The Xbox Guide’s Game of the Year

Welcome to our (late) Game of the Year feature. For those of you who listen in or watch our System Link podcast with Burly Bird Media, this won’t come as a surprise, but for everyone else it’s probably a bit of a left-field choice.

Still Wakes The Deep

The Chinese Room’s Still Wakes The Deep made an instant impact on me as soon as I saw the demo of it at the Xbox Partner Preview in early 2024 (embedded below). The atmosphere, the voice acting, the setting – it all just struck a chord with me in a way few games have of late. A day one Game Pass release was as good as a guarantee that I was going to try it at launch, and it didn’t disappoint.

The trailer above is a fair representation of the game – equal parts traversal (with minimal threat) and stealth (with significant threat). In criticism of the game, I would have liked more down time and less sneaking, but I am generally anti-stealth in most games and, as soon as the shit hits the fan quite early, it would be hard to justify taking a stroll to the canteen to have a chat with your mate the cook for half an hour.

It only has a 74 Metascore, but I encourage you to try it if you like psychological horror or narrative driven games (even walking simulators, though it’s not quite one of those). Its user score of 4.7 on Xbox UK from 1.9k reviews is much more in line with what it deserves.

Metaphor: ReFantazio would be a close second for me and will perhaps overtake Still Wakes the Deep in time (once I manage to put some more hours into it). But as an all round package (with Metaphor lacking some technical refinement), I’m very happy I spent a few hours exploring a North Sea rig in Still Wakes the Deep last year.