Disclaimer: this review was temporarily made negative in protest to a decison by Unknown Worlds to fire the sound designer, Simon Chylinski. As life goes on for the extremely talented Mr. Chylinski, such has the negative review turned positive again. While I still shudder at the attitudes of some higher-ups in UW that lead to the firing, I do not see it as fair to square blame on the entire development team with a negative reiview hanging over what is certainly a wonderful game. I will leave this disclaimer up as a reminder of the event, UW's toxic attitude treatment of Chylinski, and the consequences of posting personal material on a professional social media account.

Subnautica brings to the table my favorite thing about gaming: Innovation. It takes a concept never explored before and fleshes it out into a vibrant, extremely colorful world full of character and emotion.

The graphics, while not being the most technically impressive in the world, manage to be drop-dead gorgeous with a masterful artstyle and stunning design, giving each biome a unique feel that shapes how you view the world that is both your paradise and your prison. This feels like one of those games that I would play just to expierience the atmosphere, even without any gameplay elements.

The survival aspects boil down to basic gathering and base building, but flesh these out to truly fit the underwater theme, make use of the environment's potential, and somehow manage to reinstill a sense of accomplishment in the washed-out survival genre. Travelling and searching for specific ingredients and areas, with the refining and exploring that follows, is immensly rewarding despite the somewhat lacking tech tree which I would hope to be further expanded.

The setting is nailed hands down from the hulking leviathans gliding through the gloom to the incredibly realistic water effects. The ocean's multi-dimensional nature makes this feel more like another space game than something set in the wilderness; gravity is almost always meaningless as you hover, dive, and glide across the lunar landscape, slipping through coral hoops and grappling up vast chasms. At times I almost forgot I was designed as a human protagonist and found myself thinking more of the player character as another simple member of the food chain; barely more significant to the planet than the Peepers I gouged on. Not a hero, not an underdog, just an observer adapting to nature with the aid of some tech. I'm almost always a huge fan of any game where running or hiding is more effective than fighting, which in this game is impossible the majority of the time. My favorite item is by far the simple Scanner; reading about the huge amounts of flora and fauna was vastly more entertaining than ripping them to shreds with some kind of laser weapon, and it made me feel like a real scientist cataloguing the environment for Alterra.

The most impressive part of Subnautica is without a doubt the sound design. This is by a mile the most immersive survival game I have ever expirienced. There was never a second where I wasn't completely involved and wrapped up in what I was doing in the game. I always was completely convinced that I was really underwater, even without audiophile headphones. The phenominal soundtrack greatly aides the game's senses of isolation, wonder, and progress, it matches it perfectly. The real crème de la crème however is the simple ambient tracks and sound effects. They accomplish exactly what they're intended to without flaw. Everything sounds as washed out and distant as you would expect it to underwater. Every distant roar makes me flinch in anticipation of the possible nightmare I'll face when I turn around especially in the Lava zone, where the constant moaning of Sea Dragons completely seals the ambience. And even something as simple as the the perpetual harmonic ringing in your ears takes this from a video game to a true virtual experience.

However, the most noteworthy feature of Subnautica is that it manages to be both a survival game and one of the best, scariest horror titles I've ever played. It is the Harvey Dent of the genre. Sometimes it's just a gingerbread house where you frolic among the sealife on the ocean floor, chewing on creepvine and lying in the kelp contently, no pesky humans to bother you. Natural wonder and beauty at its finest. Then 10 minutes later you're treading water 1000 meters from your base and can't see anything below you, completely open to the possiblity that something is about to gnaw your leg off from the unknown. Or you leap off a canyon and plumet rapidly into an infinite abyss through the giant roots of radioactive blue kelp, or slide down a dune just to hear the roar that sends every Subnautica player's heart up their throat and turn to see something large, red, and full of tentacles intent on ripping your face off. I was thassalaphobic before I even started playing, so it was twice as awful an expirience. Yet at the same time the most ♥♥♥♥ing exhilerating adrenaline rush I have ever encountered. True organic horror at its finest, playing off the fear that plagues almost every human in the ocean: we don't belong here.

Subnautica's most notable flaws lie in the iffy optimization (which can be said to come with the territory, but is never-the-less quite terrible sometimes) and quite a few fairly major bugs. There are also some annoyances in general, such as being unable to place a building without an obvious reason, or having creatures clip through the ground. The draw distance is lower than what would be prefferable, and some biomes have little incentive to be traversed. Once one spends a reasonable amount of time playing, threats level out far too quickly, as the creature AI is often not as unpredictable as it could be. These complaints do take a lot from the game at times, but not enough to bring it down from unimaginably fun.

It needs to be made extremely clear that you should never, EVER go too far on the wiki or view any sort of map/biome spoilers while in the process of expiriencing this game. It is a billion times better expirienced near-blind. Using the wiki to locate the occassional specific ingredient is fine, but make sure not to go too far down the rabbit hole of info.

This is the first game I would label a "masterpiece" in ages and possibly the first early access one. It is an absolute breathe of fresh air to the survival genre and is a new must-have on my list of steam's finest. This is what happens when you give dedicated, hardworking developers a rich concept full of potential.