But as the game goes on, you are able to travel farther, dive deeper, and create new structures, eventually freeing yourself from the whole “go back to base to build stuff” loop that dominates the early game. Survival is your first priority, with the constant nagging need for food and water dictating your first moves. With little in the way of survival equipment, they must dive down to the ocean floor to explore and gather materials, which can then be fashioned into helpful gear. But for those that need a refresher, it works like this: Players arrive unceremoniously on a water-covered planet. I’m not certain that there will be anyone reading this review that doesn’t have at least a passing familiarity with the Subnautica franchise, as the first game was so wildly successful that it became something of a gaming cultural touchstone. And that was far better than having all of my goodies and materials drop from my body 200 meters below the surface. Below Zero’s superb physics engine would keep stuff right where I dropped it (well, to be fair, the titanium would roll away and gather in a small ditch not too far from my front door). I discovered that once my storage container in my pod was full, I could just dump things on the ground outside. I also learned to not carry valuable items on my body when I was heading into situations where I might be killed. Most of my drowning deaths were the results of my getting turned around in some underwater network of caverns and not being able to find my way out, rather than my own insatiable curiosity. I actually didn’t perish terribly often of underwater asphyxiation. Go further, go deeper, find the next super cool thing. I swam too far, ignoring the strict mechanics of Below Zero which kill you the moment you run out of oxygen, and died 200 meters below the sea, losing most of my stuff.Īnd that’s how they get you. I figured I had enough air to at least swim over there a bit and check it out, which turned out to be ridiculously inaccurate. But then I noticed the nearby cave.Īfter I explored the cave (more pipe!), I noticed something even crazier: a fully submerged base, even deeper down.
I could just manage to get inside it, grab a few things, and get back to my pipe before running out of breath. I ran a second line, so I could stop and get air on the way down to my first line because, again, I’m dumb, and this was a ridiculous plan.īy the time I got down far enough, I discovered a submerged ship. At this point, I passed an invisible threshold, and the game announced that my oxygen reserves would disappear twice as fast if I left my precious pipe-supplied air feed. I swam back home, gathered more titanium, and made more pipe. Having laid all the pipe I had, I realized that I was still at least 80 meters from my destination. I swam back and began the tedious task of laying the pipes in what I thought was a straight line down, but what turned out to be a herky-jerky zig-zag. Swimming back to my submerged base at least four minutes away, I gathered a bunch of titanium and constructed a little floating air pump and as many pipes as I could carry. I decided that I would construct a network of air pipes that would allow me get down to check the source of the signal.
But I had two things: a dumb plan, and the will to execute it. I had already probably explored further than the game expected me to at this point, considering that I didn’t yet have any equipment-let a lone a vehicle-that would let me dive deeper, stay underwater longer, or swim any faster. Arriving at the signal, I was horrified to see that the source was 200 meters down, far deeper into the murky depths than I had gone. I decided to swim out to the signal and check it out. While exploring, I came across a radio signal from an earlier explorer, someone who had disappeared with the first wave of people to explore this planet. Here’s an example that comes early enough in the game so as to not be a spoiler.
If the player were a metaphorical fish, the world of Subnautica would be comprised of 95% fishing lures. The game is constantly trying to lure you into pushing yourself too far, tempting you into swimming too far out of your depth, dangling something so enticing in front of you that you will decide to stay for just two or three seconds too long, and then its all over. This is a mistake, because the world in Subnautica: Below Zero is comprised of constant siren songs that come in all shapes and sizes. Subnautica: Below Zero is so beautiful that it is easy to get distracted by the wonder of it all and forget the constant danger.