Topic: Push Square Game Club Spooktacular: Resident Evil 4

@nessisonett cheers for the tag!

Has anyone played subnautica before? Any tips on it?

My friend was telling me it was a "survival" game. I don't think I've played one of those before. Unless Metal Gear Survive counts? It sounded quite stressful from how he described it 😅

@ralphdibny Yeah, I’ve got it on Steam. It’s basically a survival exploration game in that you explore as much as you can with the resources you have, and then use the stuff you collect to fuel your next expedition. So I think we’ll struggle to ‘complete it’ as such as I think it’s supposed to be quite long before reaching the credits. It was pretty fun from what I played though.

@nessisonett nice, yeah I think my mate said it was about 30 or so hours when he did it. I think I will try and play along if I have time. It's something that I feel like I'll never get around to playing on my own steam.

I did actually 1000GS it on Xbox for a rewards punchcard using console commands. Barely saw any of the game that way so I didn't spoil it for myself or anything. It certainly looked quite weird and wonderful in my brief glimpses into it!

I am up for giving it a go, going in completely blind as to what the game is or gameplay is!

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Apologies, I’ve been slaving away in the kitchen for hours 😂

@ralphdibny @RogerRoger @phil_j @crimsontadpoles @Ralizah @Th3solution @Thrillho @mookysam @LieutenantFatman @LobsterJohnson @Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy @Tjuz @Kidfried @Octane @Col_McCafferty @DerMeister @Mr_B021 @Fight_Teza_Fight @R1spam

We’ll be getting underway with Subnautica now. Not really sure what we should aim for this week but just try to get some time in!

Not my sort of thing, but I'll be interested to hear what people think about it.

Good timing, started playing this a couple of hours ago. Enjoying it so far, a shame there wasn't any real introduction in terms of a story or background but the game play loop is enjoyable so far.

Played a couple of hours tonight, although I must have forgotten to claim it while it was free on PS4 so had to play on PC instead! I have a scanner now though, which is useful and I seem to be able to interact with the wee fragment things in the cargo crates after scanning them.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy

Good tips! Also don't waste your time doing what I did at the very start by trying to board the large ship on the horizon.

I've made a start on Subnautica. At first it was quite daunting as I was worried about running out of food and water. That worry soon went away once I figured out which nearby fish to grab. Now I'm starting to get into the swing of things, and starting to get some useful tools.

I've played for about 45 mins and managed to build a scanner, fins and 02 tank. I'm playing with next gen upgrade on series x and it looks nice. Have found a cave that I need to build some pipes and a tube to get down to so will try that next time out. Going to give it a few more hours before I make a call but the game hasn't grabbed me yet. Hoping that when I start to uncover some secrets (pressuring there are some), that helps hook me in.

Made a bit more progress. I now have a seaglide which is great fun. I can’t find any of that fabric stuff to make fins though, no clue where to get it.

@nessisonett I think I got them from seaweed seeds, can't remember the real name but there's tons of it round the starting area.

@R1spam I’ll have a look then thanks. Haven’t really seen those seaweed things but I have a high capacity O2 tank so maybe I’ll find them further afield!

So, got to spend a little time into this game - probably 2 hours or so. Boy, they don’t give you much instruction or tutorial, do they? I guess that’s the point, but it’s been a lot of trial and error on my part. They don’t even teach you the controls fully. The developer must be assuming players have a certain level of familiarity with the survival genre, for which I am fairly uninitiated. Thankfully I did play a dozen or so hours of No Man’s Sky a few years ago so I feel a certain acquaintance with the gameplay loop. It really reminds me a lot of NMS... although without the guidance and instruction. To be fair, perhaps some of the tutorial stuff is buried in the menus and logs, which I can’t be bothered to read.

And for those who might remember, in the past I’ve expressed my disfavor with underwater gameplay in general; the floaty-ness and imprecise nature of movement is really frustrating. Subnautica does as fine a job as possible, I guess, but underwater swimming is still not my favorite traversal mechanic. And in this game floaty movement is further complicated by an unusually small focus area for picking an item; I’ve sometimes had to spend my whole oxygen supply dancing around an item back and forth trying to get the “pick up with ‘X’” prompt to stay long enough to hit the button. And speaking of movement, there’s this strange tendency to sink to the bottom while swimming so I have to constantly be pressing L1 while swimming because I like to hover several meters above the floor so I can see more of the terrain and spot items better. The pull of gravity toward the bottom feels too strong.

And the vast ocean is very disorienting. This is certainly by design, but it makes the exploration no less frustrating. I have repeatedly found a nice cache of resources, only to discover that while harvesting that my inventory is full, so I need to head back to the pod and do some fabrication and storage, knowing full well that I’ll never find this nice spot again. I see there is some kind of tool I can create that helps you leave a trail so you can find a spot again, so I guess I’ll work on making that.

As far as fabrication, I’ve made the first O2 tank, the knife, the air pump thing (which seems worthless right now... not sure what or how to use it), the repair gun, the fins, flares, a couple floating storage containers, and the scanner. I’m going crazy trying to find the last of 3 blueprint pieces for the vehicle dock thingy, which is apparently key to progressing to create the seamoth. I feel like I’m wandering aimlessly otherwise. 😅

Nevertheless, thanks to @Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy for a few early tips. They have come in really handy.
And yes, I’ve ventured into some underwater wreckage, unknowingly into a radiation field and died quickly of radiation poisoning. I also have contracted some kind of underwater bacteria infection too. Not sure how to cope with these maladies, so I just die. My first 3 death seemed to be “freebies” but now I’m losing inventory if I die.

@Th3solution

Donkey Kong wants to have a word with you about floaty imprecise controls! 😅

@ralphdibny Haha! Yes, underwater controls have plagued us from the beginning. 😄

Not sure what the controls are like on PS4 but I actually quite like them on PC! I’m tempted to check out the VR mode too, although using PSVR on my laptop with Trinus can be a bit fiddly, it makes me feel violently ill and simulating being underwater might make me feel even worse 😂

@nessisonett 🧐 that's a thing?? Is it better or worse than using PSVR normally? I would have thought better with the extra power of PC to back it up but I'm guessing the non-natural config throws up some drawbacks