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jp's Subnautica (PS4)

[February 15, 2023 06:53:37 PM]

I recently installed this for a more in-depth, detailed, prolonged game experience. I had seen it before (on PC), played it a little, but now I wanted to try to really engage as much as possible with the game.

Generally speaking I don't play a lot of "survival/building" games for my own entertainment - but this one I have owned for a while and the game has gotten so much attention that it made sense to go for it.

A few observations:

1. I started playing in the "regular" mode and it was interesting, and scary, and a little bit exciting, but I was surprised by how little handholding/tutorializing there is. You basically have to swim around and figure stuff out. Which is fine, but the text was really small (when read from the couch) which was annoying. I then realized that you can configure a bunch of stuff for a different play experience so I decided to turn off the hunger and thirst. I could still die (lack of air or loss of hit points) but I didn't have to sweat all the making food/water stuff that seemed more onerous and annoying than fun and interesting. I might go back now that I have a better sense of how the game works - and perhaps it'll be less annoying?

2. Inventory really is a huge limitation - and I realized that this is not the sort of game where you want to pick up a resource when you see it. Rather, you need to play it by having a plan (I'm looking for X resources of Y types) and just ignore whatever else you see. My sense is that rarity isn't really that much of an issue - once you know where some things tend to appear/spawn - so it's more about planning what you want to build next and then sticking to that plan before coming up with another. Otherwise you end up wasting too much time sorting inventory, dropping stuff, and feeling bad about the time you spent picking stuff up that you're now throwing out.

3. As I ventured further out I spotted stuff that then resulted in "moving the story forward". This was fun and unexpected - it also unlocked new resources and so on. But, generally the game's loop started to feel longer (travel further) for less reward. By this time I had build the little underwater scooter thing - so I was going faster than usual, but it started to feel a little tiresome and I started to get a bit bored at this point.

4. I bailed before getting to (what I assume will be) the major base building parts of the game. I did build a few things but for the most part it seemed like a pointless exercise (in terms of the game's goals - here I was "stuck" trying to get to a transponder that was too deep for me to access and I had no idea how/where to get the materials I needed to build the stuff to go deeper). I guess I could have consulted a guide to see what was going on - but I was more interested in preserving the (in my mind) original experiential intent of the game - the thrill of discovery with the planning for the future and so on. At this point I wondered if my turning off hunger/thirst was "wrecking" the gameplay experience for me? (as in, at this point I would have gotten less bored because I'd be enjoying some other aspect of the food/water production chain I would presumably have developed?). I don't think so - mostly because I didn't sense the ability to build to automate any of that stuff yet...

5. The tech tree - what recipes you have, what resources they need, and how everything relates or depends on everything else is pretty critical. I felt quite lost at times as to why I'd need/use certain things and because I was in a "save resources" mind set I hesitated to experiment or otherwise mess around. This because I had built a few things that seemed useless/irrelevant at the time - and never paid off either. So, it's the sort of game that doesn't have the guardrails preventing you from painting yourself into a corner, wasting time, and so on.