SONG OF THE DEEP ON PLAYSTATION 4

Insomniac Games has built quite a name for themselves over the years with series like Ratchet & Clank, Spyro the Dragon, and Resistance. Considering their past work, Song of the Deep is quite a change for the developer, as it’s a Metroidvania-style game on a smaller scale and with a much quieter tone.

Merryn is the young daughter of a fisherman, who’s the dearest person in the world to her. One day while her father is out on the sea, his boat disappears leaving Merryn lost and alone. The young girl takes scraps of wood and wreckage that her father collected over the years, and builds a ramshackle submarine out of it. Song of the Deep tells you all this and most of its story segments, through colorful, hand drawn screens and visuals. A woman acts as the narrator, walking you through the entire experience, in a similar manner to the narrator of Supergiant’s Bastion. She adapts to actions you take in the world and explains enemies, power-ups, and new items as you stumble upon them.

After the short intro, Song of the Deep dumps you right into the ocean and in control of the submarine. The entirety of the game takes place underwater, making players explore a vast labyrinth of caverns, tunnels and open ocean. Areas with a mysterious energy known as “Tyne” save your game and restore your health, and the game bestows these generously upon you. Warp points allow easy access between certain areas, and shortcuts are everywhere. The sub controls are simple enough, moving the vessel around with the left analog stick.

The game quickly rewards you with its first and most useful item just a few minutes in: the claw. This claw allows you to pick up items in the world and throw or move them, hit enemies that threaten you and open doors or pull chains. Over the rest of the roughly six hours the game runs, you’re rewarded with many other items that improve the performance of your sub. A turbine allows you to boost, improving your speed and letting you rush through the strong currents that blow through the ocean. Missiles let you blow apart walls, blocking paths while also causing increased damage to enemies. Searchlights will move light sensitive enemies out of the way and illuminate your path in the dark. The myriad of items give a sense of natural progression to your submarine, and they each allow you to revisit areas to find more items and treasure.

The upgrade systems in Song of the Deep function on a treasure currency system. Throughout the world, you can find coins and gems as sunken treasure that add up to a currency. You can cash all this treasure in with a giant friendly hermit crab who’ll help you upgrade different functions on your ship. The game’s world is absolutely crammed full of alternate paths, secrets to explore, and treasure to collect.

Exploration plays a big part, both in the story and gameplay. Merryn is exploring the depths looking for her father, traveling through ever more harrowing locations. At the same time, to continue upgrading your ship, it’s imperative that you go off the beaten path now and again to look for treasure.

Song of the Deep has three different difficulty levels of Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. Much of the game isn’t terribly difficult on any setting, but the latter half has some really strange difficulty spikes. One particular section had me rushing to escape from invincible killer squid, dodging obstacles, and blasting apart barriers with my missile. This section was removed from really anything else in the game, and the extra movement of the submarine made it incredibly difficult to successfully escape, forcing me to replay it numerous times while I had only died maybe twice in the hours leading up to it.

The controls in Song of the Deep aren’t generally an issue, but there are a few sections that require delicate precision that is nonexistent because of the floatiness of your submarine. Another section of the game unexpectedly requires you to use stealth, finding your way through the darkness with sonar that reveals walls, because your searchlights attract the killer squid. This also felt unnecessarily difficult, as the squid move fast and barely appears on your sonar before it’s right on top of you. On top of that, stealth isn’t really required anywhere in the game outside of this one segment.

Enemies are fairly varied in the game, visually taking the form of  each causing you to take different tactics in order to defeat. Most you can just hit with your hook or blast with bombs, but a few require particular strategies to defeat. Giant Crabs and giant mollusk enemies are impenetrable except for after they attack you, where you have a narrow window to blast them. Song of the Deep also peppers in a few boss battles to change things up. There aren’t very many of them, but each feels distinct and requires a specific strategy, whether that’s throwing bombs back at enemies with your claw, or grabbing pieces of the boss and pulling them off.

Puzzles in the game usually require you to use specific items to solve them, combining that with physics. One might require to use mirrors to reflect colored light onto special orbs, while another has you freezing an exploding barrel with your special missiles, and propelling that through a turbine to blow up a barricade. Eventually, you unlock an option for Merryn to leave the sub and explore smaller areas herself. The puzzles often involve pieces of the environment, and require some smart thinking to solve.

Visually, the watercolor aesthetic of Song of the Deep is reminiscent of a children’s story, and very Studio Ghibli-esque. The short animated shots give you a colorful group of characters, and the game almost feels like you’re watching animation at some points. Immediately when you start the game, you feel like you’re watching some kind of massive aquarium.

Song of the Deep feels alive as its ocean is teeming with wildlife, and one of the most impressive aspects are the backgrounds. Schools of fish swim merrily through the ocean, while giant whales, sea serpents, and other creatures loom in the back. Song of the Deep’s visual aesthetic may be its best feature, as it feels fresh and distinct, especially as a setting for a Metroidvania game. During my nearly seven hours playing, I did experience a bit of slowdown in some of the more visually packed areas, but it wasn’t a problem that I found really damaging to the experience.

Song of the Deep’s story is simple enough, with Merryn meeting mermaids and other creatures that inhabit the ocean on her quest to find her missing father. The young girl overcomes some impressive obstacles showing compassion at every turn, and there’s some surprising well thought out themes that pop up about the dangers that industrialization and technology pose to the ocean and its wildlife.

The only voiced character of the game is the narrator, but she does a fine job explaining the story and setting a whimsical tone. Alongside that, a gorgeous instrumental soundtrack calms you as you explore the quiet depths of the oceans. More action based moments are distinguished by hectic pulse pounding music, separating themselves from the quiet leisurely exploration.

Song of the Deep feels like a distinctly different experience from the Insomniac that we’re used to. It’s a beautiful, lonely world and the Ghibli-like aesthetic works incredibly well in its favor. However, some control issues and harsh random difficulty spikes hurt it by slowing down the experience. There’s plenty of exploration to be had and secrets to uncover, easily adding hours onto your time after completing the game’s story. It’s a quiet experience that works best when you’re drifting through the depths, all alone in your little submarine.

SCORE: 3.5/5 – Fair