Subnautica Review (Verdict: Excellent)

Hello folks,

Those of you who read my blog (thank you) will know that I've said the next sentence time and time again: I'm very wary of spending full game price on VR games, because the quality is so varying.

Prior to the Steam Summer Sale (see previous post), I only purchased one VR game. I did this after having pretty much exhausted the most obvious free games and experiences on Steam, and only after a lot of research.

The game I bought was Subnautica and I paid £14.99 for it. It is currently 50% discounted on Steam at the moment, so until July 5th you can buy it for £7.49.

Technically Subnautica is in "Early Access" release, which means it is not a finished game. However, as you can see in the Subnautica Blog, it's been in development for a few years already, so even though there's still a lot of polish that can be added, it is already a great in-depth experience that you can spend many many hours enjoying and exploring.

So What's Subnautica About?

The basic premise of the game is that your space ship has crashed landed whilst you were in the vicinity of a water planet. Luckily, your life pod ejected before impact and saved your life, managing to absorb it's own landing and successfully inflate the bouyancy aids. This is where you begin the game, you have literally just landed and you need to start working out where you are and what you need to do to keep yourself alive.

As soon as you venture outside, you realise that water effectively covers 100% of the planet surface and therefore all life is in the sea, returning back inside your life pod and checking the replicator, you can start to learn what resources you need to gather to construct basic survival tools.

The game has various modes to suit the type of gamer, but in the default Survival mode, you need to eat and drink to stay alive, and also you need to breathe, which as this game is mostly underwater, is probably the biggest challenge out of eat/sleep/breathe to manage.

How the Game Plays

Food and water, whilst being an important factor in survival mode, is not such a great task to manage. As long as you keep a check on your levels and make sure you keep a stock of water specifically, you don't really need to worry too much about staying on top of these. Before you set out for a long expedition, as long as you've fed and watered yourself and you keep a small stock in your inventory, you'll be fine.

It's really oxygen that defines how you play this game. To start off with, you can hold your breath for 45 seconds, which really means you begin by swimming in the shallows and the range of your exploration is taking expeditionary dives underwater to explore specific areas of the sea bed or to gather resources. Pretty soon you can craft a basic oxygen tank, which whilst only giving you an extra 30 seconds, makes a big difference to your underwater scuba diving. The next big initial step is that it is not too long before you can build a small submarine vessel. The vessel produces oxygen for you, which means now you can go deeper and explore much more, and only need to worry about your oxygen level when you leave your craft to gather some resources or enter a confined space.

The limitations of oxygen and this slow-but-steady development of your abilities really define how the game works overall. Initially you are presented with a very limiting factor, by exploration and trial-and-error you can understand how to overcome that challenge, then that part becomes easy and you move onto the next task. Thus, you can start to explore more and more of the world and get further into the game.

The other main method of advancement is technology. Using a tool you create fairly early in the game, you can start to gather blueprints based on stuff you find lying around when you explore, and this lets you build better and bigger things.

The Subnautica World

The Subnautica world is a beautiful and exciting place to explore in VR. The world is made up of different biomes where different flora and fauna live and there are several times when you get a new sense of wonder at new creatures you find as you explore further and deeper. I won't give up further details on this because it will spoil the game, but there have been several times when I have stopped what I was doing and just swam around a new creature in amazement because I'd never seen anything like it before in the game.

There is also a genuine sense of danger in exploring the seas, something that I think VR enhances. When diving into the deeper spaces, concern for oxygen is genuine. That cave over there that looks like it twists and turns, how far do you explore before you worry about if you can get back in time? Also, not all the sea life is friendly and there are creatures in this game that will either have you instantly concerned if you spot them first, or will put you into a panic if they manage to creep up on you.

Your space ship was large and other life pods were ejected. You get a helping hand in the first hours of the game as your lifepod computer picks up on signals from the surrounding area and invites you to explore them. It's possible that there are some other survivors and even if there are not, there might be some tech you can scavenge to help your own situation. Plus, the space ship crash landed in shallows and is always in view, perhaps you can visit what's left of the hull and find out why it crashed.

There is a basic plot to the game, which you are gently nudged along in the early parts of the game thanks to the signals your lifepod picks up, but really you are never pushed to follow it. Furthermore, after you receive a bunch they just stop, and then you are really left up to your own devices. Personally, although I like being able to explore freely and not be confined to the story, I can't help but feeling it is a bit too light in Subnautica. Exploring or not, I always like to know what I need to do next to get further along in the story, and after a while you are really left just to work it out yourself.

