What if survival weren't optional? That is both a useful way to explain why you can respawn in a videogame, and one of two central questions in Subnautica 2. The other is: Would morphing into some weird alien thing really be so bad?
The highly-anticipated survival game is out in early access today, and after a handful of hours, I think it's a lot of fun. Like the original, Subnautica 2 is mainly about exploring an alien ocean, seeing cool, weird alien fish, getting eaten by cool, weird alien monsters, and building a cool (but not really weird) underwater base. Thumbs up to all of that so far: Subnautica 2 is refined for an early access survival game, more than a lot of 1.0s. (And it has co-op this time.)
What's surprised me most, though, is that I've found the light narrative to be a highlight. Story is not what draws me to survival games, which I generally view as manifestations of the same old fantasy that gets people into homesteading, at least until they decide they've made a terrible mistake: The notion that you can flip civilization the bird and go live off the land, free from the incomprehensible...
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