Subnautica Review

An Octopus' Garden in the Shade

I love underwater in games, I really get a kick out of exploring one of the most diverse and interesting environments on the planet. So when you get a mini-sub in something like GTA V or a submarine sim like Silent Hunter, I'm there! It was a total no-brainer for me to take a look at Subnautica then for the Xbox One.

The game is part survival sim, underwater exploration, crafting, and of course as things tend to be with games of this ilk: building. You take the part of a survivor from a crashed space ship, stranded and alone on a world made up of a vast ocean, your large ship in the background, a monument to whatever disaster caused the catastrophic crash.

From this point on you're left to your own devices, playing on various game difficulty modes, typical survival, a hardcore variant, and of course the Minecraft-like Creative where you have no restrictions and can play with all the tools, and all of the watery-sand in the sandbox.

Exploration, Getting things Done

Yep, the key here is getting out of your tiny survival pod, getting things done, and making sure you've got enough food (and drink) to survive in the standard game mode. The ocean is teeming with life of course, a lot of it doesn't want to eat you either, but there's quite a bit of it which will happily send you to Davey Jones Locker and force you to lose all your recently gathered stuff.

The deeper you go, the more dangerous it becomes, and the more specialist gear you'll need to reach that depth, and more importantly - survive!

Again, the ocean provides, and the underground caves are littered with stuff you can pick up and turn into other stuff. The pod has a nice 3d printer style replicator which will output what you need as long as you feed it the right ingredients. You can't stay down there forever, your suit only has a small supply of oxygen, and you're going to need to find even more ways to explore.

Better oxygen bottles are a start, and the further into the tech-tree you go, the more options you'll get.

We All Live in a Not-Yellow Submarine!

Subnautica features a few methods for ensuring you don't end up at the bottom of the ocean as a pile of bones too often, the Sea Moth is a small submarine which is pretty neat for exploring the depths, and it's agile enough to get out of trouble if a really big fish decides it looks like a tasty treat!

There's also a Command Sub which acts as a mobile HQ, you can also dock the Sea Moth to it. The sub can be renamed, customised and modified somewhat.

Later on you'll be able to build an underwater base, with a Moon Pool, where you can also dock a Sea Moth (and customise it with addons, improving its energy use, adding torpedoes, and more). The habitat construction is fairly simple, using snap-together components, and for the most part works really well. There are a few placement issues, and it's a little clunky to get used to.

Early days on Console

Subnautica on Xbox One is an early days kind of game, it's lagging behind the PC version in a fair few areas, but the game developers have mentioned this in the game, and they're promising regular patches to bring the two versions closer together. This is definitely one that earns its title of Game Preview, and you should be aware that it's got a few graphics glitches, and bugs even now.

I've experienced slow frame-rates, pop-in/out, and odd physics glitches where both fish, and environmental objects are suspended above the water. There's also been a time where the ground itself under the sea hasn't rendered, so it's left all the attached sea life just floating there for 20 seconds, only to have the ground suddenly appear as if by magic, the seabed appearing suddenly and blocking progress.

I'm sure they'll fix these issues though.

If you like Minecraft, love underwater exploration, survival games, you'll probably like Subnautica - but I'd only jump in if you're prepared to get your feet wet in the waters of Game Preview's buggy Early Access version.