Under The Waves

[code]No important spoilers in this review! [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45534557/]@MatureContent[/url][/code] ─────────────────────────── It is very rare that I do not finish a game and still decide to review it, but here it is. In this game, you play a professional diver named Stan, who seeks to escape his troubled life on the surface by working at the bottom of the North Sea. You work for a company known as UniTrench, who does deep ocean drilling and since Stan is the only diver in that area, that means you get to see what happens to an isolated man with trauma, spending too much time in his own head. Like I said, I could not drag myself through this game long enough to finish it. They tried to make a Firewatch like experience, but forgot the most important parts, an interesting story and a world worth exploring. Just like Henry in Firewatch, Stan is dealing with trauma and depression, and it is eating him up, the big difference though is that we in Firewatch spend all our time in a beautiful forest with a walkie-talkie that we use a lot to communicate with our boss Delilah. She is very human with flaws and issues that might not be related to what Henry strugg…

A truly beautiful game. It's an emotional, heart wrenching at times, narrative experience. The writing and voice acting are fantastic, with great characters. It's extremely atmosphereic with one of the best soundtracks in a video game. Do not go into this expecting Subnautica. It's a slow, narrative driven game with crafting and resource gathering in the back seat and no combat. But it's worth playing to experience Stan's story and exploring what this little slice of the North Sea has to offer. Pick it up for a few bucks, sit back, relax, and enjoy a great game that you can 100% fully complete in around 10 hours.

Really lovely game. i was not sure about it given the mixed reviews, but I'm glad I did. Lovely exploration, great world building, and surprisingly emotional.

Cozy submarine exploration game. I honestly didn't care much for the story that much. I had more enjoyment just exploring the ocean. I will say I wish the exploration could've been a little bit more enjoyable. Maybe there could've been more things to find in the ocean. Also the controls could use some improvement. I used a controller as they suggested, and trying to use the strafe setup while boosting is cumbersome because you have to hold the controller in a sort of claw grip in order to effectively be able to boost, aim with the right analog, and be able to hit the acceleration and scan at the same time. Still, a great game and doesn't take too long.

TLDR: A game that really tries to shove an enviromental message and a lot of drama down your throat and can, at times, succeed. The gameplay itself is more about exploration, barebone crafting to have access to some consumables to get past small obstacles, even dying is rather difficult as there's no combat. The story itself has a lot of holes, not in making sense but it delibaterly leaves a lot of blanks and a lot of holes to fill, but that's fine as the story is rather short. I'm pretty sure the ''campaign'' itself must be around 6-7 hours. So while I recommend it, I must heavily emphasize that it is a VERY relaxing game and it's borderline depressing. Story: Meet Stanley, someone who thinks that going at the bottom of the sea, leaving his worried to death wife topside is ''good for morale''. If that ain't a redflag about his noggin, I don't know what is. The whole game shtick revolves around how bad of a head space he's in, and how he's coping with grief. Saying anymore than this would be a disservice to the story so I'll leave it at that. Be aware that the story is downright depressing and though a game like would is expected to have depth to its characters, it often misses t…

Good story. Kinda fun exploring underwater using a submarine while also doing tasks for your boss. The graphics are great and look stunning on Ultra settings. Had some crashes, but managed to solve them by deleting Scalability.ini and GameUserSettings.ini from the config folder in AppData (the game will generate them again when you start the game)..