Subnautica PC Review
Hello steemians, good day, we are making another review on a wonderful game today titled Subnautica so let’s dive in.
Credits
This year January the game had a good time giving of what to speak in what circles was finally released from its Early Access. Subnautica appeared on Steam and Xbox One (with a version for Ps4 announced but no date of any kind) to settle its peculiar proposal within a genre as exploited as survival.
There is something purely primitive in the genre (one of many) fashionable in recent years. The game context does not matter in the end, it only matters that you can collect wood, stones, mud and reeds to finish building a small city you alone and if there may be other players or a cycle of day and night that will force you the best rhythm.
It is still a reflection of the power narratives that exist in videogames. We all want to think that if we live a catastrophe in the purest style , they live! we would be able to survive (when the reality is that we probably would not even be able to light a fire in the snow). That we would become a kind of Bear Grylls and that we would survive with a knife, two sticks and a plastic bottle. If this internal desire for survival a multiplayer side added and a bunch of crazy possibilities (for Youtube, of course) we have game.
Subnautica, on paper, fits perfectly into that description ; Survival game in hostile environment (in this aquatic occasion) and science fiction (our spaceship crashes in an unknown planet) and with an exit in Early Access as funding. However, as soon as one spends a handful of hours exploring the sea depths of Subnautica, we will realize that we are facing something different: similar, but different.
Content
We have lived the premise of Subnautica a thousand times. The ship in which we lived, the Aurora, has crashed on an unknown planet and we have survived only thanks to a rescue capsule. We are alone, with a damaged capsule and in the middle of a gigantic ocean that seems to cover the entire surface of the planet. We do not know if more people have survived, we do not know if they will come to rescue us and the only certainty we have is that we feel hungry, thirsty and the imperative need to build a temporary shelter (we hope).
The starting point is what it is and on that typical start Subnautica is able to develop its own environment of intuitive mechanics and, perhaps most interestingly, its own narrative that places the player as the central focus (although the title has announced a sideline multiplayer still do not know date or anything about it). The game of Unknown Worlds Entertainment is able to move between the cracks of the genre and create its own living space by which to make us float.
The so manida and recognizable dynamics of the sort: to collect resources -> to construct-> to survive-> to return for resources is slightly truncated in Subnautica due to its own idiosyncrasy. In Subnautica we move in an aquatic environment which forces us to explore the seabed to find any resource and that entails the inclusion of a more precious resource than food, water, silver or copper: oxygen. Everything in Subnautica revolves around something simple like the mere act of breathing.
Gameplay
Our oxygen capacity in the suit (which as a good title of the genre we can improve by building bigger oxygen tanks) marks the game flow of Subnautica. If at first we can only do 60-second dives, it literally means that we have a minute to reach the bottom, collect resources or explore and return to the surface before dying. Although these margins of time are enlarging, so do the distances and depths that we need to reach the resources, places or creatures that interest us. This creates a powerful cyclic game dynamic different from that of other survivals (even counting Subnautica with a day and night cycle that modifies the attitude of the creatures).
Having such short come / go cycles, at least during the first hours of the game, the title always revolves around small objectives that little by little give you the tools (both physical and mental) to overcome each time bigger challenges . Thus, almost without realizing it, we went from building a knife to a small submarine to move through the depths of the ocean and this happens without tutorials and with a fluency rarely seen in the genre. These short (but increasingly longer) exploration-collection-fabrication cycles make tool, habitat and equipment designs short and the feeling of constant evolution. It is true that to build the largest submarines we will need many resources difficult to make or manufacture but before reaching them we will have taken a step after another making that rarely feel the vacuum of simply accumulating resources to accumulate. However, almost as a permanent curse in the genre, sooner or later we will feel that the trips between resources or bases are very long or that we spend a lot of time simply collecting and creating small pieces to build something bigger.
Survival Mode
Perhaps the greatest strength of Subnautica against its most direct competitors is its campaign, since we are facing a title centered only (for now) in single player mode. The history of this strange and hostile planet will be revealed as we explore its depths and as we try to contact other survivors of our ship to try to be rescued. It is likely that many will approach this title simply looking for an aquatic survival experience without the need for much more. This is where Subnautica surprises us by presenting a very interesting main story that reels and fits perfectly with the sense of constant evolution that we have mentioned. It is true, as we have also said, that sometimes the dynamics of the genre can be annoying for those who enter the campaign directly and only want to discover the secrets of Subnautica but ... after all, surviving at sea is not easy.
Subnautica Gameplay Trailer
Just when one was beginning to think that the survival bubble was about to explode (if not fully exploded) Subnautica arrives and shows that there are still gaps to work on . The distance of the game from the most multiplayer side and, as they say, in the youtuber reef makes it an interesting title of a player with an interesting narrative imbricated in the dynamics of the genre.
Game Details
Developer-----------------Unknown Worlds Entertainment
Publisher------------------Unknown Worlds Entertainment
Designer------------------Charlie Cleveland
Team
Programmer-------------Charlie Cleveland,Steve An, Max McGuire
Artist------------------------Cory Strader, Brian Cummings, Scott MacDonald
Writer------------------------------Tom Jubert
Composer------------------Simon Chylinski
Engine---------------------------------Unity
Platform----------------Microsoft Windows
, MacOS , Xbox One
Release Microsoft Windows, MacOS: January, 2018
Xbox One: 2018
PlayStation 4
Genre--------------------Adventure, survival
Mode----------------------------Single-player
Conclusion
Subnautica is a breath of fresh air for the survival genre and a sign of what can be done in the field of narrative for a player. With an enviable artistic section it becomes a very pleasant game (to the dangerous park) to travel.
Happy Gaming!!!!