Subnautica: Below Zero is an open world survival game set largely beneath the waves, mixing exploration, discovery and a little bit of horror resulting in an atmospheric world that can be equal parts beautiful as it can horrifying. With various alien flora and fauna to discover and a whole host of high tech equipment from basic scanners to a mobile base in submarine form to build as you uncover more of the alien water worlds secrets.
The game takes place after the events of Subnautica, but this time we follow a new character, Robin. After Ryleys return from his stranding in the original, Alterra have taken a strong interest in the planet and begun a new initiative called XenoWorx. Following some troubling news about her sister Sam, who was assigned a job from Alterra on the planet 4546B for Xenoworx, Robin takes a shuttle to investigate for herself. Her shuttle is struck by debris and she crashes down on 4546B, leaving her with little else but a lifepod to find before beginning the search for her sister.
At it's core the game is a survival game, however it provides the player with options to play the way they prefer. You can choose to play the game with permadeath all the way down to being invincible and having zero resource requirements for crafting. The following four options will be available.
Survival mode - Here you'll need to manage food, water and the cold to survive, death will mean losing a few items when respawning
Freedom mode - Food and water requirements are removed
Hardcore mode - Survival mode with added permadeath, death deletes the save file
Creative mode - No food, water, cold or o2 requirements and crafting doesn't require resources
Whichever mode you choose, the majority of your time will be spent exploring. Either to get an idea of what lies ahead, to discover new technology so you can progress further, simply to gather resources to survive, or expand your base for the fun for it.
Crafting in Subnautica: Below Zero is simple and intuitive. There's 3 main crafting stations, the Habitat Builder, Fabricator and the Mobile Vehicle Bay. Using these the player can craft a variety of high tech gadgets, vehicles and homes. While you won't have to build much of a base at all to get by if you don't want to, the option is there and it's very easy to use. The game uses a basic grid snap system with the option to rotate by 90 degrees on a horizontal axis where possible, so you won't have any struggles lining things up. Even if you should accidentally place something wrong on a base, you can deconstruct it with the Habitat Builder and be fully refunded for the materials used.
You can construct a variety of other tools and resources at the Fabricator. When discovering a new resource any recipes it can be used in will be automatically added to your Fabricator upon collection, and by extension the same applies when crafting a new resource too. All of these will be necessary to craft the various tools at your disposal such as the Seaglide, a handheld propulsion device complete with sonar and torch, or Beacons for marking points of interest around the map.
The Mobile Vehicle Bay unlike the Habitat Builder or Fabricator will be floated upon the surface with the added restriction of making sure there is room for the vehicle to be dropped safely into the water after. Simply choose which vehicle you want to make and it will materialize before your eyes.
While one of the vehicles in Subnautica: Below Zero will be a familiar friend to any players of the original game, there are new additions, but the Cyclops and the Seamoth from the original are gone. The huge open stretches of ocean from the first game won't be showing up in Below Zero, and as such the devs opted for a vehicle that will fit the environment better while aiming to fill the roles of both vehicles. This new vehicle is the Sea Truck, a modular subaquatic vehicle closer to the size of the seamoth, which the players can build additional modules for providing various different benefits and manually swap them around as they wish. The other new addition will be the Snowfox, a land based vehicle to help players get around on the glaciers. Lastly of course is the Prawn Suit from the first game, which will be returning to fill the role of a mining vessel.
Much like the first game, Below Zero's map will be broken up into distinct biomes that have their own ecosystems along with fauna and flora that often cannot be found anywhere else on the map. There will now also be more in the way of biomes above sea level on the various glaciers complete with their own fauna too. Below the ocean lie various biomes either in the more open waters or the various cave networks running through the ocean floors. Some may even spot a biome or two from early concept phases of the first game drawn up years ago.
Subnautica leans heavily into the exploration aspects of the game and as such, there's a vast variety of flora to be discovered throughout. You can harvest some to create other materials, make use of some for nourishment, or on occasion discover the fauna doesn't really want you near it at all. Whether it's on land, or beneath the waves, all of it can be scanned and added to the databank to build more of an understanding of the life forms surviving and thriving in the harsh arctic environment.
Subnautica: Below Zero's ocean is host to a variety of creatures, as well as a few waiting for you on land too. On planet 4546B life comes in all shapes and sizes, some friendly and others extremely hostile. As you venture out from the shallows you may encounter the leviathan class life forms that roam the deeper waters. There's a lot to be learned about the planet itself by scanning these and all fauna, and perhaps some insight into the planets history encountering fossils of life forms long extinct.
Game Informer: 9/10
Gaming Nexus: 9/10
Nintendo Life: 9/10
GameSpew: 9/10
Destructoid: 8.5/10
Playstation Universe: 8.5/10
Press Start: 8.5/10
TechRaptor: 8.5/10
The Sixth Axis: 8/10
NintendoWorldReport: 8/10
Attack of the Fanboy: 4/5
Wccftech: 7.5/10
Push Square: 7/10
- MINIMUM:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 7 64-bit
- Processor: Intel Core i3 / AMD Ryzen 3 2.6ghz+
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel HD 530 or better
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 15 GB available space
- RECOMMENDED:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- Processor: Intel Core i5 / AMD Ryzen 5 @ 3Ghz +
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia 1050 Ti / AMD Radeon 570, 4GB VRAM
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 15 GB available space
Not only can you buy Subnautica: Below Zero on either PS4 or Xbox One and upgrade for free to their next gen version at no extra cost, but on launch day the original Subnautica will receive a native version for both PS5 and Xbox Series S/X. If you already own the original Subnautica on either platform you'll get free access to the native version featuring higher framerates and resolutions.
Disclaimer: This is my first OT and I wasn't really planning on making one so be gentle if it sucks a bit, I kinda put it together fast and last minute since the first game never got an OT but I know there's a reasonably large fanbase for it, so it would be cool to see some discussion for it at ERA. Apologies for the font size being a bit too varied and images a bit small for desktop users. I had to scramble a fair bit together on mobile and made a pass on desktop, but would have to redo lots of it and didn't really have the time available. If any of it is causing issues I can probably try take a shot at tidying it in the next couple days.
Obligatory cute Trivalve gif...
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