Song of the Deep Review By Iroro

Upon starting Song of the Deep, you are met with beautiful artwork and a very soothing voice over telling the player a story. The story flows like an old fable and really sets the scene for the whole game. Throughout the opening scene the player experiences joy, sadness and haste before the player even touches their controller. When starting out you can see that the graphics are one of the biggest parts of the title, a huge amount of detail has been put into the surrounds. Being an underwater game the detail in the surrounding reefs and environments is beautifully laid out with impecable level design. The graphics are not all, the level design is fantastic, with enemies that try to sink your submarine and puzzles galore!


Some of the puzzles that you come across are borderline tedious and can sometimes become frustrating, however whilst you bare with it you are met with a sweetly soft soundtrack throughout your adventures. The whole story is narrated as if to be a childrens' tale, while the game play may be a bit hard for a child, I felt like my inner child was touched and soothed by this wonderful tale.


Unfortunately within the title the mechanics are not all that great. To pass certain puzzles you will need to grab a mine from the surrounding area go to the area that needs to be blown up and set the mine off, sound simple? Whilst carrying the mine there is a chance that you can be attacked by the deadly underwater sea life or even drifting off course into a wall, which will set off the mine. While playing this title the handling of the submarine reminded me of an old Playstation 2 game, "Finding Nemo" with how you seem to drift the other way for a bit before you can continue.


I felt that I spent a lot of time waiting whilst playing this as you need to wait for mines to respawn, wait for search lights to pass, wait for ocean currents to stop and also wait for your boost to recharge. The boss fights feel overly repetitive as majority of the basic enemies are what you are up against as additional enemies. This game has RPG elements also, as you go about your travels and adventures there are traders at the bottom of the sea floor that will gladly trade perks and items for your valuable ancient treasure to help you fight past all of those mean fish!


While there are many health points, or checkpoints around the ocean floor it does not really feel like a necessity as you get an ample amount of health to get through the whole game even upon starting. While you have to be careful with how you take on certain enemies it feels like not much if any strategy is required when in combat.

Positives:

• Graphics
• Narrated
• Music Score

Negatives:

• Having to wait for many things
• Frustrating puzzles
• No co-operative play 

SCORE: 7.5 out of 10

Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One

Genre: Action, Adventure, Metroidvania

Initial Release: 12th July 2016

Developer: Insomniac Games

Publisher: GameTrust