I don't usually vibe with survival games. They come in all shapes and sizes, but the toil of gathering resources, keeping up with the demands of hunger and thirst, and building a place to call home has rarely resonated from a gaming perspective.
Which is ironically why I was one of the few who fell in love with No Man's Sky when it first launched. It did such a fantastic job of portraying loneliness in the middle of a never-ending galaxy, even if it was just a byproduct of the game being fundamentally unfinished, that it offered something entirely new. It felt so awful to take off in my dilapidated ship and go where the stars took me, especially in creative mode where the resource gathering requirements were much less demanding. If I'm ever feeling particularly lost in life, it's a fantasy I can return to and briefly enthrall myself with ease.
I've always taken similar vibes from Subnautica, having lost myself in the first game for hours in virtual reality with the first Oculus Rift. Placing the headset on my desk like a bushy-tailed student doing his internship, I ran through the set of launch games only to find myself spending hours upon hours with the underwater gem. Now its sequel has come and enchanted me again.
Subnautica 2 Nails The Beautiful Horror of Underwater Exploration
While Subnautica 2 obviously lacks VR support in its current Early Access form, Subnautica 2 is off to a hell of a start. It has already sold over two million copies and offers a decent amount of gameplay and story for players to sink into until the first major update. Its massive quality of life improvements and co-op multiplayer only make the experience more enjoyable, but it will be a while before I invite some friends along for this journey.
I'm taking it easy and slow and haven't gone into my walkthrough with any goals beyond just exploring the open ocean and seeing (wahey) what I can find. After the short story to make it clear that I am a clone destined to be reproduced over and over again and that our place on this planet is a tragedy unto itself, I left my life chair behind and began snooping around.
You will be limited by less than a minute of oxygen while exploring the first depths, having to spend a lot of time gathering resources just to return to your lifebar and crafting essential tools you need to survive. These early moments are somewhat boring, but also make you feel vulnerable, alone, and out of your depth.
When I came back to the surface, I knew I wanted to push myself even further the next time my body sank beneath the waves. Whether I was returning to a previously explored cave to salvage any potential secrets it held, or getting caught in a gulf stream that took me deep into the unknown, I wanted to take in even more of the ocean each time. Upon death, you'll lose all your resources and have to retrieve them from your corpse, but this permanent respawn system also meant I was willing to take risks.
It also adds an existential layer to the unfolding narrative that anyone who sets foot on this unknown planet is a tool of a corporation whose lives can be sacrificed over and over and over again. Beneath the vast wonders that await beneath this fluorescent blue lies a mystery that I can't wait to see unfold. And what beautiful wonders they are.
And I can't wait to see it grow
On PC, I play on medium settings to ensure a stable level of performance, and it still looks delicious on an OLED screen. The saturated blues, oranges and yellows that make up the debut biome emerge from the screen, urging me forward to find out if the strange tendrils floating on the damp sand are living creatures or just playing a trick on me. I'm constantly being pulled in new directions as I scan everything in sight, pushing myself into large parts of the map that my charge isn't prepared for at range.
But that's where, for me at least, the inner beauty of Subnautica 2 comes to life. Yes, I'm getting to the point where I've built a worthwhile home that floats on the water with everything I'll ever need, but it'll only be there to fuel my underwater activities anymore. Turning up the volume on headphones and losing myself staring at corals, memorizing fish patterns and piecing together the melancholy tragedy that befell the scientists who came before me. It will be a very good day when support for virtual reality – official or not – drops and I can jump into creative mode and lose myself.
Survival games are so often about staying alive by any means necessary, but the genre also has you going to so many different worlds that sometimes it's just as satisfying to put that stress aside to take in the sights. Subnautica 2 isn't even finished yet, and that already makes it so much better than most. That is, until I stumble across a giant sea monster trying to eat me…
