Subnautica Review: Underwater Survival Experience

The first thing I want to discuss about Subnautica is the type of game it is. It is an open-world survival crafting game, as defined by the Steam tags, but it also has horror and sci-fi tags. I'm not going to spoil the game in this review, but I will tell you that there are elements that are really scary in Subnautica. You descend into the depths of an alien underwater world filled with wonder and peril. You craft equipment, pilot submarines, and outsmart wildlife to explore lush coral reefs, volcanoes, cave systems, and more, all while trying to survive. 

This is a survival game set mostly underwater. You start with nothing and must find and discover new technologies to get better tools, live longer, have more oxygen, travel faster, and generate food and water more easily as you progress through the game, all while learning the story.

The next category I like to discuss in a review is whether the game is fun. To determine this, you consider if it does what it's trying to do well and if it's fun to do those things. In Subnautica's case, yes, this game is tremendously fun. 

For me, it is fun to swim in the water, try to survive, explore, build your base, discover new technologies, and even get scared and swim for your life. I enjoy all elements of the game, so I think this scores as high as you can for fun. It's not always a thrill-a-minute kind of fun with an unbelievable adrenaline rush, but it has moments of extreme terror or excitement punctuated by a mostly chill experience of farming, collecting resources, and swimming.

Coming out of the "is the game fun" category, we look at the controls. In my opinion, Subnautica controls very well. Swimming feels intuitive, using the tools makes sense, the building system is great, the crafting interfaces are fine, and piloting the vehicles makes sense. 

There's some wonkiness when you're not in the water, like moving and jumping in your base, but that's a minor issue. This is a 2018 game from a small group, not a AAA title, so there is some jankiness. You need to save the game to avoid getting clipped out of the environment, but that only happened to me once and wasn't a deal-breaker. Overall, the controls are very good.

The crafting, inventory management, and building systems are also good. The building system makes sense, but it’s not always perfect at placing things, which is common in many first-person builders. The main issue is that there's not a great quality of life for inventory management. You can't quickly dump items into a chest or locker, and there’s no quick stacking or extracting like in games such as No Man's Sky or Stardew Valley. However, this doesn’t detract from the overall experience. The systems are intuitive and easy to use.

The UI is great. You can find a lot of information about creatures, areas, the story, and crafting components. You can pin recipes, see your oxygen levels, and monitor your hit points. Overall, the UI is clean, easy to use, not clunky or overly complicated, and it works really well. For the most part, the controls, systems, and UI are very good in Subnautica.

The next thing I want to look at is the story. Not all games have a great story, and you don't always need one for certain games to work. Super Mario Brothers is a great game, but the story is generally the same in every game. It's not why you play it. In certain cases, the story can really elevate a game, and I think Subnautica is one of those cases. The gameplay is fun enough on its own, but the story makes you care about what you're doing. Why am I doing this? Why do I care about this? That's one element of a story. Another element is the mystery and intrigue that drive you to progress the narrative to uncover what's going on.

In all ways, Subnautica's story is superb. It is a fascinating tale where you start knowing just about nothing and learn about the game through various means: audio logs, PDA files, and things you uncover and see for yourself. It's an ongoing story. 

You don't have to read all of it, but there's a bunch of lore that unlocks within your PDA, which is super interesting if you love stories. Subnautica is one of those games with such a good story that you want to read it. You want to know what's going on, you want to survive, but it also gives you that extra bit of investment. You care about what's going to happen next and realize you are involved in something larger than just your escape attempt. This aspect of Subnautica takes it to the next level in my opinion.

Next, let's talk about the visuals. Subnautica is a game that looks terrific. It won't blow your mind off with ultra-detailed textures and precise details with things going on everywhere on the screen. However, this game looks fantastic. The visuals are simple, clean, and the art direction is fantastic for the creatures and vehicles. Even though it's an older game, it looks very good.

Now let's talk about the audio. How does the game sound? In my opinion, fantastic. The game has cool music, awesome voice acting, and on-point sound effects. They can be super scary, environmental, and atmospheric, adding to the immersion. The ambient background sounds contribute to creating a believable living world under the water as you figure out what's going on with the Aurora and the planet.

Next, after considering all these things, I like to talk about the style of a game. This is subjective, but it comes down to how it all comes together. Does the game feel like it has a soul and artistic vision, or is it just an empty shell of plug-and-play components? In this case, the style is through the roof. Subnautica is an iconic game experience, perhaps the penultimate survival mystery sci-fi horror game.

So, whether you should buy it, or not? I think this depends on you. How could I make this argument? This is what I would say: If you like survival games, sci-fi games, crafting, and building games, then you're going to want to play this more than somebody who has no interest in those things. But honestly, Subnautica is such a unique, once-in-a-lifetime gaming experience that I would recommend it to anyone, even if those weren't your go-to genres. I think that Subnautica is so fantastic that you should at the very least try it.

Another part of whether you should buy it is, and I'm going to go through some categories to come back to whether you should play it. The first thing I look at is you should play it if you like these types of games. The other thing I want to look at is difficulty. This is important because some games can be so hard that you never want to actually progress or go back to it. You just give up, thinking it's too hard or too complicated, or whatever. 

People have different mileage for that kind of game. But this is not that. This is not too challenging. I don't think this is a hard game by any means. I think most people can complete this game if they put the time into it. If you prepare yourself, you can save the game, explore areas, and avoid most encounters. There’s some cheesiness with certain enemies killing you, of course, but overall, I don't think this is a super hard game, and I think anybody could play it and enjoy it.

Unless, and this is the caveat, it's not really a difficulty issue, but if you are a person who does not like being underwater and you do not like scary creatures, then maybe you shouldn't play it. I don’t like horror as a genre. I don’t watch scary movies, and I’m not into jump scares or any of that stuff. Even though this game had some of those things, I still love it. So, take it for what it's worth, but I didn't find the game to be so scary that I couldn't sleep or couldn't play it. But I know some people do, so it’s worth mentioning.

Another thing I like to talk about is the value. Is this a good value for your money? Well, yes. This game is now not that expensive. It's like $20 or $30, and it could go on sale. I think it's $30 on Steam. I think it's well worth $30. It can go on sale all the time because it's an older game. I think this is good value for the money because it's a reasonably long game. It's not a 100-hour game, but you can put hundreds of hours into it if you want. I think it is great value for the money.

Does it have replayability? Yes. I know my good friend, who introduced me to the game, has played it four or five times. I've played it twice. I think there is a reason to play it. The first time is really the best because the story is going to blow your mind, you won't know what's happening. But even when you know the story, just playing the game is fun. The progression system is fun. So, I think there's great replayability.