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Collecting resources is easy once you grasp how they distributed in the game's world after scanning them and reading in-game wiki. And if that wasn't enough, thanks to whiny bitches like Abracadabra they added not long before release scanner room which triviliazes the process completely. By the way, inventory management isn't hard if... manage it and not swimming around with full pockets.
I never said it was hard, I said it was drudgery and not fun. The worst part of the game is how much pointless back and forth there is. What does it add to the game if I have to go to a location, grind, swim home, put this garbage in two chests and then go back for more to build anything? I can find the resources just fine even without the scanning room.
We get it, you can't stand games where you start off with inefficient tools and become more efficient later. What the fuck did you think you were going to get with a survival game?
I don't mind grind so much as long as it pays off. But in this game it's only there to mask the lack of content. They filled this game with 'sandbox' elements but it's not fleshed out enough to be a sandbox. There are better similar games made by 1 person. They should have focused on the story and had scripted encounters and stuff. Or skip the story and made it a proper sandbox game, and have us hunting resources to build an underwater labyrinth that explores deep into the caves. And have us defend it etc. Even janky ass Ark is a better game imo.
I feel like a huge problem with the game is there isn't really a hostile alien ecosystem or much in the way of combating it. When I started playing I thought this would be a thing, and I was pretty careful. But it wasn't that long until I just decided to swim out and see if there was anything or how far it'd let me go, and in doing that I discovered this alien ecosystem is less dangerous than ours. Like I went out there fully expecting to get attacked by something, (and it was night most of the swim, so I thought maybe more dangerous stuff might come out and I'd be fucked) but nothing did in the ocean; it wasn't until I came upon an island accidentally that I was attacked on land. Now there are spots where theirs some big sea monster you have to avoid, and there's spots underwater where there's shark or crocodile like things underwater, and those sea spider crab things are annoying on land...but you can go pretty great distances totally safe by staying close to the surface.
I'd say the developers probably just wanted to make a kind of layed back exploration and survival games, but the rate at which you need to eat and drink (especially in the beginning, and especially in the beginning when you first start playing the game and you don't know where anything is) don't really jive with the notion of a layed back experience.
I played ABZU because it was a gift. It is a walking simulator, except that you swim, so it's actually a swimming simulator. In short, it's a game for people who don't like games, the kind you let your non-game-playing friends toy with to show off your new monitor.
Without the exploration element, Subnautica wouldn't really be much shakes; and no, the ecosystem isn't truly "living." But then, I've never seen a living ecosystem outside of dedicated artificial life sims. The main drawback of the antagonistic life forms in this game is that they tend to specifically guard points of interest, such as crashed escape pods, or else general areas of interest—such as sea serpents in the proximity of the mothership. They're definitely out there, but they're certainly mostly avoidable if you're careful and prepared.
So yes, the developers ultimately failed to present a real ecosystem. They did transcend "monster guarding treasure chest" somewhat, in that sometimes it's entire regions that are loosely guarded, but it's only one step above monsters guarding treasure chests.
The thrill of discovering something you want or need is there, though, and you do have to search for that stuff.
I don't remember a single instance of actual grinding.
the rate at which you need to eat and drink (especially in the beginning, and especially in the beginning when you first start playing the game and you don't know where anything is) don't really jive with the notion of a layed back experience.
This is really only true in the beginning, but it annoyed me too. Additionally, there is no need for the absurd lack of inventory space that leads to having floating lockers absolutely everywhere until you've got a base built. It creates tedium, not actual challenge, because you can churn out plenty of floating lockers.
I don't mind grind so much as long as it pays off. But in this game it's only there to mask the lack of content. They filled this game with 'sandbox' elements but it's not fleshed out enough to be a sandbox. There are better similar games made by 1 person. They should have focused on the story and had scripted encounters and stuff. Or skip the story and made it a proper sandbox game, and have us hunting resources to build an underwater labyrinth that explores deep into the caves. And have us defend it etc. Even janky ass Ark is a better game imo.
