DLC Review · Purchased June 20, 2026 · $13.99 CAD via PSN
The Setup
Still Wakes the Deep was one of my favorite horror games from a couple years back, a tense, claustrophobic story set on a North Sea oil rig, so when The Chinese Room announced a story expansion in Siren’s Rest last summer I made a mental note to circle back to it once I had a free weekend. That finally happened in June, about a year after the DLC actually released.
Living With It
Siren’s Rest is set roughly a decade after the base game’s events, and returning to the Beira D with that much narrative distance gives the whole thing a different flavor than the original: less about surviving an active crisis and more about investigating the wreckage of one, both literally and emotionally. The rig itself is in a genuinely different state of decay compared to the base game, and the sound design team clearly had fun finding new ways to make familiar corridors feel unfamiliar again.
It’s shorter than the base campaign, which makes sense for a story-focused add-on at this price point, but it doesn’t feel rushed. The investigative framing gives you more room to piece together what happened than the original game’s more linear survival-horror pacing did, and as someone who wanted more time in this specific setting, it scratched exactly the itch I was hoping for. If you didn’t love the base game’s slow-burn pacing, this won’t change your mind, but it’s a genuinely worthwhile return trip for anyone who did.
What I Liked
- Investigative framing gives a fresh angle on a familiar setting
- Strong sound design continues to carry the atmosphere
- Meaningful time jump gives the rig a genuinely different feel from the base game
What I Didn’t
- Noticeably shorter than the base campaign
- Same slow-burn pacing as the original, which won’t win over anyone who didn’t like that the first time
The Verdict
Rating: 4/5
A worthwhile, atmospheric return to one of the better horror settings in recent memory, even if it’s over quicker than I wanted.
