Monthly Archives: June 2021

After a tumultuous 2020, this year feels like a far more sedate gaming experience for me. It feels like I’m writing here about far less games than I did in either half of 2021, even though I can look and see that this is objectively incorrect. I guess that’s just the fallibility of our own human perception at play.

Subnautica (Unknown Worlds Entertainment; January 2018 for PC, December 2018 for PlayStation 4/Xbox One, and May 2021 for PlayStation 5/Xbox Series X and S/Nintendo Switch) and Subnautica: Below Zero (Unknown Worlds Entertainment; May 2021 for PC/PlayStation 4/PlayStation 5/Xbox One/Xbox Series X and S/Nintendo Switch)

That thing where I claim I’m not into a game genre and then find an exception that proves me wrong is going to keep happening, isn’t it? It happened with character action games via Nioh, the Monster Hunter series with World, roguelikes with Hades, deck builders with Dicey Dungeons, and now survival games with Subnautica and its sequel. Moreso the original, as Subnautica: Below Zero is the weaker of the duology in my opinion. While Below Zero has a number of quality of life improvements, including the supreme vehicle that is the SeaTruck, there are also several places where it falls short of its predecessor. The greatest problem is that the world of the second game feels so much smaller. This is literal in a sense, with the actual world map of Subnautica is larger than Below Zero’s, but just as much true figuratively. Narrative decisions made for Below Zero dilute the atmosphere of quiet isolation in an extreme survival situation. Does this mean Subnautica: Below Zero is bad? Nah, not really, it’s just not as engaging as its predecessor.