There are survival games that do the survival thing good. Take The Forest, it's not a great game either but you have to survive waves of enemies that get stronger as the game progresses and there is a dungeon for the end game. There's very little grind in that game and the inventory works great. Subnautica punishes you for trying to build a base of operations and it's completely pointless other than some upgrades you can do to your submarine. The only game part is the grind for resources and you do that to get more resources. It's a terrible treadmill without incentives to go on. It doesn't go anywhere and fishes remain things you wave away with whatever weapons you have on hand to continue on that treadmill. The only thing missing here is a coin shop where you can buy more inventory space for real money.
We get it, you can't stand games where you start off with inefficient tools and become more efficient later. What the fuck did you think you were going to get with a survival game?
I think grinding is a perfectly legitimate complaint re:Subnautica. The endgame especially suffers from it, and in concert with the performance/graphical issues it knocks the game down from a 10/10 to a 8.5/10 for me.
Assisted Living Godzilla What you say is largely true. The world is much less dangerous than it presents itself as, but speaking as someone who has moderate thalassophobia, the suggestion of danger was enough for me; I’m not sure I could have stuck with the game if it actually was as dangerous as it kept suggesting. I’ve played a multitude of horror/survival-horror games, nearly all of which have been yawn-inducing to me, but Subnautica did a great job at exploiting a very real and familiar fear for me, which is something nearly every other entry’s attempt at has failed at.
I think grinding is a perfectly legitimate complaint re:Subnautica. The endgame especially suffers from it, and in concert with the performance/graphical issues it knocks the game down from a 10/10 to a 8.5/10 for me.
You can thank the Unity engine for that. The development team tried very hard to address the terrain pop-in issues before launch, to no avail—they would have had to tear apart their engine work and start pretty much from scratch. It's a situation akin to trying to replace the foundation of a building.
I largely avoid Unity engine games anymore. They run like garbage (some might run okay on a given system, but are still garbage compared to how a game would perform if presented identically with a custom engine), and the dev kit is so shitty that special knowledge is required to implement windowed fullscreen and dedicated fullscreen options to the end user simultaneously, among many other issues.
It seems that actual computer programmers lay outside of the typical indie budget.
Assisted Living Godzilla What you say is largely true. The world is much less dangerous than it presents itself as, but speaking as someone who has moderate thalassophobia, the suggestion of danger was enough for me; I’m not sure I could have stuck with the game if it actually was as dangerous as it kept suggesting. I’ve played a multitude of horror/survival-horror games, nearly all of which have been yawn-inducing to me, but Subnautica did a great job at exploiting a very real and familiar fear for me, which is something nearly every other entry’s attempt at has failed at.
Horror 101, and evident in Poe and Lovecraft as well as the better horror and creature films and novels: The monster should only be glimpsed occasionally until the end. There's something to be said for threat of confrontation and lurking dangers rather than combat forced down your throat.
I think grinding is a perfectly legitimate complaint re:Subnautica. The endgame especially suffers from it, and in concert with the performance/graphical issues it knocks the game down from a 10/10 to a 8.5/10 for me.
You can thank the Unity engine for that. The development team tried very hard to address the terrain pop-in issues before launch, to no avail—they would have had to tear apart their engine work and start pretty much from scratch. It's a situation akin to trying to replace the foundation of a building.
I largely avoid Unity engine games anymore. They run like garbage (some might run okay on a given system, but are still garbage compared to how a game would perform if presented identically with a custom engine), and the dev kit is so shitty that special knowledge is required to implement windowed fullscreen and dedicated fullscreen options to the end user simultaneously, among many other issues.
It seems that actual computer programmers lay outside of the typical indie budget.
Assisted Living Godzilla What you say is largely true. The world is much less dangerous than it presents itself as, but speaking as someone who has moderate thalassophobia, the suggestion of danger was enough for me; I’m not sure I could have stuck with the game if it actually was as dangerous as it kept suggesting. I’ve played a multitude of horror/survival-horror games, nearly all of which have been yawn-inducing to me, but Subnautica did a great job at exploiting a very real and familiar fear for me, which is something nearly every other entry’s attempt at has failed at.
Horror 101, and evident in Poe and Lovecraft as well as the better horror and creature films and novels: The monster should only be glimpsed occasionally until the end. There's something to be said for threat of confrontation and lurking dangers rather than combat forced down your throat.
