Open-world games in which the main task of survival is thirteen in a dozen. The common denominator: a declining hunger meter, a few shelves to build your own base, a total lack of focus and to keep it exciting a few zombies. Fortunately, the boom has been about its peak for a few years, but Steam's Early Access swamp is still full of survival games that really - really! - will appear soon. Once in a while such a game manages to rise above the middle, like the inexorable The Long Dark. Subnautica also belongs to that category.
Crashed on the watery planet 4546B, your mother soul is alone. When you climb out of your rescue capsule, the only sign of life is the smoldering wreck of the spaceship Aurora. Below the sea level, however, there is a busy ecosystem of plants, fish and predators. Schools at Peepers and Bladderfish swim shyly away from you and hide in seaweed forests, while crocodile-like Stalkers play with the wreckage of the Aurora. In the depth you can just see how a Sandshark dives up to catch a Bladderfish. Subnautica knows perfectly well to create the illusion that you are swimming through a living, breathing world. Time and time again, we looked open-mouthed at the bizarre fluorescent life forms that the planet accommodates in its deep troughs.
Man versus nature
Spurred on by your trusty PDA you master yourself of that strange nature. You use the 3d printer in your rescue capsule to make tools out of the melted wreckage and minerals that are embedded in the seabed. You scan the flora and fauna to determine their usefulness. Peepers for example are tasty nutritious and Bladderfish can be used to filter water. Unlike many survival games, you are not dependent on a wiki site to figure out where to go. You get hints from your PDA and emergency signals from other survivors challenge you to dive deeper and deeper.
As you progress in Subnautica, it becomes increasingly easier to provide for your primary necessities of life. You build an underwater base or two, with aquariums filled with nutritious fish. Planters with extraterrestrial fruits and vegetables keep your stomach filled and as long as you have power, it will be fine with the production of oxygen. Yet you are never completely in control of nature. Most predators can still be chased away with your knife, but the various giant leviathans that you encounter will eat you and your submarine without mercy.
It does not take long before you learn to fear the distant screeching of a Reaper. Subnautica is not a horror game, but our first meeting with a Mesmer is food for nightmare- a fantastic experience that we can recommend to everyone.
Metroidvania
While you are exploring, you will find blueprints and raw materials that provide you with access to locations that were previously life-threatening. This creates an almost Metroidvania-like progression. An example: with lead and rubber you make a diving suit that protects against radiation, with which you can approach the wreck of the Aurora without problems. There you will find the blueprints again to make a vehicle that allows you to wade through corrosive brine underwater rivers without problems. And in it you find the raw materials again... and so on. The good thing is that at the same time you learn more about the planet where you reside as an unwelcome guest, how you have crashed and the nature of the mysterious bacterial infection, which you have to cure before you can leave.
In many ways, Subnautica is one of the best survival games we have ever played, but at one point the game clearly falls short. Although Subnautica does not demand an exceptionally large amount from the video card or the processor, we often experienced annoying stuttering. Probably this has to do with the way the game loads environments, but an SSD could not help. In some cases it became so bad that we threatened to fall into an endless depth because the land we wanted to land on was not yet loaded. We also advise against playing Subnautica in vr. In addition to the performance problems, the interface is too close to your face, controlling your inventory is a crime and teleporting vehicles spontaneously away from you to stay a hundred meters above sea level.
The regular stutter during play is annoying, but that does not extinguish our enthusiasm for Subnautica. The development from defenseless shipwreck to a true captain Nemo is satisfying, but there is always something to fear in this fantastically realized underwater world. It is a pleasure to explore the depths of planet 4546B and thanks to the overdue structure you will never get lost in the subtly told story. Even if you are tired of the survival genre, Subnautica is worth diving into.
Conclusion
Subnautica immerses you in a fascinating underwater world. Recurring performance problems sometimes threaten to break the spell, but the game is so cleverly structured that a bit stutter does not stop us during our exploration of this wondrous and sometimes horrifying water world.
Subnautica is now available for PC and Xbox One. The PC version supports the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive.
➕ Beautiful, handmade submarine world to explore, well-balanced progression, effective narration
➖ Stutter when loading environments, moderate VR implementation
Thanks for reading.
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