Put it this way, if you enjoyed the original game, you’ll love Subnautica: Below Zero. A significant improvement over the last game, if nothing else. I don’t know if it’s just because everything is covered in a layer of snow, but it certainly makes it all feel more… modern. While underwater is still visually gorgeous from a purely technical level, making your first landfall always felt disappointing as you were warped back to PS2 era graphics. Now, it still feels a little like that but at least it makes sense right? It also just looks better. Controlling the character of Subnautica on land never felt good, like you were gliding across vast swathes of ice. Not so in Below Zero, you’re in a tundra, remember? Outside of the water, your body temperature becomes your main concern as you scavenge in abandoned bases and avoid the creatively named Snow Stalkers.Ĭonsidering you’ll be spending more time out of the ocean, it’s a good thing developer Unknown Worlds improved on the movement of the game. In the original game, the land was treated as a haven, a refuge from the horrors of the ocean. You’ll also be spending more time on land in Below Zero, which makes for a decent change of pace when 85% of the game is underwater. That’s the balance Subnautica has always been so good at keeping: Prompting curiosity while never outwardly encouraging your safety. Each creature is beautiful in it’s logical design that prods players to investigate but to also be wary when first encountering something. Seeing Penwings and Penlings (which must have been named after Benedict Cumberbatch) darting in out of the water, catching fish to feed to youngsters never grows old while the deeper you go the likely to come across things like Squidsharks, Cryptosuchus and if you’re unlucky, an Ice Worm. The Arctic Peeper, Crashfish, Boomerang and Bladderfish will all look familiar but the new creatures are the real stars. Fans of the first game will see some essential creatures while other, more iconic animals have been given a slight redesign. Speaking of which, the real stars of Subnautica continue to be the fauna that populate the icy waters of the planet. That may make the game appealing for some, but for me, I liked the feeling of being completely by myself with a character chatting about what a Sea Monkey stole off them. It’s a decent little story that sometimes drops the pacing (expected for a survival game with so much downtime) but I’ll admit that the addition of a voice made me feel less… isolated. Each of the characters has a distinct personality and certainly stands out as actual characters in comparison to the first game. If you’re a fan of audio log storytelling, that’s all present and accounted for, don’t you worry. The shift to a more… present character-focused story was unexpected, especially when you realise that Robin isn’t the only person strutting about the frozen tundra of Planet 4546B, but I won’t get into those spoilery details. You’re no longer a silent protagonist who’s crash-landed on the island, you’re Robin who won’t hesitate to offer her thoughts on the events unfolding around her as she searches for her sister, Sam. Below Zero goes in hard on the narrative and it actually works rather well. The original Subnautica set itself apart from the competition by not only having a (fairly competent) story but a definitive completion point, something many survival games avoid to ensure they rope players in for as long as possible. The most noticeable difference is the front-loaded narrative of Below Zero. In the process, it delivers a game that it’s as good if not slightly better than it’s predecessor while still occasionally suffering from some problems that should have been solved. So of course Subnautica: Below Zero, the standalone expansion to the original game, takes even that small sanctuary away from you. The only true place of safety was on the surface. While you could cruise around in a submarine, you know that there was something much bigger than you trawling through the depths for prey. The ocean, no matter how prepared you were, always felt like a treat. Back in 2018, when Subnautica first launched out of early access, I think what made it special was that the threshold of safety never arrived. There’s always a constant pressure to eat, hydrate, set up a shelter, or rest amongst myriad other factors that need to be accounted for, depending on the difficulty of the game. There’s a funny thing that happens while playing a survival game, and I believe this stands true for a variety of different sources: Every survival game starts off scary or at the very least tense.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |