Subnautica (2018)

I have a massive fear of the ocean/open water and giant creatures IN the ocean, and somehow that only accentuates my fascination with this game. I wouldn't call it horror, but if you're anything like me you'll for sure be horrified while playing anyway.

Gorgeous survival and exploration game with a storyline to uncover and varied, interesting creatures, both hostile and friendly.

Pros:

• Unique setting, atmosphere and aesthetic that are done super well
• Very cool and mysterious backstory that makes you want to keep progressing
• Pretty solid game loop and mechanics
• Building bases is fun!

Cons:

• The worst pop-in I've ever seen in a game and even worse - it's in a game that really requires you to be able to discover and see things
• Switch performance and graphics are pretty mediocre, even for a 7 year old game
• Things really start to drag later in the game when you don't know where to find specific materials and you have to travel long distances between areas
• Building bases is clunky!

Unlike Astroneer, I don't think the technical issues are gamebreaking on the Switch. That being said, I would still try to play this on the PC where you'll have better graphics, performance, draw distance and less issues with pop-in. The game holds up surprisingly well considering it's 7 years old now. I am really excited to see what they do with Subnautica 2 when it releases later this year.

This game is very unique and original. I played it for more than 8 hours and I was really starting to like it but unfortunately there are some bugs which happen all too frequently ruining all the fun. It is very frustrating to spend hours searching for resources only to find that what you build turns into dysfunctional black box. On another occasion, the food I cooked also turned into a black box and I could not eat it. Searching on the internet for fixes did not help either as no one seemed to have had the same problems.

The developers have a means to let us report bugs but when I look at the list bugs people are encountering and unable to solve, I feel this is nothing more than PR to manage gamers' anger and frustration. It is absolutely unacceptable that four years after release, the game continues to have game breaking bugs that waste our precious time. I hope they did a competent job in Below Zero.

I started playing this game because one day my daughter (3 years old) was sick and I had to chill out on the couch with her but everything I had involved a lot of shooting and/or beheading and I felt that wasn't appropriate. Dug through my collection of PS Plus titles and thought "oh a nice relaxing ocean exploration game this'll kill a few hours" And I couldn't be happier to be so wrong about my judgement based on the game's cover.

Firstly, it WAS appropriate for me to play while my child was around (though once I got hooked on it I played most of it in her absence, because it turns out it's not the kind of game that you want to play for 10-20 minutes at a time while your child is doing her own thing). But also, it wasn't exactly the kind of G-rated experience I was expecting; without any blood, gore, or profanity, it proved to be one of the more thrilling games I've played of late. Experiences like the race to find your way out of a labyrinthine sea cave system when your oxygen is running out, or push your Sea Moth a little bit faster when you know there's a leviathan right behind you that would love to crush your little vessel into scrap, or the moment you are enveloped by the shadow of something massive moving through the water, but can't find anything when you look up to search for it. These are all moments that the game delivered beautifully.

The game's challenge->reward cycle was also very well-designed. I never felt that the work was too grindy to get to the next step, nor did I feel like advancement was trivially easy. The basic process (find a new resource, use it to make a new tool or explore a new area that unlocks a new resource, repeat) may not be fun for some, but I found it very compelling.

At first I thought the game was going to be very narrative-light, in the way that a lot of survival-genre games are, but actually I found it to be a very rich narrative experience. It took a moment for me to adjust to because its delivery is somewhat nontraditional: there's no cutscenes (there are some important story events but they happen in real time during gameplay) and no dialogue. All (well, most) of the narrative is delivered in the form of recordings and documents discovered by the player, and commentary made by the AI assistant. This doesn't sound great, I know, but it's very well done (and enhances the feeling of isolation that immerses the player in the experience of being marooned on an alien planet). The mystery in the narrative unexpectedly becomes a very compelling point of the game.

I encountered a few bugs, but nothing that noticeably reduced my enjoyment of the game.

Pros

• You can take things at your own pace
• You can chose what missions and tasks you want to do
• Freedom!

Cons

• It moves too fast compared to how the player progresses
• You better have a lot of spare time, because finding some items is a massive pain
• The story moves a little slow
• You will almost certainly get frustrated and look at a YouTube Walkthrough

Much like my feelings on most open-world survival games, the sheer aimlessness of everything was a huge turn off for me. There's a story to be told here, but I didn't enjoy the journey to finding it. There just simply wasn't enough going on to keep me interested.

I know there's a demographic that it appeals to, but I tried and just like the others of it's kind, it was not for me.

