Castle Magus

Just finished the original Subnautica for the second time (would've been third time, if bullshit hadn't happened on my second attempted playthrough).

So, I decided to go ahead and jump into Below Zero right after, since I had that installed already. Tried to launch it a couple times and nothing happened. Well, as it turns out, at some point, they apparently "updated" the game to require that AVX bullshit. It even does the same shit, where you try to launch it and absolutely nothing seems to happen. No warning message or anything this time, either.

If that were the end of the story, I'd be super fucking pissed off right now, and this post would probably be far longer, more ranty, and much more profanity-laden. However, Unknown Worlds Entertainment had the good sense to make a "legacy build" available, via the Beta stuff in Steam, and it seems to work fine, at least so far. It actually opens the game, at the very least.

I'll just say this, games that require this AVX crap are games I won't be playing, until and unless I finally bother to upgrade my currently 13-ish year old CPU (and motherboard and RAM and whatever else would be required to be upgraded in that case). This and Death Stranding are the only games I've encountered so far that require this shit, but I fear it's only going to become more pervasive as time goes forward. *weary sigh* I have not yet encountered a game for which I'd be willing to go to the trouble and expense of upgrading my computer (or, essentially, buying the parts to make an almost entirely new computer), though. Subnautica: Below Zero certainly isn't that game, that's for damn sure. Oh well, at least in this particular case, I can still play the older version (which I'm pretty sure is probably still newer than the version I played through before).

Just finished Subnautica: Below Zero, which is basically "more of the same" for Subnautica.

Or, maybe... less of the same? The area to explore is a lot smaller, and overall the game world feels more compacted. There are less underwater areas to explore, in favor of more (frozen, glacial) islands. There are technically the same number of vehicles, but one of them is a land-only hover-bike sort of thing that I hardly ever used. The Seamoth and the Cyclops submarine from the first game are gone, essentially replaced and combined into the new Seatruck. The initial Seatruck is essentially the same as the Seamoth, but you can find blueprints for extra modules that you can build and attach to it, eventually giving it the kind of the same versatility (and the same lumbering, unwieldy movement) of the Cyclops. The Prawn mech suit from the first game is back in this one, essentially unchanged.

On the whole, though, it's still mostly the same gameplay. Early hours of scrambling around your immediate area trying to find basic components to build basic air tanks and fins and a knife and such, then later on, building the above mentioned vehicles and upgrades and going ever deeper, while uncovering more of the story.

Rather than playing as a nameless, faceless, voiceless cypher the way you did in the first game, in this one you are playing as Robin Ayou, a black woman who has come to 4546B (the planet from the first game) to find out what has happened to her sister Sam, who was reported killed by Alterra (the company from the first game and for whom Sam worked). And, that's basically it, as far as motivation goes. They even lampshade it early on when Robin muses that she's probably going to spend as much time or more simply exploring as she will looking for Sam. There is another, semi-related plotline that comes into play later on, though.

Lastly, I'm not sure what it is about this game that has apparently gotten all the alt-right/Trumpanzee/Irredeemably Toxic Shithole types up in arms against it, though. Apparently, it's too "woke"? I'm not sure what's so "woke" about it. The whole "giant corporations are bad" thing was present in the first game, too, and I don't recall it being described as "woke." Maybe it's the "researching a deadly disease for potential bio-weapon reasons is bad" thing? But then, that seems more like common fucking sense than "wokeness" to me. Or maybe something something LGBTQ+ (I don't recall encountering anything related to that in the game, even though that's what a lot of these mouthbreathing neckbeards are complaining about)? Or maybe it's the simple fact that you're playing as a female POC that strokes the rage nerve of these (probably white and male) fuckwits. I don't know. I don't get it. The story was fine, for the most part, even if it felt a bit barebones and only partially complete.

All in all, if you played the first Subnautica and liked it, then this one will scratch that same itch. Just don't come in expecting it to be as expansive as the first one, because it's not. It's still pretty good, though.