And yeah i agree, it does survival stuff really well while also having a good storyline and a lot of world building to go through and concrete objectives to work towards BUT ALSO it really nails the vibe of “It’s half life but what if Gordon Freeman had to live off of vending machines, find places to poop and worry about extradimensional stalkers killing him in his sleep”
I was watching someone’s playthrough and I genuinely had to turn the stream off after like a dozen hours because I knew I had to play it. I mostly gave up on the survival/crafting genre because all the heavy hitters just didn’t do much for me. I always play solo and they all quickly feel like they devolve into housekeeping and inventory management sims.
The only one I ever really enjoyed was Subnautica, specifically because of some of the non-thematic reasons you mentioned for this game being so good. The survival aspects are actually really well done without making the game feel like a chore (it’s so weird how effective adding a tiny little mini game to things just makes it feel less obnoxious), the setting and story is interesting and well crafted, and most of the tedious aspects of gameplay are given intended solutions in the crafting trees.
The setting and storytelling is just so masterfully done that it always keeps you engaged. The combat is a little bit lame, but it’s mostly because of AI being kind of dumb. I’m playing on a lower difficulty though so maybe that’s the reason.
And yeah i agree, it does survival stuff really well while also having a good storyline and a lot of world building to go through and concrete objectives to work towards BUT ALSO it really nails the vibe of “It’s half life but what if Gordon Freeman had to live off of vending machines, find places to poop and worry about extradimensional stalkers killing him in his sleep”
I was watching someone’s playthrough and I genuinely had to turn the stream off after like a dozen hours because I knew I had to play it. I mostly gave up on the survival/crafting genre because all the heavy hitters just didn’t do much for me. I always play solo and they all quickly feel like they devolve into housekeeping and inventory management sims.
The only one I ever really enjoyed was Subnautica, specifically because of some of the non-thematic reasons you mentioned for this game being so good. The survival aspects are actually really well done without making the game feel like a chore (it’s so weird how effective adding a tiny little mini game to things just makes it feel less obnoxious), the setting and story is interesting and well crafted, and most of the tedious aspects of gameplay are given intended solutions in the crafting trees.
The setting and storytelling is just so masterfully done that it always keeps you engaged. The combat is a little bit lame, but it’s mostly because of AI being kind of dumb. I’m playing on a lower difficulty though so maybe that’s the reason.