088
INFO
FORMATPS4
ETAOUT NOW
PUBUNKNOWN
WORLDS
ENTERTAINMENT
DEVUNKNOWN
WORLDS
ENTERTAINMENTSUBNAUTICA
You’ll never look at the sea the same way again
T
his is one of those games where the
less you know about it, the better.
Even the name of a single item could
spoil a huge chunk of the experience,
and that wouldn’t be fair. Well, not on our
watch. This review doesn’t give away any of
the best surprises. But if you have even the
slightest interest in games about adventure
and discovery, get this now.Subnautica starts with your spaceship crashing
on an alien world. You manage to board an
escape pod, which keeps you alive... at least until
you reach the planet’s surface. You wake up to
discover your pod is on fire. But you pick up a
fire extinguisher and put out the blaze, leaving
the pod damaged but mostly functional. Your pod
has a health pack dispenser that takes time to
recharge, a fabricator to make new items (think
the replicator in Star Trek), and a broken radio.
As you emerge from the smoking wreck, all
you can see is your crashed spaceship burning in
the distance. That, and water. Miles and miles of
water and nothing else besides glimpses of coral
and some bug-eyed fish that are jumping out of
the wet stuff near you. Hunger and dehydration
are kicking in. You’ve got a simple choice: stay
here and die, or dive in and try not to.
Where other games give you quests in an
immersion-shattering menu marked ‘quests’,Subnautica’s tasks are cleverly
suggested through recipes in
the fabricator’s menus. As you
explore the watery alien world,
you discover new blueprints
for tools and machinery, which
enable you to explore and build
even more.
As you begin to make more
and more complex items, you
suddenly realise there’s far
more to the game than meets
the eye. Your goals broaden
exponentially as you find your
feet, opening up into a story
with excellent pacing. Planet
4546B is very much like Earth
in the way the climate works
but, being alien, everything
on it has the potential for the
extraordinary. And so as you
venture further from your
starting point you frequentlyIf your bum was
behaving like
that, you’d have
that look on
your face too.find things to surprise, excite,
and even scare you.FROZEN WATER
However, it has to be said that
some of the illusion is broken
by the technological limitations
of the Unity game engine. It
feels wrong to talk about the
metaphorical ‘man behind the
curtain’, but when the curtain
keeps falling down, it’s difficult
to ignore him. The draw
distance is roughly 1km, so you
can see your crashed ship and
other objects of note clipping
in and out of existence as you
move around. Similarly, the
game often freezes momentarily
as you move between the
surface and the submerged area.
Massive environmental features
like fronds and mushroom-likeNO ARMBANDS @catgonecrazy“YOU FREQUENTLY FIND
THINGS TO SURPRISE, EXCITE
AND EVEN SCARE YOU.”