Are survival crafting games overdone? I would say, no. They used to be overdone, now they’re that smear of smoking fat on the floor of the oven that you keep telling yourself you’ll clean before the next time you use it and makes all your tater tots taste like charcoal. How many more times must we combine bit of wood with plant fibre to craft two storey mock tudor retirement cottage with kitchen island and baby grand. Why do they always assume I want to build a fucking house? I’m only here for the thrill of exploration and discovery, it’s like wanting to build a house in Disneyland. I climb a mountain and gaze upon the savage landscape below me, simultaneously inviting and foreboding in its cruel majesty, my first thought is not “Well there’s a good spot for the breakfast nook.” Still, amid even the blandest and most tedious hedgerow might be found the occasional discarded porn mag, and one of the few survival crafters I unmixedly love is Subnautica. Why? Because it was full of danger and spectacular underwater scenery that made it thrilling to explore, it had a story with a beginning, middle and end and a progression path that felt like we were constantly expanding and improving our ability to explore.
Even when we were building a fucking house. So I’d definitely have been among those who held aloft their cleaned Subnautica plate and cried “More please!” to the exasperation of our parents and prison wardens, and that’s exactly what we’ve got here, Subnautica: More Please. Or, Below Zero. Which is rubbing up against the title of “standalone expansion” so closely that “Standalone expansion” should probably complain to human resources. It’s generally smaller and shorter than the original Subnautica and much of the gameplay is the same, the little exploding bastards that hoard the cave sulphur are still a massive pain in the oxygen tank. But there are some new features. Most notably, the main character has a miraculous and innovative new piece of equipment called “a personality.” Robin, for ’tis her name, comes to an alien ice planet to uncover the truth behind the death of her sister. The evil corporation that runs the Subnautica universe keep saying it was an accident but every time they say it they sort of very unsubtly wink to someone standing off to the side so obviously we’re going to trust them about as far as the distance between a Catholic schoolteacher’s knees.
But the inciting dead sister plot element kinda fades away from the game unless you’re the kind of sucker who actually pays attention to audio logs, and after Robin gets an alien AI stuck in her head like it’s the theme song from a 90’s Disney cartoon her priorities shift to mainly doing whatever the fuck it wants to do until you can build a new alien body for it to annoy the shit out of instead of you. So that’s what drives you along much the same progression path as before, going from a little helpless floundering babby with an escape pod and two granola bars who can’t hold their breath very long and can’t even dive past 100 metres because we’ve got a note from our mummy saying we don’t have to, to a deep sea drilling robot suit wearing badass survivor who’s escaped from the mouths of giant horror whales so many times they’re licensed to practise horror whale dentistry. What’s different on the gameplay front is that now we have to worry about freezing to death on top of air, food, water and paying the electricity bill. Although it’s only a factor when we’re on land. For some reason all the seawater on this ice planet is pleasant jacuzzi temperature. Another wonderful survival tip from the world of survival games – if you’re in below zero temperatures, immediately make yourself as wet as possible. That’ll certainly help.
So there’s a bit where you ride a snow speeder through icy wasteland while being chased by one of Godzilla’s more unruly turds that shows up in the promotional art a lot, but it’s more a gimmicky interlude than an integral new mechanic. I mean, if the most interesting new feature of a game called Subnautica takes place on dry land then it sounds like something’s gone wrong somewhere. Still, even in a vacuum it’s not that interesting. You ride along, the giant worm pops out, you fall off your speeder, the worm wiggles his big glowy bum at you with the malicious pleasure of a housecat knocking a cup off a desk, you get back on the speeder, repeat. If the whole game were a cheeseburger it’d be the pickle. If that. It might just be the sesame seeds on the bun. Or the brief pang of guilt from your contribution to the deleterious effect meat production has on the environment. The meat and the bread and the tasty tasty cheese is still the underwater fun, and I was getting into that just as much as the last game. Sometimes “more please” is all you need if the original was good enough. Diving deep, finding new caverns, picking a good spot for your base and slowly making the initially vast and intimidating environment your cringing salty bitch.
I do like the new vehicle, the SeaTruck, it starts out just as a little sporty runaround like the original SeaMoth but you can add modules to it until it has the Cyclops’ advantage of basically letting you carry a base around with you but fully customisable so if you don’t want nineteen fucking lockers in the thing constantly reminding you of how many people failed to come to your last birthday party then you can CRASH. I’m sorry, what? CRASH. The game crashed. I should mention I was playing the PS5 version because it was the code I was given and might as well get some fucking use out of that glorified factory warped panini press. And this version seems to be a bit buggy. It occasionally crashes to I hesitate to use the word desktop. So when was my last autosave, Subnautica Below Zero? Autosave? What’s that? Is that like runner’s high, but for goalkeepers? Sudden change of expression, sound of distant breaking glass. You don’t have autosave? But I’ve been playing for like four hours. I built half my base. I found some really hard to find things. I made friends with a shark and named it Porthos. What do I do now? I dunno. Eat shit, by the sounds of it.
It was a difficult few days after that, listeners. I didn’t want to go back to Below Zero. I didn’t feel like I could forgive it. I sought other games to review. I tried out a Castlevania clone on Steam called Lost Ruins that people seemed to like, and that was enjoyable and intriguing as I set off to uncover the mystery behind every single character wearing a Japanese school uniform, and why the giant anime girl boss fights attack me by trying to crush me with their giant titties- oh I just figured the mystery out actually. Inclusivity’s great and all but there are people who I feel would still benefit from being shamed now and then. So in the end I went back to Below Zero and just tried to power through to where I’d left off, making do with a nice plain one bathroom studio underwater tech base. And confirmed just how short Below Zero is because there’d only been about half an hour of plot left before an ending that felt somehow both overly drawn out and anticlimactic. So, yeah. It’s more Subnautica with some bits bolted on and maybe that’s enough but for fuck’s sake put autosave in your games. Yeah, we used to get by without it but shit changes, alright? Your mum used to get by without a gastric band but then the five dollar footlong happened.
