izigame.me

After 41 hours, I feel like I'm ready to say my piece about this game. It's important to specify that I'm playing in survival mode where you have to constantly worry about food and water. The game will be very different depending on which mode you play, because in the sandbox mode you can freely build and explore without ever having to stop what you're doing to gather nourishment. In hardcore, you have to be extra careful, because once you die you have to start over. At this point, I'm glad I did not pick hardcore, because there are ways you can die that just aren't forseeable. There also occasional bug in the game which results in your death, like the all too common diving reel malfunctions.
First Impressions:
This game is amazing. That can be, and is, said about many games. But there is nothing like Subnautica. I had been waiting for 19 years, ever since playing the crap out of the incredibly immersive, fun, but ultimately flawed Sub Culture. Finally, we have a game that surpasses Sub Culture in every aspect except the storyline. With that said, Subnautica has flaws.
The Bad:
In all it's glory, there are a few nags, some of which make the game increasingly difficult as you get further into the game. First, I'm going to get it out of the way that there is a startup bug that made me almost request a refund even before getting into the game. Subnautica doesn't always start, because the game menu screen frequently refuses to fully load. This is probably some sort of GPU initialization issue that prevents the graphics from displaying properly. In any event, I have to exit out of the game and restart it in Window mode to get the game to finish loading at all.
Also, The learning curve is very steep. There are no instructions for anything, and the information given on any device in the crafting menus tell you nothing worthwhile about what stuff does. There are some basic descriptions, but they're very poor. For example the current generator says it generates current. When I started playing I had no idea what I would want to create a current for.

The third thing is the max depth of the in game vehicles. There is much debate about the actual depth of the game. Some say it goes on forever. Others have quoted that the game crashes out at 60,000 meters. Some have said 20,000 meters. Others have said there is a secret world in the greatest depths, which sounds pretty epic. In any event. The ocean goes deeper than I feel comfortable thinking about. The problem here lies in the fact that the vehicles seem to have a max depth of 200 meters. (I've since found the Cyclops can go to approximately 900 meters at the expense of power efficiency. I believe the Seamoth can also go to a comparable depth.)
Fourth, the hunger and thirst meters drop far too quickly. This seems nitpicky when you consider I did pick the survival mode, but the problem with this system is that you have to spend hunger and thirst to find food that becomes increasily more difficult to find as the game goes on. As a result, you might find yourself spending almost half your time gathering food and supplies to make water. Which leads me to the next problem in the game.
Fifth, scarcity of food and supplies for making water. At first, everything is plentiful and readily available. Salt, while a challenge to find when you don't know what you're looking for, seems to respawn readily and limitlessly. Coral, while seemingly limitless at first, begins to disappear rapidly after many hours of gameplay. Moreover, I have seen no indication that it respawns.
Food, which pretty much comes from the natural fish stocks, can disappear amazingly fast from an area. After 41 hours of gaming, I have effectively cleared all of the initial shallows of the ocean, plus the surrounding depths of fish. It's amazing how fast they diminish. The only solution seems to be to put respawning, or faster reproduction, of the fish in the game. I have not seen any indication that the fish respawn at all, which seems clear by some of the dead zones I have in my current save. There are some pretty heated debates about this in the discussion groups. Naysayers claim the supplies are unlimited, and all you have to do is look further. My answer to that is that you begin to spend a lot more thirst and food meter, energy, and other resources to find food.
Because of this there is a rapidly diminishing return on the value of food and water in the game. The devs claim it causes people to explore more. I'm not satisfied with that response, because the reality is this: if people have no motivation to explore. If they just stick to the shallows and eat and drink, they aren't going to have the attention span to stick with the game for the long term anyway. Apparently, a fix is being tested in the experimental mode, but it's coming all too slow to a stable build.
Sixth, and my final gripe, and this is definitely as glaring as the fifth, scarcity of resources. Copper, Quartz, Acid Mushrooms are plentiful at first, but become ridiculously difficult to come by as the game goes on. Quartz is practically used in everything, because you need it for glass and rubber, which you need for building and making Power Cells to power your vehicles. Each Power Cell takes a vast amount of resources, which would not be as much of a problem if they didn't deplete so rapidly. Even with the power efficiency mod only a small expedition can use 6 power cells and leave you scrambling for resources. Many users have defaulted to the same argument they have given to the food shortage problem, that there's plenty in the depths. The problem is that it takes more and more energy, food, and water to farm this stuff. You end up trapped in a cycle of more and more rapidly diminishing marginal utility on all of your resources. This really needs to be fixed or users will basically be driven out of their own game by scarcity.
Both of the last two problems have people vehemently defending the current scarcity, with the argument that resources are scarce in real life. I would like to point out, however, that one person alone in a wilderness does not leave vast expanses of land void of any life. Certainly these rich biomes should be able to support just one person. Also, if the player were able to hunt for shellfish and crustaceans in the game, diversity of foods might help lower depletion rates. The player should be able to find oysters and dig for clams.
The Good:
Based on my criticisms, some might get the idea that I don't like the game. That couldn't be more wrong. Subnautica is, hands down, simply the best underwater game ever made. There's no competition. The environment is rich, full of wonder, and among the most immersive games I've ever played. The world is packed full of fascinating creatures, beautiful vegetation, and unparalleled undersea effects. The graphics are complimented by some of the most incredible sound you could possibly imagine. All of it adds up to a game that makes you feel like you're living rather than playing.
It's one of those games that comes along and really changes things forever, at least among those who have played it. In my opinion, the game hasn't gotten nearly the recognition it deserves. The amount of stuff you can do in this game, and the painstaking attention to detail are mindblowing. Those are things I hope never change with Subnautica. Many early access games are dumbed down in later iterations. Unknown Worlds Entertainment seems to have a good attitude about adding new features instead of taking them out, like some other developers of early access releases have done in the past. I just hope they maintain the trend.
Subnautica is an oustanding game, worth its price about three times over. It comes with my highest recommendation. In it's current state, I would give Subnautica a 9/10.
Added 11/23/17: The game has been hugely updated since this review.