Still Wakes the Deep

This isn't a game. Hell, it isn't even particularly much of an interactive story. What it is, is a tedious exercise in moving a camera from point A to point B, and despite the thing being as linear as a ruler, every stretch of that path not already fenced off by literal railings has been splattered with an obnoxious amount of YELLOW that even on "Reduced" mode demands you see it. There is no option to turn it off. On occasion you're treated to a repugnantly unnecessary QTE. Press S to remove a ventilation cover after the game has already undone the two screws for you. Can you do anything other than press the button? No. Can you disengage with the process once it's begun? Also no. So what is the prompt actually for, other than the most unnecessary latency tax? Bypassing and occasionally being chased by [spoiler]sticky tendril monsters[/spoiler] does not constitute gameplay in any meaningful sense. Each of those areas has one route, one quirk of timing and one correct answer, and when you get it wrong you produce the same attempt again until it lands. Nothing is learned, because there was nothing there to learn. No spacing to fix, no approach to reconsider, no second way through. Pick the object up, throw it in the direction the game wants it thrown, run where the game wants you to run. The consequence of failure is contrived repetition. And the doors. Doors you cannot pass because the way is obstructed, and you look, and the obstruction is two barrels sitting a good thirty centimetres clear of the frame. Unlocked and unblocked doors you cannot walk through now for some contrived reason, but which you'll invariably walk through later, once the story has decided that everything you needed to do in this area is done. Randomly, the game introduces a kick door interaction, which I can only recall using at its introduction in my playtime, which is quite something, because not some ten minutes earlier you come to a closed door with [spoiler]one of the crewmates you're ostensibly here to save behind it, begging for help.[/spoiler] A door, which every instinct tells you to kick, though you can't do that yet, or even try the handle. Another door has a similar interaction after you reach it on the other side of a broken gantry, [spoiler]screams and pleading for help on the other side[/spoiler], and a wheel handle you can't at all interact with, for some reason. In both instances you are instead treated to the protagonist openly declaring his lament. You aren't even given [spoiler]the agency to open either door to be killed by whatever abomination is on the other side.[/spoiler] On top of this, the protagonist can swing himself across a chasm on the strength of his arms gripping bright yellow monkey bars, with only the North Sea somewhere deep below to break his fall. He is nimble enough to edge along ledges made of assorted fallen broken matter that turn out to be only ever just deep enough, every single time. But he cannot climb over or around any fenced obstruction, even if it is just taller than a door, or only some ten centimetres thick. His capabilities painfully belong to whatever the level requires of him in that moment. For being sold as a narrative experience, it perhaps should have been kept more so in that medium and made as a short film, because every interaction in this blatantly exists to make someone that's purchased it feel as though the story moving along is contingent on them, when playing the game really only functions as a glorified laborious fast forward button through filler scenes that only serve to bloat playtime. As a film it also wouldn't be two years past launch and still riddled with bugs. Once too often I've been met with a one way invisible wall when trying to return to the yellow bricked road, or literally being fired off the playable map area to fall forever. Which invariably means you must open the pause menu and restart from the last checkpoint, all because you dared to move through the environment in a pseudo exploratory fashion. And what horror exactly is there in this? When you promise otherworldly horror on the edge of all logic and reality, in which you have to save your crew. Then some utterly basic pearlescent body horror that involves a group of people you have the option to meet once, at the beginning of the game, isn't that. Particularly as most of them have more screen time as corpses or monsters. The one moment I thought we might be faced with some dilemma of choice, in which our actions might give agency to the supposed objective of saving someone our character knows beyond a passing work familiarity, was in [spoiler]Roy initially sharing with us that he needs his insulin.[/spoiler] But what does the game do? How does it deal with a character openly, directly asking for our help? It has the protagonist put it straight back on him, with what amounts to "you can get that yourself, right?" To which [spoiler]the clearly distressed and warning he is feeling hyperglycaemic Roy quips he's not that useless yet, so off you trot to fruitlessly try and stop that pesky helicopter from taking off quite yet[/spoiler]. You weren't offered the chance to help or refuse, no choice as to what you prioritise. The refusal was preordained so that the contrivance of a singularly linear plot could unfold. Speaking more to the narrative, the overstated and simultaneously underexplained backstory arrives whole in the opening minutes, [spoiler]a letter from a wife who'll leave you if you stay out here, police after you over an assault of a man for insulting said wife. Which is restated periodically through the runtime.[/spoiler] To put it plainly, asserting a thematic analogy is not the same as actually dramatising one. So nothing here evokes fear, and nothing evokes disgust, because dread needs something at stake and you were handed nobody of earned importance to lose. There's nothing psychological or existential about any of it either, because the game announces what it's about rather than putting you anywhere near the edge of all logic and reality. Which brings me to the main claim of the store page: "this three times BAFTA Games Award winning narrative horror experience." Look at what those three actually were. Performer in a Leading Role. Performer in a Supporting Role. Both recognising the performance of voice actors. The third, New Intellectual Property, ostensibly goes to the most original or innovative game that isn't part of an established series, which prompts the obvious question of what exactly is original about pseudo-eldritch horror on a 1975 oil rig. The setting? But the important aspect to note is that none of those three are for the writing, the design, or the horror. It wasn't up for Game Design at all. It was nominated for Narrative, and it lost. So the single craft category that the phrase "narrative horror experience" actually names is the one category it was nominated in and did not win. So, I suggest anyone who is considering this purchase reconsiders it. As I would have refunded this game already, were it not for the fact I purchased it over a month ago.