Only this isn't a movie or book. When you start you start around some dangerous stuff, so you know there's dangerous stuff out there and possibly more dangerous stuff you've yet to see...unless you've no understanding of video game progression. You also know reality, you know in reality it's dangerous to go swimming in the vast open ocean at night, and that it'd be dangerous if you just went out into the ocean for more than a day. So the threat of the idea of these kinds of things, the threat of the unseen, will keep you close for a bit. But once you know you can just swim out from your starting point to either of the islands no matter what time it is that threat becomes completely nonexistent. And depending on when you decide to take that chance and see what's out there that threat of the unknown can disappear pretty fucking quickly in this game.
Incidentally the best threat in this game isn't the threat of the unknown, it's the threat of the know. It's the first time you accidentally stumble across some Leviathan that wreaks your shit and you know whatever area is a no go zone unless you've go something that can get you through their safely.
Finished Below Zero yesterday after playing it during the weekend.
tl;dr version: the base game in general is a better game because there is less storytelling and more exploration, especially encouraged exploration since it does not have as much of a quest compass.
autism enabled version: It is definitely smaller and at the same time the game is telling you where to go to most of the time, which leads to a more linear and shorter experience. Especially when you look at tech progression which now is really hampered because you don't have aurora wrecks all over the place. Exploration, which for me was the main selling point of the first game, suffers because of this smaller scale and because the waypoints the game throws at you are far less "subtle" (closer to the actual "you need to go here to progress" spots). There's a ton of tight spaces so it is no wonder that the Cyclops is not in, it simply would be too fat.
Gameplay wise the additions of the sea truck, spy pengwynn (or how was it spelled in game) and arctic land exploration (including exposure/hypothermia risk) add not a whole lot over the "base" game. Practically what you pay for is a new map and story scenario, so technically getting more of the same. You end up getting less of the same though, since the map is smaller, and the game spells out where to go at least 7 out of 10 times as opposed to the more subtle approach of guiding the player the first game had (which sometimes was maybe a bit too cryptic, but it added to the exploration experience IMO).
The land part in particular is in my opinion largely underdeveloped (yes, I obviously know there is "nautica" in the title and it is not the focus of the game/series), if you bother with the topic of arctic exploration in a survival game it really should have forced you to build shelters inland or place beacons around not to get lost in heavy snow. This disappointed me also because I am a sucker for arctic settings ever since as a kid I watched the shit about Mariusz Kaminski's arctic journeys (Potato TV also used to have a weekly show about the topic at one point in the 90s), and I really hope we would get a better arctic experience.
Meanwhile all you need to do to survive on the icy land is get a snowfox, you even don't need the arctic suit since the snowfox acts like somekind of "Kharkovchanka" and prevents hypothermia despite not being enclosed. Between that and the abundant food found in caves all around the land biomes, that raises body heat, the cold ends up being a bit of a joke without much effort. Although at least magnetite for the snowfox is not so easy find, unless you know you can just use the spy pengwynn to find it in the small caves it can access and collect minerals from (easy to miss that the pengwynn is useful for this IMO). Speaking of which it is a pity the game does not make more use of remote exploration/drones. The camera drones are also quite underused, I wonder if there is a mod to make them mine deposits.
Story is worse because there is more of it, or rather there is a voiced character having dialogue, but at least it got severly cut down and retooled between EA and release. I am quite certain it would be as woke if the original game did not have the whole "sole isolated mute survivor listening to doomed logs" theme, you saw the [current year] seeping through some of the log entries you collected. Initial BZ story in EA was worse with more chatty characters and a scenario with more holes. Also the new intro sequence is better, since you get to the meat of the game or rather water much sooner with less scripted sequences than in the first BZ story iterations.
The one thing the game objectively did better was streamlining some recipes (fabricator for instance) and not doing a "lol, now go back and collect plants before they rot" at the fucking last minute of the game, clearly informing you what you need to bring in advance of reaching the deepest part of the map.
Yes I know there are teleporters in the base game around the chamber connecting to all the biomes, but the whole thing is tedious as fuck with the boring slow walking.
Well that and you don't need to dodge as many vessel destroying killer leviathans to finish the game. Only once I lost my PRAWN parked outside the alien ruins at the bottom of the map, while I was busy engaged by the endgame storytelling. Of course I had to reload, because I could not return to the surface and finish the game without it (unless it would spawn me in the drop pod if I died, dunno).