After several weeks of getting all of my attention, I've finally left planet 4546B, glad I got the chance to visit. I started playing only due to seeing Miracle of Sound's song of the game, but ended up loving this. I've not connected with a game this well since Horizon Zero Dawn, so apparently I've got a thing for mission-based, story-centered exploration games. The underwater vistas are lovely and diverse, the animals varies and the crafting system easy to use and well-balanced. The combination of survival, exploration and investigation works well. Unfortunately, due to some unlucky breaks and some oversight on my part, I ended up spending about a quarter of my time in the game feeling lost and stuck. The sources of information that set up progress at the start went silent and I could no longer find new places to explore or the resources required to advance my exploration tech. Having missed some basic navigation tools ingredients (radio beacons and compass) I swam around aimlessly quote a lot, eventually leading me to exploring online forums rather than deep, wet environments. However, due to the structure of the game, it still took me more hours than I would've liked to get going again.

After successfully finding the entrance to a new area, I was again submerged in the exquisite experience of find new creatures, harvesting interesting resources and building more enabling gear. I was once again exposed to new dangers and challenges.

On the blue watery planet I'd experienced fear of predators, survival challenges, navigation issues and the wonder of experiencing new environments and constructions.

In short, I highly recommend this game.

Just started playing this game as part of my friend's and my stream, where we have both of our screens up while playing separate games, switching the sound on stream to whichever is at a more interesting part. We have slightly different tastes in games, and our concept for this was that each of us would play one of the other's favorite games, despite it being outside our comfort zones. He is playing NieR: Automata, and I am playing this.

I have never been interested in survival games, but I am all in on Subnautica because I have no choice, and I must say that right away the environment and sense of desperation are very effective. The game does a great job of getting you going without virtually any instruction, though I imagine it would be much more difficult to someone brand new to gaming or something. I look forward to experiencing more of Subnautica and having my mind change about the Survival genre!

I am not sure these survival games are for me. I appreciate that there is a full narrative version. I played through it and found it genuinely interesting, but, ultimately, the busy work of surviving the day-to-day never really felt... fun.

Maybe it is not the point of these things to be fun but it also is not what I was looking for in a game. I wish Grouvee had half-stars because this was a total 2-and-a-half for me.

Visually wonderful and a legitimately good story full of intrigue. The controls were mostly clean and good and really it is that this type of survival game is not my cup of tea.

I was completely addicted to this game for a few months. I love any game where I can explore the ocean and an alien ocean at that? Sign. Me. Up. I think the way the game teaches you is smart. It thrusts you in a very perilous situation where you have no idea what you're doing, and exploring is literally your tutorial. You realize that you can collect things, by exploring. You find that you can't go to specific areas without certain gear, that you can create. You could visit the same area dozens of times and still find new things. I found that I was incredibly eager to see what my character would discover next.

If you have a fear of the deep, or the ocean at night, I really don't recommend this game. Going to the deep part of the ocean and trying to navigate back to your life pod is very stressful. Luckily I don't have these fears since I grew up by the ocean, but I know many people who had to immediately stop playing the game when they were faced with a seemingly endless bottom.

I wish I could finish the game, but I couldn't. I got to a certain point in the game where I was building to leave the planet and I had to amass a crazy amount of rare materials and I lost interest. I ended up looking at videos on youtube to see how it ended because I was still invested in the story, and found a decent amount of satisfaction just from that. I don't think I will pick it up again, but it was fun while it lasted!

Picked this up for free with the Epic Game Launcher. I get what I paid for. Not for me. It wasn't clear to me what I am even supposed to do, which may be intentional, but is too open ended for me.

Given that I don't have as much time to game, I am more interested in games that lead me through a scripted experience or narrative. I occasionally appreciate more open ended games, such as I did with State of Decay 2. That had the benefit of its base mechanic being killing of zombies, which was very satisfying.

Pro/Cons

+Beautiful

+LOT of updates

+LOT of content

+LOT of map

+LOT of species

+The first game I pooped myself since a long time (exploring the abyss is terrrifind)

+Pressure and limited oxygen are a great mechanic, creating a lot of stress (or pressure... haha)

+Freedom

+Seabase, I mean, you can build under the sea, you know, THE SEA COME ON ITS SUPER COOL

+A survival game with a story and a lore and you can play the scientific collecting all the species of the sea

+Submarines

-Can't craft bacon

PS: Did I mentionned the game take place under the sea ? MAN THE SEA, MTRHGGEGDIUEFKING SEAAAAAAAAA YEAAH