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Still Wakes the Deep | Review Thread

tommib

Member
Played for a bit this morning, holy hell did they nail the atmosphere! Some thoughts:

- Amusing to see the subtitles provide translations for the Scottish slang being thrown about.
- Some of the best sound design I've heard. Using headphones is an experience, let me tell ya. Creepy af.
- Graphics are amazing. I'm playing fully cranked at 119 fps and it's jaw-dropping at times.
- Pursuant to above, the only graphical issue I had was the motion blur, turned it off. Well, that and anything that's a rope or cable hanging down or swinging seems to have less animation frames than anything else.
- The plot is pretty great so far, though I'm less than 2 hours in. Gets creepy very quickly.

I guess that's it for now. Will report back when I finish it up.
Fuck. Can’t wait for my office hours to end!
 

tommib

Member
Played for like two hours. Quick impressions:

Game has no right to look this good.
Sound design will win awards all over.
Has one of my favourite environmental settings ever.
It’s starting to get actually scary.

Note: I got a trophy for looking at guy’s ass in the showers for too long.
 

Blindy

Member
Played for like two hours. Quick impressions:

Game has no right to look this good.
Sound design will win awards all over.
Has one of my favourite environmental settings ever.
It’s starting to get actually scary.

Note: I got a trophy for looking at guy’s ass in the showers for too long.
Wow and I thought Hellblade 2 practically had that wrapped up too, can't wait to jump into this.
 
As a Chinese Room game enjoyer I'm looking forward to this one. I'm waiting a few months though, saving it for spooky season.
 
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Bartski

Gold Member
Credits! Very nice I really love to see those one-sitting type games coming at this quality.

Story is very character-centric and doesn't explain much about "the incident" which could be a plus if you're sensitive to exposition dumps.

Threat design is actually pretty cool and clearly inspired by The Thing, does the job despite suffering from some wonky collision and being just a bit too easy to outsmart. Makes up for that with killer audio work, the noises it can make during chases like holy f.
Talking about audio, worth mentioning the whole game is in Scottish which tends to be a bit too much for me but the subtitles come in plain English to help lol.

There are no collectibles so the game comes with some wild trophies like dying in every possible way so good luck with that.

Only gripe is second half seems somewhat underpolished with some severe audio glitching happening on XsX and other minor bugs shitting up two otherwise great key moments, but I'm sure this will get patched.

Strictly for enjoyers of walking sims and hide and seek horror - not the next SOMA but an easy recommend if you're one of them.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
Watching Lirik play this right now and it is awesome but also has some of the most egregious "yellow paint leads the way" I have every seem. Literally every ridge, every obstacle you have to vault over is yellow.
 

Bartski

Gold Member
Watching Lirik play this right now and it is awesome but also has some of the most egregious "yellow paint leads the way" I have every seem. Literally every ridge, every obstacle you have to vault over is yellow.
That is very true, but due to the amount of volumetric effects and just shit that messes up your vision, game would be very hard to navigate at times without it. May not be that obvious at the beginning.
 

tommib

Member
Credits! Very nice I really love to see those one-sitting type games coming at this quality.

Story is very character-centric and doesn't explain much about "the incident" which could be a plus if you're sensitive to exposition dumps.

Threat design is actually pretty cool and clearly inspired by The Thing, does the job despite suffering from some wonky collision and being just a bit too easy to outsmart. Makes up for that with killer audio work, the noises it can make during chases like holy f.
Talking about audio, worth mentioning the whole game is in Scottish which tends to be a bit too much for me but the subtitles come in plain English to help lol.

There are no collectibles so the game comes with some wild trophies like dying in every possible way so good luck with that.

Only gripe is second half seems somewhat underpolished with some severe audio glitching happening on XsX and other minor bugs shitting up two otherwise great key moments, but I'm sure this will get patched.

Strictly for enjoyers of walking sims and hide and seek horror - not the next SOMA but an easy recommend if you're one of them.
Did you play Half-life 1 when it came out? I got a lot of Half-Life vibes here with how the set up to the “shit hits the fan” is build and some of the industrial design, even the underwater sequences that I found super claustrophobic.

I think I’m more impressed by this title than anyone else around here. It’s going to be at the top of my games of the generation. I woke up thinking about it. It oozes quality at every corner. Even the voice acting is top notch. It’s just a superb experience with the perfect length.
 
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Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
I played it yesterday night for about an hour and a half. Pretty good stuff so far (love that you can actually run and jump in the game) and will probably finish today after work.
 

Luipadre

Member
Yeah i played and finished the game when it came out and watched the whole thing again on liriks stream later. I might do another playthrough on PC. Really loved this. I also liked that hiding from the monsters wasnt annoying at all and i usually dont like these type of stuff where you cant fight back
 
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tommib

Member
Yeah i played and finished the game when it came out and watched the whole thing again on liriks stream later. I might do another playthrough on PC. Really loved this. I also liked that hiding from the monsters wasnt annoying at all and i usually dont like these type of stuff where you cant fight back
So true. I hate the chase and hiding in all the PT clones but here it works and it’s never frustrating and actually scary.

This might be the PT clone we always needed. Everyone tried so hard. Bloober and all the Steam PT parodies and these guys just nailed it.
 
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STARSBarry

Gold Member
It's a fun little adventure, I have to say they fucking nailed British banta, I know some Scots and this exactly how they talk. They all call me "big man" as I'm 6 foot 5 and aye occasionally a wee English cunt, but it's all in jest. While I was born in the 80's so missed the 70's the decor is spot on, iv worked in enough dilapidated left over network buildings that haven't been upgraded for 50 years to know what it looks like.

I would say it fails at being scary, but I wonder if that's more due to the fact your not alone for long as many of the rig workers keep in contact throughout the game.
 

tommib

Member
It's a fun little adventure, I have to say they fucking nailed British banta, I know some Scots and this exactly how they talk. They all call me "big man" as I'm 6 foot 5 and aye occasionally a wee English cunt, but it's all in jest. While I was born in the 80's so missed the 70's the decor is spot on, iv worked in enough dilapidated left over network buildings that haven't been upgraded for 50 years to know what it looks like.

I would say it fails at being scary, but I wonder if that's more due to the fact your not alone for long as many of the rig workers keep in contact throughout the game.
To me be the setting is the scary part. Just being in the high sea with an entity that’s fucking shit up. It really hits me.
 
This looks nice but...34 squid/eurotrons for yet another "cinematic ", overly linear 4-5 hours game...yeah, sorry but no.

Unfortunately, games like these have reached "only when it'll be on a sub" status and it shows - how many would have actually bought it if it wasn't on Gamepass ? Same thing with Hellblade 2.

Not every game needs to be a 30+ hours epic but, 5 hours of playtime is still too little to justify the asking price.

In before : " that's only as much as a McDonald's meal"/"a beef tagliata costs more than that"/"I spend more on candy" etc etc
 
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tommib

Member
This looks nice but...34 squid/eurotrons for yet another "cinematic ", overly linear 4-5 hours game...yeah, sorry but no.

Unfortunately, games like these have reached "only when it'll be on a sub" status and it shows - how many would have actually bought it if it wasn't on Gamepass ? Same thing with Hellblade 2.

Not every game needs to be a 30+ hours epic but, 5 hours of playtime is still too little to justify the asking price.

In before : " that's only as much as a McDonald's meal"/"a beef tagliata costs more than that"/"I spend more on candy" etc etc
Can’t disagree. The only thing I’ll add is that compared to other 30 bucks games this is really, really high-quality. Comparing to stuff like the horror titles from Bloober.
 
Can’t disagree. The only thing I’ll add is that compared to other 30 bucks games this is really, really high-quality. Comparing to stuff like the horror titles from Bloober.

Tommi my man, this absolutely looks high-quality, this is why it pains me that it's overly short.

SOMA, both esthetically and story-wise was one of the best games of its genre back in the day (that ending, FuuuuUUUUU), thing is, I played it through PS+, plus, it was also longer than 5 hours.

Now, I have absolutely no problem spending 60-70 Eurodollars for something like Alien Isolation since its campaign is very meaty (and replayable if you're into that kind of thing) but, personally, this kind of super-linear, "one and done", super-short with zero replay value type of game doesn't sit well with me at this pricing.
I get it, it's very polished and looks nice, it's not like they could have sold it for 15 bucks, shit, there are retro pixel art games that cost more and yet...
This is why I insist that these kind of games are "problematic" by nature when it comes to their pricing and why they're considered "subscription based games" by today's standards by some people (me included).
Heck, I've been even able to enjoy mediocre games by Bloober like Blair witch, Observer, The medium etc but, again, I'd only play them if A) they're on sale for 10-15 bucks and B) are available through a sub. service

Just my 2 cents obviously.
Cheers friend
 
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nemiroff

Gold Member
I'm looking forward to trying out this game later tonight. Seems like a good fit for my low-level gaming hiatus. Anyway, nice to see people "suddenly" enjoying walking simulators again :messenger_smirking:
 
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tommib

Member
Tommi my man, this absolutely looks high-quality, this is why it pains me that it's overly short.

