Subnautica is a game about exploring an alien planet which is mostly covered by water, hence the name of the game. In Subnautica the player will be exploring different kind of bioms and meet a lot of alien lifeforms. Since we crashed on this planet, our main goal is to get the hell out of here.
The first thing that (pleasantly) surprised me that this game actually has a story. While playing you will figure out why your ship crashed here, how to stop other ships from crashing and last but certainly not least, how to finally leave. A lot of this story is delivered by radio calls and Log entries that are scattered throughout the planet.
Let's talk gameplay now. Even though a story exists you will go multiple ours in this game without progressing it. I am glad to say that the core gameplay holds up just as strong. A very intuitive UI gives quick access to the inventory, crafting blueprints and the databank where all information is stored. Crafting is done on stations with a quick and responsive design that always gives easy feedback on which things can be crafted and what materials you are missing to create the things you can't.
To get blueprints and materials needed for crafting a lot of exploration is needed. The player starts out by simply swimming and with very little oxygen. Without wanting to spoil anything, lets just say exploration is getting more and more interesting when you advance in tech. The environments you explore are varied and the further away you go, the more dangerous they get. Also the game has great level design that pushes the player down the right pass. I only had to look once at the wiki and had some help from stream chat, but I was never completely confused on what to do next.
One thing I unfortunately have to mention that I did have a couple of bugs. Usually little things like movement being broken which was easily fixed by leaving and entering the area or a visual glitch here and there. It was often enough though that I feel a mention is needed. On the bright side I did not have a single crash in about 29 hours of playtime.
So what is my verdict about this game? I greatly enjoyed it especially the unexpected lore and story. Movement, exploration and crafting is a lot of fun if this is your cup of tea. A absolute must play for survival game fans!
Have a look at my gameplay of Subnautica in my VOD's.
Im finishing up Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Im running out of things to play.
Yes have GamePass but I’ve been playing Xbox for quite some time and I’ve played almost everything that I can find that interests me.
I was hoping if this sub could help me find my next game.
Title. I've also seen some discussions about it's optimization and performance which I would hate to run into.
A lot of popular games have been put on blast for the last few days. Let me start with the standard disclaimer. As with all dumps on popular games, if you enjoyed it, I'm glad you did. I mean...I have a stupid amount of hours in Dungeons and Dragons Online. There's like 20 of us still playing that game.
Minor spoilers ahead.
I didn't care for Subnautica
As a survival game it just falls flat. At no point in the game are you ever really in any danger. Food and water is plentiful and managing your O2 is pretty easy. There aren't many underwater sections where you can easily get lost that might lead to running out while exploring.
The enemies are a complete non-issue. With the exception of the >!exploding fish!< you can outrun every single enemy...including their projectiles. You can skip every enemy with ease and there's a grand total of 2, maybe 3? you actually need to engage with at any point in order to get materials you need to progress.
I never at any point in the game felt any sense of urgency or danger. The closest I came was when I didn't realize that one mob that can >!teleport you out of your diver!< but once I knew they could do that, they were another non-issue.
The base building is mostly pointless. Other than to create some checkpoints to restore your O2 and get clean water, they simply serve no purpose. They could have left it out entirely and just spread some bases around the game world that you can obtain.
Base building for the most part exists it seems to give purpose to the crafting grind. This game falls prey to the MMO trope of "grind material rank 1, so you can make the tools to grind material rank 2, so you can make the tools to..."
This leads to a third problem...
While the environments are pretty cool to look at, you quickly realize that the biomes are mostly pointless. You go "Oh neat, floating mushrooms" then you loot the 2 materials you need and go back to scraping the walls looking for the metals.
To make matters worse, most of the biomes are just the same 3 or 4 doodads copy/pasted over and over...and over again.
Most of the game involves finding >!wrecks!< that look the same no matter what biome you're in, thus defeating the point of having different biomes.
As such the gameplay loop becomes pretty repetitive pretty quick. Go to biome 1 and search for >!wrecks!< to get blueprints, then scrape the walls of that biome for mats. This will allow you to
... keep reading on reddit ➡It's an amazing title. I am so happy that I read it on magazines and got it on Epic for free.
It's immersive with it's sound design. Lovely dynamic musics too. The shallows is a great place to introduce yourself to this watery planet. Wonderful atmosphere with all of these combined. And I was playing the game for too much this week, a little too much religiously and you know the feeling when you spend all day swimming, you take a shower and lay in bed, you keep feeling the waves brushing on your body. I felt that playing this game (or I am just mental)
You can also play a mode that you can close the survival mechanics. I am not much a fan of those but I still wanted to play it that way. It's not too much burdening because with every step you find more ways to make it easier for you to survive. Easier to get fresh water, easier to get food, easier with your oxygen need. You just need to explore, the game is doing such a great job to give you incentives to move on, progress, get better and make life easier for yourself.
