location, Scottish representation (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿) and Lovecraftian themes all sit super well with me and are absolutely Still Wakes the Deep’s best aspects. the subtle story about love starts interesting, then turns sad and finally tragic as the central character Caz and his wife’s relationship is strong but tested by a big mistake he makes. Ultimately bittersweet, it undoubtedly tugs your heartstrings a bit by the time the credits roll. this has so much to do with the incredible voice acting. holy shit give this game Oscars. as mentioned, another strong point is the Lovecraftian themes which add heavily to the horror. the unsettling sound and creature designs make for some genuinely effective scares and gameplay sequences of hiding and chasing. these turn out to be the best parts of the game, and when this is partnered with the stunning visuals, the game can be exhilarating to play and look at at times. a certain chase in particular takes full advantage of the sound, monsters, setting and visuals to make one hell of a sequence. but issues arise from the majority of general gameplay not being very interesting. the story and character moments, horror sequences and stunning visuals are padded out by the most mundane parkour and traversal system. at least half the game is Assassin’s Creed if you were a middle aged electrician instead of a highly trained assassin. it makes a lot of the game drag, and despite trying to keep things interesting with peppered QTEs, there’s a jank to the movement and controls (looking at you, not being able to crouch/ stand back up while holding an object) that keep things mundane. and while the story and especially the overall concept are great when isolated, they don’t merge in any meaningful way. it feels like 2 separate games: a story touching story about unresolved love on one hand, and a Scottish Lovecraftian horror game on the other, and it just keeps jarringly switching between them. i liked the narrative and absolutely adore incomprehensible and unexplained Lovecraftian creatures, but when the two don’t merge together in a meaningful way it often just felt strange. despite these issues, it’s still a good game and well worth playing. in isolation, the super original concept and the touching narrative with god-tier voice acting are great, and the game is incredible when it takes full control of its creepy horror and insane visual spectacle, but the disconnect between the concept and narrative and the mostly slow, purposefully dragged out gameplay sometimes killed it for me personally.