Subnautica

Genre: Open World First-Person Survival Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Subnautica + Subnautica: Below Zero, along with Subnautica: Below Zero.)

Subnautica is an Open World First-Person Survival Adventure game where players take the role of a space traveler whose ship has suffered some great calamity and crashed on an ocean-covered alien world. Awakening in an escape pod, players must head out into the strange, hostile aquatic environment to gather resources to survive and hopefully find a way to get off the planet.

When this game released on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2018, it was infamous for pushing those platforms in ways they struggled with, so when the game was announced for release on Nintendo Switch in 2021, one of the biggest questions everyone had was how well Nintendo’s hardware could manage a game that far more powerful machines struggled with.

I suppose the answer to that question ultimately depends on how realistic your expectations are. Make no mistake, the Nintendo Switch version of this game bears all the hallmarks of a game that has made significant compromises to work on the handheld platform. The framerates have dropped from 60FPS on other platforms to 30FPS (with some brief but steep drops on occasion), and the texture resolutions are lower. The Nintendo Switch version also features more fog (or in this case, murky water) than in other versions of the game. Also, every version of this game is known to suffer some pretty nasty pop-in, and the Nintendo Switch version is no exception in that regard either. There’s also some pretty significant load times to contend with.

Having said that, despite these major sacrifices, the overall experience here remains largely intact, and that means this is a game that’s kinda’ a wonder to behold, presenting players with a beautiful underwater landscape full of lush, detailed fauna and flora, as well as some fantastic-looking water and lighting, with the game’s dynamic day/night cycle filtering down under the water to transform the wondrous landscape not only based on what part of it you’re looking at, but when you’re looking at it. A lot of attention has been made to little details in this game, from shark-like creatures that seem to be either playing with or possibly collecting debris from the downed ship, to a massive moon that causes everything to be cast in darkness when it eclipses the sun, causing bioluminescent life to be one of the only things you’ll see clearly as the landscape is cast in darkness. For all its graphical faults, the Nintendo Switch version of Subnautica is still a visually-stunning game, and it is paired with a lovely synthesized soundtrack that does a good job of accentuating that beauty.

The gameplay here has players scrounging resources from the surrounding area and bringing them back to your escape pod to be processed in a handy fabricator unit, transforming raw materials into useful tools, as well as food and drinkable water. As players progress, they gain the ability to process new materials with the tools they create, as well as to scan wreckage from the ship to gain recipes for new tools. As such, one of the core gameplay loops of this game is finding resources, crafting tools that allow you to explore further or process additional resources, and then making use of that added utility to get even more advanced resources.

For those who aren’t a big fan of survival-style games, this game thankfully gives players multiple difficulty level options, including a more casual mode that allows players to forego the need to constantly seek out resources for food and water. For those looking for a challenge, on the other hand, there’s a game mode here that allows players only one life. Given that I’m not the biggest fan of survival mechanics in games, I much appreciate having these options.

Having said that, there are still a lot of inconveniences here that make this a game that’s hard for me to fully appreciate. Given the very three-dimensional nature of the underwater environment, I suppose it’s understandable that there’s not a comprehensive map, but the lack of any sort of map whatsoever is frustrating, and particularly so given that it’s absurdly easy to get disoriented in this game – underwater things are murky and repetitive enough that it’s easy to lose track of where you are and where you’ve been, and on the surface so much of the world is just flat open ocean that there’s no way of orienting yourself apart from where you are in relation to the wreckage of the ship and your escape pod.

Things are made more frustrating by something I’m sure many will undoubtedly see as one of the game’s better features – its refusal to hand-hold players. You’re not told how to operate the game’s menus, not told how to use the important tools at your disposal, and not told exactly what it is you should be working on or where you should be going, save for when you’re wanting for food, water, oxygen, or medical attention. At the very least the fabricator does indicate what resources you need to craft the tools you have recipes for, but you’re often not given an indication where you can look for these resources, or if they’re even something realistically attainable at your current point in the game.

For players who like to figure things out for themselves and not be told what to do, I’m sure this will seem like a dream come true. But for me, it resulted in me constantly having to dip down to fruitlessly search for something I could use to enable me to spend longer underwater without drowning, only to have to bob back up to the surface before much time had passed, then repeat the process while trying to keep myself properly oriented and not lose track of where I was going and where I had already been.

This isn’t even getting into the hostile creatures you’ll have to fend off, largely using only defensive weapons, with the game requiring you to manually switch over to them in a way that can be highly frustrating. For many threats, I found this process so bothersome that it ended up being easier to circle-strafe around them until I was able to put enough distance between us or they just ended up giving up on me. I feel like it seems telling that my first experience with one of the monstrous shark-like fish that hunts you was one of terror and panic, and that later on this subsided into annoyance and frustration rather than a feeling of powerful progression and mastery.

One final note – this version of the game does not feature gyroscopic motion controls or touchscreen controls, even though I feel it could have greatly benefitted from both. What you’re getting is a straight port. However, there’s an argument to be made that this in itself is more than Nintendo Switch owners could have realistically expected.

In closing, I wanted to like Subnautica a lot more than I did. Its fascinating and beautiful world, its unique gameplay, and the simple fact of its mere existence on the Nintendo Switch are all impressive and enticing. Unfortunately, I found myself frustrated by so many elements of its gameplay that I felt like it was hard for me to appreciate the game’s better qualities. For fans of Survival games, this is absolutely a game to play – there’s not much else out there like it. But for the average player, I feel like this is going to be a love it or hate it experience.

tl;dr – Subnautica is a downgraded but competent port of the Open-World First-Person Survival Adventure game that has you exploring a hostile aquatic alien world after your spaceship crashes. The world here is beautiful and enticing, but the gameplay is frustrating in numerous ways due to its almost complete refusal to hand-hold the player in any way. Fans of the Survival Adventure genre should definitely give this game a look, but others may find its flaws make it too hard to appreciate.

Grade: B

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