Graphics and Sound

The sound in Subnautica is spot on. Various creatures have their own sounds and the audio cues in the game are sometimes even more important than seeing things. In particular, hearing the sound of a predator will have you checking around so you are sure you know what it is doing. Also, the rush of water around your ears when you dive underwater really makes you feel like you are submerging yourself thanks to how the world around you genuinely sounds like you are now hearing it through water. Overall the sound effects and music give a very immersive feeling of really being in the world.

As I said before, Subnautica is undeniably beautiful. However, this is sometimes thanks to the overall immersion rather than the technical quality of the graphics. Sea life tends to always be rendered well and moving realistically, but distance pop-in is a real problem. The Length of Distance view in this game is actually quite short, and not only will you see things popping into view all the time, but sometimes you need to more closely explore an area just so you are close enough to see what you are actually looking for. It's an issue but one that can be lived with.

The other major issue with the graphics is that this game is quite unoptimised. I don't have a beefy VR rig, in fact mine is technically entry level, but nonetheless, I don't typically have too many issues with frame rates in games. With Subnautica, however, frame rates do chug all too often, and not always with any apparent good reason like there's a lot going on. In the worst cases, you can see the SteamVR busy/loading graphic pop up and really I think there is no space for this to be happening in any "proper" VR game. I suspect this is the main factor with the game being in early access. The graphics are beautiful, but the game engine needs a lot of polish. Still, I find I can easily look past these issues and stay genuinely immersed.

Overall

Despite any issues with the graphics and the plot, I heartily recommend Subnautica to VR headset owners. There is a full scale world to explore, the graphics and sound are beautiful even if the game engine needs polish, and I especially like the underwater survival element of the game.

I bought this game at full price and having probably spent 20-30 hours on it already (and feeling like I am nowhere near the end), it is definitely value for money. The game being early access might put some folks off, and it did me originally, but the developers don't give any signs as to when they'll make the 1.0 release and really I think you are doing yourself a disservice if you hold off buying Subnautica just for that reason.

Steam Summer Sale Now On

Full Disclosure: I am not affiliated with Steam in any way, nor do I gain any commission from anything in this blog post, I am merely a happy customer!

Attention all HTC Vive and Oculus Rift owners, the Steam Summer sale is now on!

If you've looked out for previous sales, then you will be well aware of the tradition of picking up multiple games for bargain prices, only to ever play about 25% of what you bought!

Well, if you are like me and you don't normally like to pay full game prices for VR experiences, which can either be short or so-so in quality, then this Summer Sale also means something else, the opportunity to take a chance on some VR games without worrying about wasting too much money on games you end up not liking!

In just the first couple of days I have already picked up the following.

Game	Original Price	Discount	Sale Price	Saving
Monstrum	£11.99	75%	£2.99	£9.00
The Solus Project	£14.99	50%	£7.49	£7.50
Dead Secret	£10.99	60%	£4.39	£6.60
Twisted Arrow	£14.99	75%	£3.74	£11.25
Carnival Games® VR	£15.99	75%	£3.99	£12.00
Arcade Saga	£14.99	75%	£3.74	£11.25
Please, Don't Touch Anything 3D	£10.99	60%	£4.39	£6.60
Blue Effect VR	£10.99	50%	£5.49	£5.50
Total	£105.92	66%	£36.22	£69.70

You can pick up some great VR bargains in the sale!

As you can see, the Steam Sales are really the way to build up your VR library whilst minimising your risk. I don't mind paying a good price for a game I genuinely enjoy, but the trouble with the VR market is that it is really still dominated by Indie games developers and, to be brutally honest, there are a lot of short, boring, technically poor and/or "early access" games out there.

I don't mind taking a punt on a VR game for £3.99. At that price, if it turns out to be a bad game, it's only a few quid, whereas if I'd spent £16 on it I'd be more upset. Plus, this is a great chance for me to get some games I can review for my blog, for your pleasure of course! 😀

I considered burning through my newly acquired list of VR games, to give each a couple of hours play and have a chance to review them for you guys so you still had a chance to pick them up in the sale. But, upon reflection, I thought the trouble with that is that some games can seem really fun for the first couple of hours, then you discover that the rest of the game is pretty much the same (like No Man's Sky, a huge disappointment), so I'm not going to do that. If you want to take advantage of the Steam Sales then you'll need to take a punt like I am, but by the time the Steam Winter Sale comes out, I'll have some reviews out.

