I thought I'd make a thread because this is fucking great, and it's on Xbox One preview at the moment. As a rule of thumb these games do very little for me, but the setting of Subnautica and total lack of real combat really draws me in. Plus I had dreams of being on team Zissou Cousteau as a kid, so it's pretty much tailor made for me.
Also I know a lot of you like stories about these kinds of games, especially after the No Man's Sky thread. I'm about 18 hours in, and I've loved most of it so far. After you figure out how to get a decent supply of food and water, and learn where certain ores and so on are found, it gets quite streamlined.
So today I completed my Moonpool. A total bastard to fit onto my base, but I wanted to dock my micro submersible and customise/upgrade it. That imposing sub to the left is Leander (I am a sucker for names from Greek mythology) my Cyclops Submersible.
Here's the Seamoth Submersible in the Moonpool:
Also here's my main base room and the mini planters I've got some melons growing in. Yum! No more fish for me. Also I have a viewing window because I like to ogle the ship.
My base sits near this kelp forest, which is full of material that I can make lubricant and fibres with. It's also full of stalkers which are total bastard fish that chase me around - fuck off Stalkers!
So with the Seamoth upgraded I took a ride out to the weird underwater mushroom forest I'd found to search for components. It was fruitless, but I found a cave opening nearby. The Seamoth is as deep as it will go here, at around 190m - just before it gets crushed.
I got out to explore further but my oxygen tanks are shit. Also fuck dealing with the worm bastard in that giant bio-luminescent mushroom. It had massive, evil teeth.
So I took a different approach, docking the Seamoth in the Leander, and heading over to a crevasse i'd scoped out much earlier. On the way I bumped into this Reefdrifter. Big herbivores.
The crevasse contains these strange glowing kelp plants, that look quite spooky. The Leander has a bunch of cameras all over it so I could get some quite nice shots without having to risk being outside.
I also got a shot of this crazy segmented fish that tried to take a chunk out of the Leander. Luckily, Cyclops subs are very tough. So he just wobbled it about a bit. Still, I hurried on.
By this point I'd upgraded the Seamoth so it could go down to 300m without risking any kind of crushing sensation, so I used it to explore some of the more fussy outcroppings that the Leander couldn't fit in. I found this weird plant covered in huge, scarlet growths. Luckily, no hostiles, but I did find some upgrade schematics tucked away.
But it just keeps going down...
I took the Leander as far down as it would go, and hopped out using the Seaglider. This is around 500m down, and there's still more to go.
Here's my last shot, peering back up at my Sub, wondering how much more is down here. I need to upgrade my o2 tanks, increase the pressure threshold of both the Seamoth and the Leander.
I'd say first off that it's quite clunky at times - some creature designs, sounds and animations are a little subpar. But, is still in Early Access, and they add to it regularly. The story isn't complete, as a lot of biomes are missing, but hopefully it'll get there.
Also @roujin clearly wanted to find some big fuck off fish in No Man's Sky, and he could easily find some in this if he bought it. I have seen big, horrible things, and some mad majestic stuff in othe areas.
Only played an hour but I loved it. It's quite rough on Xbone but the atmosphere is intact. Reminds me of Abyss and unfortunately that bit in the sub from The Phantom Menace. There's always a bigger fish.
I've had my eye on this but basically I just have to finish stuff before I can justify any more. It looks great though, and I'll definitely be on it at some point. Maybe if I finish Soma I can go for it.
It's in the early access part of the Oculus store and the first version they put up was pretty ropey (framerate, pop in etc). They've made it far more stable now for my recommended (970, i5) pc but you've reminded me to dive (hyuk hyuk) back in..
You gonna rly enjoy yourself mate you gonna breathe bottled O2 you gonna chip away at sea coral to make computer chips you're gonna scream at Reapers you gon bounce across the waves in ya buddy Seamoth you gon stress out looking for silver minerals.
I take it you didn't play this in survival mode then chaps? I spend my entire time looking for salt to make bleach to purify the water and cutting kelp to eat, never quite managing to get enough of either to counter rate at which the hunger/thirst meter drops. It also runs worse now than when it first launched, which is to say it stutters like fuck. I am dissapoint.
I only ever played it in Survival. Tough at the start and you'll drown, starve or dehyrdate a few times but you eventually start building a base and fabricating becomes simpler.
That's what I've been doing, scavving about and ignoring the hunger and water meters. Seems to miss the point of a survival mode though. I'll plod on and see if I can start a base.
Sucks to be me. Reading up on the Xbone version, it's two updates behind the PC version and the last one it received fucked the frame rate and gave it memory leak issues meaning fish and resources, like the pretty vital salt deposits, stop showing up forcing a reset.
I love the idea behind it, really fancy exploring the depths from my own terribly inefficiently laid out base, but I'm not playing it in that state. I'll keep a beady eye out for updates and bump the thread when it's safe to go back on the Xbone.
Comes with the territory dunnit? Just a matter of time before it's fixed hopefully, although it does stick in the craw that they plow on with improving and adding to the PC version while console plebs are left with a broken product. I'd be fine knowing I was missing out on a few systems and biomes if the version I had actually worked.
Also, I've just remembered that console Starbound still isn't a thing. What's up with that?
I dunno if the same applies to the Xbox One as it did to the 360 store, but updating games through the MS store requires lots of testing and form filling, and probably some cash to pay for the above, which is much less strict on Steam. Also I imagine most devs just go where the money is, and given it's been on PC for so long I imagine it's got a much larger player base, like you say, comes with the Territory.
I think that was related to fully fledged XBLA releases, which were supposed to be finished games. I'm sure they get plenty of leeway for updates under the preview program thing, that's the whole point of it after all.
I found it really relaxing in the mode where you only deal with O2 and Health issues. A real of sense of progress in building your first Seamoth then (first shallow water) seabase then a big ol' Cyclops to DIVE DIVE DIVE.
The update fixed a lot of things and it's way more stable on the xbone now. Just saw the afternoon vanish because of this, great game. Managed to explore the downed ship a little before I got brutally murdered by something massive and really fucking loud. Shit myself.
Also, regarding my above gripes regarding food and water, that was 100% down to the shoddy stuttering making fish catching impossible. I was trying to get by on kelp and water purified by bleach, dear me.