Recent reviews by Shifty

Preface: This game was in my library for some time before I happened to play it coincidentally at the same time the Subnautica 2 drama happened. For that reason, if you won't want to buy now because of your views on the company, Krafton's behaviour or the industry in general, that's fine, this review just serves to illustrate my reaction to the game.
----

Subnautica: Below Zero is a faithful, "can I have some more Subnautica please" with some extra ups and downs. It introduces some cool gadgets, but also some frustrating new elements which feel a bit like UWE felt pressured to put in the game for the sake of putting something new in the game.

Firstly, S:BZ assumes you've played Subnautica first, and thus doesn't slowly introduce you to things that were wondrous discoveries the first time round; you'll be up and running within 2-3 hours with a solid base, survival becomes easy almost as quickly and you don't have to go far to get your first vehicle. Which is great, as it gives you more time to spend exploring, collecting blueprints and unravelling the story.

The map, whilst smaller than Subnautica, is still as wonderful to explore and devilishly intricate with lots of little hidden areas full of resources and tech to discover, and the biomes are still as beautiful and mesmerising as the first game... underwater.

'Cos when the game turns your attention to the above-sea level areas, it becomes more of a chore than fun. The overground areas are fine to traverse, but too intricate to be of interest (really, you have no reason to be climbing down into caves unless its for 1 or 2 specific resources) and it's always a case of "ok I got the thing, now can I get back into the water?"

The story is good, it's an interesting search for clues as to where your sister has ended up, and makes some good references to 4546B and events from the first game. But it's missing that wondrous, "I gotta survive" element that the first game did. Being on this alien planet feels more trivial than last time, where in Subnautica it was a fight for survival against the flora and fauna, the tone here is definitely lighter and the environment and its inhabitants take a back seat to the story and the characters we read about. No, seriously, the sense of danger and fear is somewhat muted here.

In terms of gadgets, vehicles and tech, there's plenty of cool things to build and try out, and apart from the standard tools for the job, you build some of the other things once and don't need to worry about say, water, ever again.

S:BZ suffers from "taking what made something in S1 good, and making it 'ok' to introduce something new". This is what happens with the vehicles: we had a really cool Cyclops sub in S1 with silent running features that would save you from certain death, and in S:BZ we get a modular vehicle that's... fine. Like, it's got all the things the cyclops had but you can customise it... ok. But you can't look around, you need to awkwardly rotate the whole vehicle to look in a particular direction... frustrating when traversing narrow spaces. At least the Prawn Suit went untouched!


Overall, on its own, it's a Subnautica downgrade. But as an add-on, it's a good game, a respectable and faithful expansion to S1 and deserving of your time if, and only if, you played Subnautica, loved it, and are asking, "Please sir, can I have some more Subnautica?"

And if that's the case, enjoy it, because with the way things are going with the devs and the cursed execs (as usual) it might be the last bit of good underwater adventuring we're gonna have for now.

The Codex Astartes definitely supports this action video game