You’ll know which alien to salt and eat, and which alien wants to eat you. In time, you become a part of the ecology around you. This lack of weapons might be seen as a weakness of the player, but it isn’t a weakness of the game - it’s a virtue. In my time as a deep sea dilettante, I used neither of them.
Later you will get a propulsion gun and some vehicles with semi-offensive torpedoes but even these feel like rarely-used scare tactics more than actual weaponry. Even this you will use to cut materials more often than to gut aliens. Upon landing in this unknown world, the most you're given to defend yourself with is a knife. On the survivalism scale, it is more gatherer than hunter. There are otherworldly “Blood Kelp” regions, caverns filled with giant glowing “jellyshrooms”, a richness of life, both hostile and harmless, that will keep the fearful-curious laughing nervously for weeks. These are just two examples of the variety in this huge ocean, and they aren't even the most interesting. But there is also something with tentacles. There’s a crash site in that Deep Grand Reef, stuffed with equipment and goodies. You can spend hours comfortably splashing about in the bright shallows, then take a 90-second foray among the red fauna of the grassy plateaus, where angry sharks will kick up sand and bully you all the way back to your pod.Įach biome has its own ecology of resources and risks – there may be diamonds in these subaquatic caves but something else lives here too, groaning loudly from the depths. This is not a game for thalassophobes, but it might be the perfect game for those on the cusp of that phobia – those who don’t trust the sea but are nevertheless enchanted by it. It doesn’t interfere with your daily fishing, instead giving you a focus, some extra motivation to stay alive on this vast blue expanse.Īnd expanse is definitely the right word.
It’s a light story that encircles everything you do, like a friendly dolphin reminding you to check out this part of the sea, or dive down to that crash site. There’s also a radio in your pod which, once repaired, will get the game’s plot rolling.
If you do croak it from drowning or from becoming fish fodder, you'll respawn back in your lifepod having lost some of your items (although it's somewhat random and inconsistent in this punishment). The environment and your lifepod contains everything you’ll need to stay alive. You’ve got a food and water meter (although these can be turned off in an easier mode), an oxygen meter and a health bar. But even now there are places I do not like to go.įor those yet to dip their toes, Subnautica’s survival is familiar. I’ve become a proficient scavenger, making the journey from trouserless idiot to Tom Hanks in Castaway’s third act. Today, I swim among these beasts, collecting vines and seed pods as they impotently pursue me through the weeds.
#Subnautica review gamers with jobs full
I eyed the hazy green water of the nearby kelp forests with fear, knowing it was full of Stalkers, an aggressive fish whose body is mostly one long croc-like jaw. Last year, when I first splashed about in Subnautica’s alien ocean, I was wary of leaving the shallow reef in which you first crash land. The best survival games are about conquering fear.
0 kommentar(er)