What kind of review doesn't even mention the new, improved Poo-in-the-loo 3000® PDA, complete with broken English that reminds you when you're PARSING 100 meters? Or the obnoxious Sea Youths that steal your bike all the time?
The seatrk has some neat stuff the Cyclops doesn't, like the ability to catch food on the go, but I prefer the ability to build shit inside it.
I really loved the first game, I was put off by what I was hearing about Below Zero but decided to try it out after seeing a certain shark playing it a few days ago. I've gotten as far as the mandatory Spy Pengling part, I'm probably not going to finish this game and I'm glad I acquired it for free.
What's really baffling is that it's been over three years since the first Subnautica was fully released. They already had the engine and most of the assets ready to reuse. And in that time they've made...a tiny new region with less diverse and more empty biomes, a handful of new creatures. Oh, and a temperature meter that only functions on land and makes no sense - you avoid hypothermia by getting into shade or water. What?
Over three years. And in all that time, they managed to give us a game that's less than the first in every way that matters, the only things there are more of are tedium and cringe. What were they doing in that time?
It's almost entirely cut content from the first game, the developers admitted as much. To answer your question, they were fixing Subnautica. It only really left early access quite recently, it was always work in progress like Dorf Fortress or Factorio. And like any game built on the worst engine in history, it's still a buggy mess to this day.
What kind of review doesn't even mention the new, improved Poo-in-the-loo 3000® PDA, complete with broken English that reminds you when you're PARSING 100 meters? Or the obnoxious Sea Youths that steal your bike all the time?
What kind of review doesn't even mention the new, improved Poo-in-the-loo 3000® PDA, complete with broken English that reminds you when you're PARSING 100 meters? Or the obnoxious Sea Youths that steal your bike all the time?
They're easy to deal with, but shouldn't be there in the first place. It's like they tried to make the game less scary on purpose.
And yeah, the fact that they went at the last moment and spent time and resources on completely re-recording all those voiceovers, and fucked it up (they were using the old PDA sounds throughout the EA), instead of say, expanding the arctic surface areas, is pretty shitty.
Only this isn't a movie or book. When you start you start around some dangerous stuff, so you know there's dangerous stuff out there and possibly more dangerous stuff you've yet to see...unless you've no understanding of video game progression. You also know reality, you know in reality it's dangerous to go swimming in the vast open ocean at night, and that it'd be dangerous if you just went out into the ocean for more than a day. So the threat of the idea of these kinds of things, the threat of the unseen, will keep you close for a bit. But once you know you can just swim out from your starting point to either of the islands no matter what time it is that threat becomes completely nonexistent. And depending on when you decide to take that chance and see what's out there that threat of the unknown can disappear pretty fucking quickly in this game.
You're right, it's a game, which is the weakest medium for presenting a genuine atmosphere of horror or fear. It's the easiest thing in the world to bear in mind that it's only a game and methodically plumb the mechanics of the ultimately imperfect presentation, discovering that there are limitations and sets of simplistic rules governing everything. You'll find that it's all just an illusion—because it is.
Even if there were terrors queued up waiting to nab you as you swam toward those islands, you could find a way to beat them or avoid them. They are ultimately MOBs in a computer game. Congratulations, you figured out that the actual ocean at night is more threatening than a computer program running on a screen.
I've never played a genuinely frightening or horrifying computer game of any kind. The best that can be said of them is that you can be startled, or that they're viscerally thrilling. There can be a sense of dread at unknown threat—I felt that playing System Shock 2, Prey, etc.—but that too can easily be overcome because ultimately they're indeed just scripted MOBs.
Basically, your criticism could be applied in some way to literally any game that has ever been developed. "It's not as frightening as an actual ocean/swamp/hellish realm/deep space/etc." Capital observation. You have to work a bit and cooperate with the game if you want to experience some immershun. Alien: Isolation's atmosphere of horror (for example) can be easily dismantled, the rules governing the alien easily broken down into a mechanical set of instructions.
Incidentally the best threat in this game isn't the threat of the unknown, it's the threat of the know. It's the first time you accidentally stumble across some Leviathan that wreaks your shit and you know whatever area is a no go zone unless you've go something that can get you through their safely.
