Everyone hates the dentist. They poke and prod aggressively inside your mouth, making your gums bleed as they scrape away the plaque bonded to your teeth. All to the ambience of your spit slurping through a hose hanging out of your mouth. (and Kenny G) \”You know, if you flossed more your gums wouldn\’t bleed like this.\”, they tell you. You look them in the eyes and nod, knowing full well the only time you\’re actually going to floss is when you need to, like when you eat grilled corn on the cob or beef jerky. I\’ve had quite a few dentists throughout my 29 years on this sphere of life called Earth, but there is one dentist I remember fondly. She was kind and sweet, and most importantly, personable. She knew you by name, what\’s been going on in your life. Oh yeah—and she also was a seasoned scuba diver. Her office walls were adorned with photos of her and various sea life such as the white fin tipped shark. My dentist was a badass.
I have always been fascinated by marine life. It\’s undeniably beautiful with bold bright colors from sprawling coral reefs to starfish, sharks, and jellyfish. Yet, for something that takes up so much space on this planet compared to the continents we inhabit, it\’s a world we often take for granted. A world that lives in the furthest recesses of our mind and is only brought to our attention when something like Finding Dory or Blackfish are released.
…Or in my case, Subnautica.
I remember receiving a press email a year or so back about the game. As you can imagine, it immediately piqued my interest. but then, much like the real thing, I kind of forgot about it until I saw it on the Xbox Marketplace. I think back then it was announced only for PC and the hardcore survival mode turned me off. I\’m not much for survival sims. I live in the real world where I have to survive every day, so the idea of cooking and watching my hydration levels is unappealing to me. Then, one day, it was released on the Xbox One with a one hour timed demo of the full game thanks to Microsoft\’s fantastic Game Preview program. Within the first fifteen minutes I emailed the game\’s developers asking for an ongoing review copy. After maybe a half hour (if that) I grew impatient and purchased (Subnautica for $19.99)(https://store.xbox.com/en-US/Xbox-One/Games/Subnautica/ec3cb120-5fdc-4472-aa43-7aee97561bf8?cid=majornelson) and boy am I happy I did.
The build that originally launched on Xbox was three or four months behind it\’s PC sibling and lacked many of the systems I found myself reading about online. It also lacked any real optimization for the Xbox platform. Want a bed so you can skip the haunting and dangerous night cycle? Nope. Want to recharge your Seaglider\’s battery or your Seamoth\’s power cell so you don\’t have to keep harvesting resources to craft more? No can do. The game also froze for a split second every five or ten seconds constantly. I know this doesn\’t sound like a good sell but it should. You know why? Because I played the shit out of that dated build of the game that hiccuped on my console. Ask anyone here at Pixelrater and they\’ll tell you that I spend most of my gaming time on my PS4, so this is the most action my Xbox has seen since Rise of the Tomb Raider, which came out well over six months ago.
Let me paint a picture of how the game starts. Imagine waking up strapped in a seat on a life pod that\’s on fire. Panicking, you immediately unfasten yourself and put out the flames with an extinguisher that’s lying on the floor. After playing fireman, it\’s now you. Alone. In a pod with damaged power systems and little handholding to guide you. Your first priority is to scavenge the resources required to craft a welding tool to repair the pod’s power system. Okay, cool. How do you find what resources you need? Well, you just keep interacting with fixtures on the pod’s wall until you stumble upon the fabricator which, as the name suggests, fabricates items. When you open the fabricator you’re presented with three primary menu categories and subcategories:
Resources
– Basic materials
– Advanced materials
– Electronics
Sustenance (if playing on a harder difficulty)
– Water
– Cooked food
– Cured food
Personal
– Equipment
– Tools
Deployables
– Seaglide
– Mobile vehicle bay
– Beacon
– Current generator
– Waterproof locker
– Gravsphere
The Deployables category contains the fun stuff like vehicles such as the Seaglide, Seamoth, Cyclops, etc. But before I could have fun with any vehicles, I needed to repair my little floating life bubble. After I discovered the recipe for the welder I emerged out of the pod and was greeted with a beautiful bright sky shining above endless blue ocean with a gigantic crashed ship I was flung from. I gazed down into the shimmering water before I dove in and once I did I was immediately taken back by the beauty of the bright coral and the interesting creature design. All it takes is one look at the sea life to reveal you’ve crash landed in an alien ocean among a galaxy of unknown worlds ([see what I did there?][http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/]). After finding the needed ore, I swam back to my pod and crafted the welding tool and repaired the power system.
Okay, great, now what?
I was about to find out. Shortly after the ship in the ocean exploded, scattering debris throughout the seabed as well as emitting radiation in the immediate vicinity. I came to find out the radiation would limit where I could travel and explore. The solution? Find the needed materials to craft a radiation suit. However, my oxygen tank only holds a finite amount of oxygen—definitely not satisfactory for exploring the ocean depths. So before setting out to craft a suit I decided it’d be a better investment of my time to make two additional oxygen tanks in order to stay submerged longer. After building more tanks you’ll want fins and then a scanner. The scanner is where the real fun begins; with it you’ll gain the ability to scan boxes on the ocean floor for blueprints. These blueprints unlock tools like the habitats builder, which is a key item, and allows you to create structures like rooms, corridors, solar panels, fabricators, battery chargers, and many other items.
That’s pretty much the main gameplay loop of Subnautica, forage for materials, scour the ocean in search of blueprints to craft equipment, build a base or multiple bases, and venture out into the depths of the alien ocean. You’ll encounter other downed life pods and eventually islands, although I have yet to set foot on land. Also, similar to Game of Thrones, the night is dark and full of terrors, so as a general rule of thumb I’d say if a sea creature is bigger than you, it’ll kill you in no time. As Will and I discussed in our (Subnautica themed episode of LAN Party)(http://pixelrater.com/2016/07/episode-20-diving-into-subnautica/) there are multiple difficulties to suit your play style from hardcore where you have to scavenge for food and water rations to an extremely laid back difficulty where everything is unlocked and you don’t have to worry about damage or oxygen. If I had to draw a comparison going off of Will and Daney’s experiences, I’d say Subnautica is like an underwater Minecraft. It’s worth pointing out again that being in early preview the game is a bit rough around the edges. Even still, with bugs and performance hiccups aside, Subnautica is an easy recommendation for those who want a world to get lost in. Between Subnautica, ABZÛ, and the oceans in No Man’s Sky it looks like I’ll be partaking in a lot of underwater expeditions through the rest of the year.