Honestly I just got a feel of a retro first person rpg (where you need to put down a couple of notes to remind somethings yourself) or a metroidvania feeling from this game. And yeah, it's little bit buggy. Jank even. But it is just the right amount and that's how I love it (using console commands will help with some frustrating bugs where you lose a whole ass Seamoth inside a Cyclops submarine)
I highly recommend the game and even if it is more of the same I am looking forward to playing the sequel/expansion.
I got Subnautica for free a while back but never got around to playing it. But I kept hearing such good things and I was looking for a new game so I decided to give it a try. Over the course of a month I played about 4 hours, and made basically 0 progress. I couldn't find the resources I needed, so I kept swimming further and further, going deeper and deeper, but I couldn't find anything. I figured at that point, I must be doing something wrong, so I started a new game, and decided to play it on the easier mode to hopefully make it less frustrating.
Well, on my second playthrough I immediately discovered what was wrong: I somehow missed the part of the tutorial that told you you could mine rocks. Welp. Turns out that's pretty important. This second game, I immediately started making progress, crafting technology to help me explore better. This allowed me to go farther, and explore new areas. However, while the game was much more enjoyable, I was starting to get bored. Sure exploring and crafting are fun, but at a certain point it starts to get old.
That was until I built the Seamoth. I took it out on its first mission, to explore a distress call that was about 200 meters down. I wouldn't be able to dive that deep on my own, but with the Seamoth I was able to get closer without wasting air. However, the distress beacon was hidden somewhere in a cave system, so I'd need to dive off the Seamoth and explore a pitch black cave with my O2 meter slowly ticking down.
It was one of the scariest gaming moments of my life. I carefully timed out how fast my O2 meter depleted, and how far I could go before turning around. I wanted to take my flashlight to see, but you also needed to use the Seaglide to go faster, and the Pathfinder tool to find your way back. I made multiple runs down the cave system, trying to figure out where the ship is. Eventually, I figured out how to swap between all those tools, first laying down a path with the Pathfinder, use your flashlight to explore, then return back with the Seaglide.
It was such a cool moment of fear, and using it as a motivator to learn the game's systems. It also reminded me of Outer Wilds, which is probably my favorite game of the past 5 years. You have that total feeling of being an explorer, and learning how to survive at the same time as your character.
Anyways, sorry for the long rant, but yeah this game is amazing.
Before playing this game I was skeptical of this genre of game (i.e. resource gathering exploration games), but gave it a try mainly because of the comments on it from this sub and damn I am so glad I had that experience. The entire 60 hour gameplay was just endlessly mind expanding and it kept delivering and delivering and delivering. The mystery, beauty (in some places), the fear (in some places) and general ongoing experience of just amazing new things around every bend really worked for me.
One of the things that just made it a total and complete masterpiece was that I already was in love with the game after exploring what seemed like the entire map and then about 75% of the way through the game you go to this entirely new and huge area that starts at the lost river and it just keeps getting more and more exotic, mysterious and fascinating. I literally was like 'this game does not stop delivering from start to finish'
This game is definitely in my top 3 of all time and I can't recommend it enough.... especially if you think you don't like this kind of game.
So I accidentally bought a key for this game, which I already have, and figured what better to do with it than give it away.
To enter just comment your favourite movie from the 90's (or in general).
Good luck!
Edit: Thanks to everyone for participating, u/baffernacle has been chosen as the winner!
I recently got subnautica thinking it would be fun, but the moment I looked down at the water I got terrified and cant seem to push myself into staying underwater for any extensive time without freaking out and shivering, I just hate the feeling of being in what feels like an endless expanse of water alone.
I really enjoyed Subnautica because I could build a base without the whole piece-by-piece construction. I understand that style is for people with more time on their hands to play the game, but I'm not a power builder at all and more of a casual player. I want to build a functioning base that looks good quickly so I can get on with exploring!
Any recommendations? That Planet Crafter game looks promising and seems to have a similar style to Subnautica.
I’ve played through the original twice and thinking about purchasing below zer. I barely enjoyed the game on the 2nd playthrough as expected.The fear the adventure the not knowing anything, was what really hooked me to the game. First time playthrough experience is golden. Did you feel the same playing sub zero or does it feel like a slightly better rerun of the first since you already know alot.
I just got Subnautica for the Switch. I know that probably isn’t the most favorable device to play it on but my PC definitely isn’t capable of running it and the Switch is my only console. I saw a little gameplay of it many years ago (probably 2014-2015) but that’s about all I’ve seen of it. Otherwise, I’m aware it’s an underwater exploration and survival game. Is there anything I should know before I start playing? Thanks!