But you never know exactly where and when they may sniff you out, nor will you know they're onto you until it's too late (unless you have the submarine's radar) which, as I've said, is an echelon above a goblin squatting directly on a treasure chest.
Oh I did. Subnautica, STALKER, Alien Isolation, System Shock 2, SOMA, etc. scared the shit out of me.
The moment when the Alien shows up for the first time in Isolation had me PARALYZED with fear. And I think I never had more fear of going to places than near "potential Reaper zones" in Subnautica. Fuck, even in Darkwood - a isometric game - I crapped my paints in the first nights.
It's easy to say those games aren't scary 20 hours in after you learned the Alien or Reaper or Chomper AI behavior and such. But early on when you're still green ? I prepare my diapers, thank you very much.
They only stop being scary because they are shallow indie games made for childlike pansies like who are content with a glorified Minecraft. EverQuest never stopped being scary, even after years, simply because there is always something that can kill you with 1 hit. And dying was a huge setback so it made everything intense. These survival games could do the same thing but they never even try because it is hard to fill a world with good content, and they can get away with just filling it with copy paste fish and sharks instead. They take all the time-sinks from sandbox gaming like constantly travelling long distances, grinding for materials, etc. But there is none of the depth, no emergent gameplay, or thousands of hardcoded factions, quests and finely tuned encounters with scripted events, complex combat systems, etc. etc.
You get none of that with indie games now. But they can get away with it apparently. Look how successful this is. And it people defend it...
Subj is scary enough with the hardcore mode on. Even when you simply explore debris and counting a way back before you suffocate. Unfortunately, part of that fear comes from possibility of being thrown under textures by the reaper. So, it's hard to recommend, really. But playing w/o hardcore is non-scary at all and therefore boring.
They only stop being scary because they are shallow indie games made for childlike pansies like who are content with a glorified Minecraft. EverQuest never stopped being
Assisted Living Godzilla What you say is largely true. The world is much less dangerous than it presents itself as, but speaking as someone who has moderate thalassophobia, the suggestion of danger was enough for me; I’m not sure I could have stuck with the game if it actually was as dangerous as it kept suggesting. I’ve played a multitude of horror/survival-horror games, nearly all of which have been yawn-inducing to me, but Subnautica did a great job at exploiting a very real and familiar fear for me, which is something nearly every other entry’s attempt at has failed at.
They only stop being scary because they are shallow indie games made for childlike pansies like who are content with a glorified Minecraft. EverQuest never stopped being
EQ is more horror than anything you've ever played. You would shit yourself walking through a zone full of howling ghosts that could kill you with 1 hit and the only thing saving you is invisibility which could fade randomly at any moment. A game can make you scared in a horror way or scared for your survival and EQ did both. Mostly the latter but still. My point which you missed completely, was that it also had tons of content and gameplay, emergent gameplay too. And they did this on a budget and 20+ years ago. So what's the excuse for this shitty shallow swimming with fish game?
Wtf? I completely agreed with your points and you didn't even read mine. I'm going to put it down to bad medication or terrible eyesight, or temperament. Either way I'll give you one more chance and I'll go slowly.
So this Blaine moron is saying gaming isn't suited to being scary and that Subnautica isn't scary, etc. etc. His usual shit. Then YOU said you got scared by several games and it only stops being scary after 20 hours once you learned how to beat the AI.
I agree with all of this! But now I want to suggest a solution that I've ACTUALLY SEEN. Now this is where I lost you last time so try your best, I read both your points and thought about them enough to agree. Are you gonna try to read my point? Here it comes...? It stops being scary after 20 hours and you beat the AI, but I've played a game where every 20 hours there is a new AI and a whole new challenge. The game existed and it was amazing. If you want to judge it as being shit because of the box art or something then go ahead. But just know that you don't know anything about the game, you've never seen it, you wouldn't make fun of it if you knew about it, and you would agree with me if you knew what I was talking about.
Cool man. And yeah you might but it also sucks in many ways It used to be much better but even then it did a lot wrong. It's just that for everything it did badly it did 2 things in a way better than I've seen in any other game. (And with not a big team or budget)
It used to be much better but even then it did a lot wrong. It's just that for everything it did badly it did 2 things in a way better than I've seen in any other game. (And with not a big team or budget)
