Video Game Review: Subnautica

In light of our recent global crisis, video games are on the rise. Many of you might be new to the gaming experience, and I’m here to weigh in for the next couple of weeks on some games that I really enjoy. Now that is settled, here is the first: Subnautica.

Subnautica is a single player, action-adventure/survival game set on a water planet known only as “Planet 4546B”. It is a completely open world, which means you can travel around as you please and discover many locations around the site where your ship, the Aurora, crashed. You are left to survive with only the resources on the planet and in your pod. It is rated E+10, or everyone 10 and older and is sitting at a 4.8 on Google. You can play Subnautica on Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, and MacOS. As of April 7th, the game is $20 on Steam, $24.99 in the Epic Games store, and $29.99 on PS4 and Xbox One. The main story alone can average around 30 hours, but with the addition of side quests this game could easily last 46 hours. This gives you many hours of content to play as you travel to any other world while trapped in your own home.

I absolutely love this game. At the beginning of the game, I would stand at the top of my escape pod and watch the sunrise onto the splashing waves, and I would also watch the sunset and bring darkness gradually, just as it would in real life, but in awe that it was indeed a game. It was amazing seeing the different biomes and fish, as they seemed to be as if they were real. This game also proposes realistic problems, such as lack of oxygen or food, which really made you think about what you needed before you embarked on crazy adventures. I also feel this game had a very nice balance of story line and survival needs, neither which I felt were rushed or forced (minus the need for food and water respectively). Subnautica also manages to keep you on your toes, as you are faced with many new challenges and twists as the game progresses. The only downside I saw with this game was how quickly your inventory fills when you go exploring, thus needing you to only take and keep the essentials.

I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who likes the prospect of space exploration, or would like to see how well they could survive on an unknown planet. Happy gaming everyone!

By Laurel Madere