Still Wakes the Deep: Siren's Rest

Publisher: Secret Mode

Developer: The Chinese Room

Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows

I don't always do reviews for DLC, but by my own rules, I have to do so if any aspect of the DLC is eligible for any of my GOTY lists (aside from the "Best DLC" award). Still Wakes the Deep: Siren's Rest, is one such DLC. 

Likewise, I don't always do reviews for things I have as little to say about as this. But it was either this or tack this review onto the end of a Sword of the Sea review, and I want that game to get its own spotlight. So, this will be pretty brief. 

Siren's Rest is an expansion to 2024's Still Wakes the Deep: a psychological horror game set on an oil rig in the middle of the Scottish North Sea. This DLC takes place something like a decade after the rig was sunk by the cosmic horror that drove the base game's plot forward. You are Mhairi, a diver tasked with retrieving mementos from the wreckage to deliver to the families the crew left behind. Throughout the DLC, you'll learn a bit more about who she is and what motivated her to take on this dive in the first place, and I have to say I was a big fan of where these little plot threads ultimately went. Some of the little bread crumbs made me think the story was going one extremely predictable way, but I found myself pleasantly surprised. Like the base game, it's incredibly well-written and acted, so that's another positive.

There is, however, one major negative on the story and characters front: the whole thing is entirely unnecessary. You may be tempted to skim past that statement and not think too much of it if you've played many DLCs, but I want to emphasize this: this DLC is wholly unneeded. It doesn't really change anything about the base story, and the world isn't much changed by how this expansion's plot pans out. I liked what I got an awful lot, but when the credits rolled, I couldn't help but reflect and wonder what it was all for. As for whether or not that affects your experience, your mileage will vary. It didn't turn me off of the experience too much, but it's still something to note.

Gameplay is kind of a different beast here than it was in the base game. Or rather, it focuses on a different aspect of the base game than one might expect. Still Wakes the Deep consisted of navigating perilous terrain and evading monsters, and most people would expect a DLC to hone in on that second thing...but Siren's Rest goes almost all in on the perilous terrain. After all, you're in an underwater wreck of an already claustrophobic oil rig. As a result, I thought this DLC was far scarier than the base game. It does an excellent job of emphasizing the fact that you're never more than a step away from being buried under rubble and trapped until you suffocate, and voice actress Lois Chimimba brings that panic home with her performance as Mhairi. What this means for gameplay, though, is that it's largely just walking and soft quicktime events. I'll say it again: when it comes to how much that impacts your experience, your mileage will vary. 

There is one monster evasion chapter in this DLC, but it suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. There isn't really anywhere besides one tube at the start of a section to hide, and the monster doesn't stay distracted by thrown flares for very long, so survival is a matter of finding the correct part of the arena to throw the flare in the first place, then praying. Oh, and all of this is underwater, so you have to do it with an already unwieldy control system. One of the major positive surprises in the base game was that the monster segments were actually well done, so it's a shame to see The Chinese Room backslide into territory closer to Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. 

Technically speaking, Siren's Rest looks and runs as smoothly as the base game, but it does come with a couple small caveats. Firstly, there was a period of time where the right thumb stick stopped responding after opening up a door. This caused me to have to reload a save, which brought the other caveat to my attention: the checkpointing is all kinds of odd. Checkpoints always seem to place you right behind a door you need to start breaking open or right before an unskippable mini-cutscene. It isn't the end of the world, but in a bite-sized package like this, it matters.

Normally DLCs are easy items to sell: "if you liked the base game, you'll like this." I'd say the same about Siren's Rest. It has the writing, the voice acting, the characters, and the horror that made Still Wakes the Deep as great as it was. But it comes with some technical hangups and an undeniable sense of "what was the point of that?" With that in mind, it may seem beyond odd that I ultimately recommend Siren's Rest...but I went into this wanting an underwater horror thrill with good characters, and that's exactly what I got. With this being a DLC, I'll be using my "smaller scale" scoring system wherein I double the points off for any negative.

Let us review:

Ultimately pointless - 1.0

Lame monster segment - 1.0

Technical issues - 1.0

The final score for Still Wakes the Deep: Siren's Rest is...

7.0/10 - Good

That'll do, The Chinese Room, that'll do