I'm not sure whether anyone here will be interested, but the sequel to the 2017 sandbox/survival game "Subnautica" from indie studio 'Unknown Worlds' has just gone into open beta. It runs poorly on my mac (which I really shouldn't be using to play games, but have been forced into using due to my last desktop currently being a melted slap-heap located in a junkyard somewhere), but then again pretty much EVERYTHING runs poorly on my Mac.
But from what I can ascertain through a haze of bad FPS, placeholder models, early-access bugs and unfinished gameplay, the game looks like it's going to be a excellent experience when finished. A lot of the cut content planned for the cancelled post 1.0 updates for Subnautica have been implemented (i.e. Control rooms, teleporters, new seabase modules), and the game has so far avoided falling into the trap of basically doing everything from the first game, but differently. There's a new story, new characters, new looks into the universe, and I wouldn't be surprised if the finished game wins the same awards the last instalment did. Subnautica won Best Survival Game of 2017 from Eurogamer, won a couple of other prizes and titles from other groups, and...wait, did I just spend two paragraphs talking about a game that some people may not have even heard of, let along played?
<ahem>...Subnautica, the original one, is a 2017 Survival game set in the far future. You are a 'non-essential systems maintenance technician' called Riley Robinson, and serve aboard a ship called the Aurora. The Aurora is owned by Alterra, a interstellar conglomerate that functions as a government in its own right. Alterra sent the Aurora to construct a FTL network node called a 'Phasegate' in the Adrianne Arm of our galaxy....
...except of course something has to go wrong, and the Aurora crashes on Planet 4845B...a planet mostly covered in water. To the point where you are now forced to survive underwater, while looking for a way off the planet you find yourself on.
The game isn't procced like you'd expect from a indie game originally designed for mobile. In fact, the game has a beautifully rendered and designed underwater world, which has the feel that the ecosystem could go on just find without you, and that you are simply a uninvited guest. This also means that anything that doesn't immediately swim away from you wants (in the words of Colonel Quaritch) to 'kill you and eat your eyes for Jujubes'. Sometimes this can be annoying, such as when your precious submersible that took you a long time to build and cost a lot of valuable resources is eaten by a creature twenty times your size.
The game also has a thrilling story that plays out via hidden locations around the open world, audio and text logs, distress beacons, as well as a checklist of things to do before you can head off-world. There's also base-building, with modular seabase components constructed from a handheld replicator device...oh, did I mention that the usual 'stick-plus-flint-equals-battleaxe' logic of survival games is remedied via the use of a star-trek style replicator? Not sure if that'll sweeten the deal much, but anyway.
The game also features the ability to farm alien plants and fish to sustain yourself. I ended up spending way too long to complete the game in survival, because as soon as I had constructed my sprawling underwater fortress with 60 rooms, a fully-functional nuclear reactor, ten submarine docks for my small fleet of vessels, a massive aquarium tower housing a colony of hundreds of alien fish, and a smaller tower containing enough potatoes, melons and glowing-alien-fruit-trees to last a lifetime; I had gotten quite comfortable. Enough so that I felt rather sad when I decided I wanted to see the end game, and had to leave it all behind.
I believe I already recommended Subnautica in a thread I dedicated to game review some time back, but I'm recommending the sequel now. I feel at least some people here will be interested. That's all for now!
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