SOMA, both esthetically and story-wise was one of the best games of its genre back in the day (that ending, FuuuuUUUUU), thing is, I played it through PS+, plus, it was also longer than 5 hours.

Now, I have absolutely no problem spending 60-70 Eurodollars for something like Alien Isolation since its campaign is very meaty (and replayable if you're into that kind of thing) but, personally, this kind of super-linear, "one and done", super-short with zero replay value type of game doesn't sit well with me at this pricing.
I get it, it's very polished and looks nice, it's not like they could have sold it for 15 bucks, shit, there are retro pixel art games that cost more and yet...
This is why I insist that these kind of games are "problematic" by nature when it comes to their pricing and why they're considered "subscription based games" by today's standards by some people (me included).
Heck, I've been even able to enjoy mediocre games by Bloober like Blair witch, Observer, The medium etc but, again, I'd only play them if A) they're on sale for 10-15 bucks and B) are available through a sub. service

Just my 2 cents obviously.
Cheers friend
I totally get you but I really don’t value games on their length. As I said many times, my favourite game ever is D from Kenji Eno which you finish in 2 hours. I payed full price when it came out. I would do it again today. The experience and the atmosphere is what I value. And the quality of course.

As most know, I hate open world bloat fests and normally only get into them when they’re dirt cheap to actually just confirm my bias.
 

Luipadre

Member
This game is another great example of why you should ignore review scores. Not that 74 is a bad score, but lots of people see that as "mid". Everyone i talked to or watched loved the game
 

tommib

Member
This game is another great example of why you should ignore review scores. Not that 74 is a bad score, but lots of people see that as "mid". Everyone i talked to or watched loved the game
The media scoring recently is almost coming off as a corrupt institution.
 
Holy crap this game features the best introduction to a game since Half-Life.
The script and voice acting is the best yet. Not perfect but one hell of an enjoyable game


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Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
Sounds fucking awesome.

I'm smack dab in the middle of SMT Vengeance, will play this immediately after.
Might be worth it to save this game for the first snow of the year, and have some whiskey handy. And grow a beard. :pie_thinking: You don't just name drop the Thing like that and not expect a response.
 

RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
So, not only is this like the defining horror experience of the generation it’s even moving by the end?

Very, very impressed.

Hey, Konami. Here’s your team for your Silent Hill revival.

And here’s my screenshot dump (because I think the game looks insanely good):














Christ that looks excellent, like many others have mentioned an oil rig is a criminally underused location for these sort of games/shows, tempted to splurge
 

Darsxx82

Member
I finished it yesterday, about 5 hours. Perfect balance of time for this type of games and genre. I loved it. One of the most credible performances in a horror game ny the actors.
Clearly reminiscence of The Thing changing the research station in the artic for a Oil plant.
Graphically in general it is very good.
 

Poppyseed

Member
Finished this today. Someone else mentioned the second half of the game is considerably less polished than the first, and I concur, even on PC.

The voice acting is absolutely top tier, and hilarious at times. The gameplay is more enjoyable for the first part of the game and then less enjoyable toward the end. It’s especially annoying walking through areas peacefully with places to hide and knowing that you’ll be hiding in a moment. It feels just awkward. Also a bit annoying the not always knowing where to jump to at times. Also, the swimming is plain bad and annoying. F that noise.

Overall, 7.7 out of 10. Looks great (some odd framerates on swinging cables aside, and fire which just looks bad in Unreal Engine for reasons beyond me - same as Hellblade II), played pretty well, tells a decent story and doesn’t outstay its welcome, thankfully.

That said, it’s not as good as Edith Finch (masterpiece) or Rapture. Worth a play through.

Oh, and fyi: no DLSS on the PC Gamepass version. (It’s in the Steam version and Epic version). I also didn’t see any raytracing options either on the PC Gamepass version though I don’t know if that’s PC-wide.
 
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