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Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
As I crawl along broken metal beams suspended from the base of a collapsing oil rig in the middle of the North Sea, and waves the size of skyscrapers explode beneath me, my knees slipping on the wet metal, my eyes fixed on the platform in front of me, I creep quickly but carefully. Don’t look down.
I look down. The cold sea is boiling just inches from my boat, sending up white spray, threatening to pull me under miles of suffocating darkness and pressure. Fuck.
in Awaken the AbyssFear comes in many forms. Feral creatures stalk the corridors on thin, overlong limbs that jut out from their bodies like bungee cords. Human-sized pustules and swathes of blood grow along the corridors, giving off a sickly cosmic glow. The ocean is an unrelenting threat, screaming with every step. And then there’s the Beira-D oil drilling rig itself: a huge, labyrinthine industrial platform supported on thin tensile legs in the middle of a raging sea, groaning and tilting, torn apart from within. Every one of these elements is deadly, and each presents its own unique terror.
Awaken the Abyss is a first-person horror game from The Chinese Room. Amnesia: A machine for pigs, Dear Esther and Everyone went to the raptureThe game is set in the winter of 1975 and the action is confined to Beira D, a huge metal maze where mystery, familiarity and death await at every corner. The maze is filled with a variety of characters from the British Isles, mostly from Scotland. The player takes on the role of Caz, an electrician in the maze. Caz’s best friend is Roy, a cook.
Awaken the Abyss It feels like a hit from the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, without the bloated feel of modern AAA titles – it’s just as restrained as the original. Dead SpaceThe core loop supports the story and vice versa, the mechanics evolve steadily without becoming repetitive or tedious, and the monsters are brutal but not overpowered. Awaken the AbyssThe horror is relentless, but its source is constantly changing: ferocious eldritch beasts, collapsing drilling rigs, the raging North Sea, etc. This variety infuses the game with tension right up to the breathtaking final scene.
The game is fully voiced and the crew are incredibly likeable – there’s an air of good-natured teasing to every interaction, and even in life-or-death situations the conversations are serious and genuinely funny. This clever sense of character development makes the carnage that follows the monsters boarding the Beira D all the more disturbing.
After an oil rig drills for a mysterious substance deep within the North Sea, a giant, eerie creature takes over the structure, destroying metal walkways and consuming the bodies of the crew. Cas is tasked with surviving the creature and escaping the rig to save Roy, who is rapidly debilitating due to lack of insulin.
Gameplay Awaken the Abyss is a classic first-person horror piece, done with grace and expertise. Action involves jumping over broken platforms, balancing on thin ledges, running down corridors, climbing ladders, swimming through claustrophobic holes, and hiding from monsters lurking in vents and lockers. There are no guns in Beira D, and Caz only has a screwdriver to destroy locks and unscrew metal panels. The focus is on pure survival rather than combat. Interactive materials tend to be highlighted in yellow, so it’s not a question of what to do or where to go, but how to get there without falling prey to the monsters, the sea, or the rig.
Each input is impeccably precise and responsive. Climbing a ladder, for example, requires holding RT and pressing the analog stick in the right direction, but if Caz slips, you suddenly need to hold LT as well, allowing a quick-time event to return him to his grip. In a moment of sudden panic, squeezing both triggers feels natural; when, in the aftermath of a sudden fright, you grip the gamepad as tightly as Caz is gripping the rung of the ladder, player and character feel perfectly synchronized and deeply satisfying. Awaken the Abyss A great example of intuitive game design.
It’s a great game. It just kept stopping a few times while I was playing. Awaken the Abyss It’s not enough to simply admire the crisp lines, intricate lighting, and photorealism of any given scene, but every frame is chock-full of thoughtful, well-rendered detail. Otherworldly structures littering the rig cause Caz’s vision to bubble like a molten film reel, and the screen is covered in multicolored circles every time he gets too close to a pustule. It’s a work of eerie beauty that, like the rest of the game, is disorienting.
Awaken the Abyss is a modern horror classic. It’s full of heart-pounding scares and laugh-out-loud lines, and it unfolds in settings rarely explored in interactive media. As you sneak, swim, run and climb your way through Bayleaf D. Awaken the Abyss It beautifully tells a heartwarming and powerful story about relationships and sacrifice: Cath and Roy share a special friendship, but they also have families back on land and their constant drive to return to them (hopefully alive) is what drives them.
Awaken the Abyss is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S and is included in Game Pass. It is developed by The Chinese Room and published by Secret Mode.