Subnautica
I feel like I've talked about this game recently. Either that, or I just played a lot of it recently and it's still fresh in my head. Anyway, Subnautica. What's not to love about the concept alone? You are stranded in the middle of the ocean, and you have only you and your wits to help you survive. It may sound like your typical survival style game, but once you've played in ultra high graphics and you have to survive under water in the dead of night, you'll realize that this isn't just your typical run of the mill survival game. This game is also a horror game as far as I'm concerned.
Basically, as I said you are a guy who crash landed on this water planet and you have only your tools and your wits to help you survive. You can basically get right under the water as soon as you play, hell the game recommends it. You also start off very close to where you crash landed, and you can see your ship just out in the distance. And yes, you can go to it and explore it. The game just straight up wants you to explore its beautiful underwater world. And it's exciting from the first minute to the 30th+ hour. I'm serious. This game never gets boring. There's a twist and turn at every place you reach and it's just you and the ocean.
With the gameplay itself aside, there's something to be said about the developers of this game. We're talking about Unknown Worlds here. They in the past have developed Natural Selection and Natural Selection 2, and now they've taken on Subnautica. Now in case you didn't know, this game actually first came out in way early access, and it's made itself all the way to a full complete game. I gotta hand it to the developers for continuously updating the game to completion. It's always a shame to watch a game get stuck in early access hell. Unknown Worlds were fortunate enough to not only have an original survival game idea, they also managed to get the funding necessary to finish it. And let me tell you, watching this evolution has been a truly magnificent sight. I've watched it all the way from the beginning, and to play it now on a super ultra graphics capable computer, it changes everything. It's so good, and the developers deserve all the praise they can get.
Now, I want to touch on the gameplay a little bit more. Because I forgot to mention that while you're underwater, you will come in contact with things you've probably never seen before. And it's really ****ing terrifying to see a huge shadow in the distance with spikes and you can't see anything in front of you other than the moonlight coming through the water. Because again, you're literally underwater the whole game. So I do want to touch on this: if you do have issues with being underwater for any reason, do not play this. You will get so submersed in this game that it will literally feel like you're swimming under water yourself. I highly recommend playing the game with really nice headphones because you want to be able to hear everything around you. Fish in the distance, sounds coming from somewhere, the water pushing waves around you. Again, you get very immersed. It's almost scary.
Anyway. Yeah. Play Subnautica as soon as you can. It's good.