This game is a bargain at twice the current price!

A final note before I finish. My next post, which will be out today also, is a review of Subnautica. Prior to the Steam sale, this is the only VR game I've actually paid money for, I did so after a lot of research and I paid full price. My next post is a review of this game and it is now in the sale at half price. I was already happy to have bought this game at full price, so I totally recommend you buy Subnautica now whilst the sale is on. The genre is exploration/survival but the water element makes it huge fun!

Game	Original Price	Discount	Sale Price	Saving
Subnautica	£14.99	50%	£7.49	£7.50

I'm working on my Subnautica review to be published today, so keep hitting that refresh button if you are keen to see it!

A European Driver's Review of an American Muscle Car

Hello everyone,

As they say in Monty Python, "And now for something completely different."

I travel to the US a few times a year on business and the company pays for a hire car when I need one, which is most of the time. If you've hired a car with any regularity, you know that a lot of the time you can get sweet deals and even free upgrades, because they don't pre-allocate you any particular car, you choose one when you go to pick it up. Also, hire car companies don't really try to keep any of a particular class in stock, so it is not too unusual for them not to have one in your particular class. So this is how you get the free upgrades.

And this is how I got an American muscle car for the price of a standard full-size sedan, a 5.7l v8 Dodge Challenger!

Because I got to enjoy this beast for a week, I thought I'd take the opportunity to blog my thoughts on it. As someone who only really knows anything about European cars, and even then I'd hardly call myself a petrolhead, I thought it might be an interesting insight for muscle car fans and European car fans alike.

Actually, having written this article once, I decided to re-write it. I felt my original article really missed the point of the American muscle car and probably would have upset fans of them to the point where what I wrote would have just been dismissed. And what's the point in that? I want to write something that fans and non-fans might find interesting. So this blog post is actually take 2.

First Things First - Performance.

This car is the epitome of what the American Muscle Car is all about, a 5.7l Hemi v8 engine that produces 375 hp. That's hp, not bhp, (you can read about the difference here) so that's even more impressive than a 375bhp car you'd read about in Europe.

The engine makes this car a beast. If you are one to appreciate cars and like the performance aspect of it, then the noise of the Challenger will make the hairs on your neck stand up. It is fantastic, I have never driven anything like it. I have a friend in the UK that has a Mercedes C63 AMG with a 4.0l v8 engine, a magnificent sounding car, but the Challenger is just louder, bassier and more guttural. I think it is actually probably quite likely that the Challenger wouldn't be legal in Europe because it doesn't have sufficient noise suppression in the exhaust, it is LOUD!

The 5.7l Hemi V8 Engine

My hire car is the automatic variant, which I understand to be an 8 speed. It's fairly responsive and seems perfectly good enough for the engine by American car standards. I don't know the specs for sure, but I bet this is a single clutch system. I'm lucky in that my own car at home, the Audi A4, has the S-Tronic system and obviously the dual clutch system on the S-Tronic gives it a big advantage. Compared to typical American hire car fare, however, the automatic clutch on the Challenger is definitely man enough.

Muscle car fans probably won't agree with my next statement however. Although the power of the Challenger made me laugh with pleasure every time I put my foot down, I still couldn't shake a feeling that it didn't quite have the same sense of urgency even as my own car. And this is where I think there is a key difference in the typical European sports car vs the American muscle car. For all of the Challenger's power, it is only 0.7 seconds quicker to 60 than my 250bhp A4. Once you start to look a bit deeper I think it becomes obvious why. In the Dodge Challenger you have 375 hp going through the rear wheels in a 2000kg car. In my A4 you have 250bhp going through 4 wheels in a 1350kg car. Even if you just look at the power to weight ratio you have 0.1875hp/kg in the Dodge and 0.1852bhp/kg in the Audi. That's not much of a difference, and if you consider that with Quattro you are getting power to all 4 wheels from a standing start, this is why I think the Challenger ultimately lacks that urgency and that "shoving you in the back of the seat" feeling you might expect with all that power.

The American muscle car is a frickin huge, powerful and heavy engine with just enough car round it to enjoy it. The European (or rather German) sports car is all about engineering, and that engineering largely gets you to the same place as the muscle car but with half the fuel consumption.

I know muscle car fans will probably not like the comparison and in a way it isn't fair, because really it is comparing apples to oranges. I do not mean to be negative about the Dodge Challenger at all, it was absolutely thrilling driving it for a week, but nonetheless that feeling about the lack of urgency despite all that power was there and I'm just trying to articulate why I think that is.

