Still Wakes The Deep: Siren's Rest Review

It seems fitting that Siren’s Rest, the unexpected DLC for the oil rig horror Still Wakes The Deep, is set in 1986. That was the year Aliens was released —a film about a group returning to a scene of unspeakable horror. So it is here: eleven years after the Beira D sank into the depths of the North Sea, a trio of divers — Mhairi, Rob, and their remote colleague Hans — return to uncover what happened and bring closure to the families who lost loved ones in the disaster.

You play as Mhairi, whose link to the doomed rig only becomes clear near the end of the two-to-three-hour journey — though a few scattered clues may give you an inkling earlier on.

It’s worth stating upfront: around 85% of the gameplay takes place underwater. Let’s be honest: few gamers see a primarily underwater game and think, “Oh, this’ll be fun.” Diving and swimming are often tossed in for variety, and rarely executed well. When they form the core of an experience, it’s a gamble that the mechanics will click with players. Subnautica and Abzu managed it well. Siren’s Rest… just about gets away with it. 

The main complaint about the base game — including mine — was its strict linearity and reluctance to allow exploration. Siren’s Rest lets you off the leash far more, as Mhairi is able to explore the wreckage within the confines of the disaster zone.Soft barriers like pressure limits and colleague warnings keep you from veering too far off course, but there’s still a lot more freedom to search for the bodies and mementos of the Beira’s crew. 

However, much of the original’s charm is lost here. The rig was a marvel to explore, with distinguishable areas and interesting features. The submerged version is a carousel of murky corridors with the same rusted doors, broken beams, and caved-in walls. The blue-grey repetition becomes tedious rather than oppressive, and your task — photographing remains and collecting objects — feels throwaway in comparison to the urgency of trying to keep the Beira afloat, or simply surviving. A good two-thirds of the game involves blowtorching rusted entrances, finding the next yellow marker (yes, yellow paint is alive and well, even underwater), and repeating. And since you didn’t get to know most of the original crew anyway, there’s a disconnect between your mission and any emotional investment in it.

That’s not to say The Chinese Room has forgotten how to ramp up the tension. There are several moments of genuine anxiety as you steer Mhairi through tight tunnels while being pursued, or scrambling for an exit as collapsing debris rains down. Thankfully, the oxygen gauge she often looks at is just a prop — there’s no need to interrupt gameplay to replenish air. 

But there is also no horror. The body-mutating, Thing-like entities from Still Wakes the Deep barely feature — and when they do, they’re as gloomy as the environment, and as easily distractible as ever. The programming also feels looser: a few easily passable doorways became awkward when broken-down doors jammed in place.

Where the base game offered a decent character study of a flawed man under pressure, Siren’s Rest never quite finds the same narrative weight. Unlike the depths you explore, the story remains stubbornly surface-level, the relationship between the characters remains unexplored, and any sort of explanation for the supernatural elements feels frustratingly out of reach. The penultimate scene is genuinely affecting, but it’s quickly capsized by a final moment likely to divide players as much as the experience overall.