So, moving onto other points...

The Exterior

The outside of the car looks great, it says American muscle car all over it. Aggressive styling from the front and rear, great looking rear light clusters, excellent side profile with obviously only 2 doors, this being a coupe. The car certainly looks the part from the outside and goes well with the engine sound. There's certainly no comparison to the (in)famously fairly modest looking Audi in the looks department (even though actually I love how my Audi looks, especially the rear lights).

The Interior

The stereo  and integrated controls, pretty poor.

Taking a serious look at the interior of the Challenger reinforces the ethos with cars of this type. The interior is quite sparse. The upholstery and quality of the fabric is fine, but there is no leather in sight. Even the steering wheel, whilst comfortable, is a poor fake-leather/rubbery type material. Looking at the Dodge website, leather doesn't even seem to be an option, I think that is quite a poor show for what is essentially meant to be a car you impress your friends with. Why wouldn't you want to add a harder wearing and better looking leather interior to go with all that muscle?

I could write pages about my feelings on the Dodge interior, so let's break this down into pros and cons:

Pros:

• Almost fully electric seats with adjustable back support. Electric windows and mirror adjustment.
• Keyless entry and engine start/stop.
• Having a touchscreen display in the centre console is a nice touch.
• Driver's dashboard, whilst basic, does fit in with the sportiness of the car and it also partially features an electronic display.
• The car does appear to have some kind of stability program, although I'm not sure if it is only ABS or if it includes traction control (having successfully had the wheels squealing during my second day in the car).

Keyless entry is a nice feature, however.

Cons:

• The seats have a manual fix/loose lever you open and close to adjust back tilt. Bizarre when all other seat controls are electric.
• Too many controls centralised on the touchscreen digital display and the stereo/control system itself frankly rubbish. In particular I don't like the way half of the AC controls are only accessible from the touch screen.
• The driver's dashboard is basic. An analog and digital speedo, rev counter, engine temperature and fuel gauge, and that's it. Quite the comedown when you are used to Audi's Virtual Cockpit.
• No leather interior option.

The stereo system and a lot of in-car controls are centralised on the touchscreen display. Frankly, it is a really poor and basic system. It pesters you with a pop-up message you have to say OK to every time you start the car (although that may be normal with American cars). I paired my phone to the stereo but it never remembers to use Bluetooth when you turn the car and on always switches back to radio. Half of the AC controls are on this touch-screen system and the other half are traditional dials. The display is too small and difficult to use when driving (even with sensible use such as when you are stopped at lights), although you can upgrade to a bigger display with more features as an optional extra.

Really, the interior does tell a story about the price you pay when buying an American muscle car, on top of the actual price of course. Essentially you are buying the 5.7l v8 engine and only enough car around it to enjoy using that engine, there is precious little on top in terms of toys. Keyless entry is a nice plus you might not expect, but a lack of any toys, even as additional extras, are huge negatives, and seems like a missed opportunity from Dodge. On the other hand, the car already weighs 2 metric tons, so maybe putting even more toys in it isn't the answer.

The Price

So, by looking at the features that are obvious (or rather the lack of them) and using Dodge's "Build & Price" feature on their website, I calculate that the car I have costs $34,840 brand new, which is £26,842 at the time of writing. That is quite a bit of money for a fantastic engine in a good looking but functionally basic car. You could spend that much money on a European car and get a top of the range model of a non-premium-brand car with a decent engine, although nothing like the v8 of course, and without four wheel drive you're not going to get close to the acceleration from standing either, so ultimately there is nothing comparable in the UK market that is "better."

Summary

Ultimately, the American Muscle car is not about having something that makes sense on paper, because they don't make any sense at all on paper. Heavier, thirstier, somewhat expensive and ultimately a fairly basic car with the old-school muscle engine in it.

But my god is it fantastic to drive!

And that sums it up, if you just look at the specs on paper and considering technical engineering points as a basis for reviewing the Dodge Challenger, you've missed the point (I know I've done that but only to try and articulate my thoughts). Driving a muscle car isn't about making sense, it's about having muscle and putting rubber down on the road, and it's as simple as that, and it's f*****g fantastic!

If I could get to drive a Dodge Challenger or another manufacturer's muscle car again in the future then I'd totally go for it!

I'm not sure I could own one as my everyday car though.