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Zazz Razzamatazz
Apr 19, 2016

by sebmojo
I thought The Forest was kinda similar.

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double nine
Aug 8, 2013

Zazz Razzamatazz posted:

I thought The Forest was kinda similar.

similar to the long dark or similar to subnautica?

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

Comrade Koba posted:

The Long Dark is amazing, if for nothing else than the fact that unlike a lot of other survival games, Subnautica included, you can't just eventually craft your way to mega-powerful gear and make everything trivial. Wildlife and the environment can and will gently caress you up eventually.

Eh... not really. Once you find or craft good gear, the cold stops being a challenge almost entirely. Blizzards are the only challenge at that point, and and you can trivially avoid those by waiting them out inside any type of shelter (including an abandoned vehicle).

Wildlife is not that challenging either if you're paying attention to your surroundings. You can also easily avoid wolfs and bears, or kill them easily by lining up a good shot or two.

Don't get me wrong, Long Dark is a good game, but it doesn't have the same sense of... dread, and danger, as Subnautica does. It's way more casual.

LonsomeSon
Nov 22, 2009

A fishperson in an intimidating hat!

Toxic Fart Syndrome posted:

As far as similarly colorful building games, I am hopeful about Satisfactory, but haven't actually had the chance to try it or watch much footage.

Satisfactory has drop-dead gorgeous environments and the unlockable ability to recolor anything you've built, but it doesn't have quite the atmosphere of Subnautica.

It is a loving amazing game, however! If Factorio looked interesting but too cerebral and finicky for you, or if you loving live Factorio and wished for a high-res 3D version where you are physically climbing all over your machines and conveyor belts to check settings and connections, it is worth a look.

The world is huge and has a ton of vertical scaling; I've built giant ramps across lakes and huge elevated highways to allow autopiloted vehicles to avoid needing to negotiate less-predictable terrain features where they might get stuck, or fall off.

There are at least a dozen different kinds of wildlife so far, including territorial types which need to be cleared in order to access resources, little colorful scenery guys, and at least one really cool looking huge grazer thing.

Away all Goats
Jul 5, 2005

Goose's rebellion

The thing that makes The Long Dark and Subnautica similiar to me is the sense of exploration. You don't know whats around the corner or over the hill or inside that structure. However the difference is exploring an alien underwater planet vs contemporary Canadian winter region. There's a limit to what kind of weird and fantastical poo poo you can find compared to Subnautica.

Also, while the survival elements are so light in Subnautica that a lot of people find it better to turn them off completely, TLD is almost entirely about surviving. It's harsh and unforgiving, especially when you're starting out and don't know the terrain, wildlife, and/or how to judge and manage how much time you can spend outside.

Comrade Koba
Jul 2, 2007

enraged_camel posted:

Eh... not really. Once you find or craft good gear, the cold stops being a challenge almost entirely. Blizzards are the only challenge at that point, and and you can trivially avoid those by waiting them out inside any type of shelter (including an abandoned vehicle).

Wildlife is not that challenging either if you're paying attention to your surroundings. You can also easily avoid wolfs and bears, or kill them easily by lining up a good shot or two.

Don't get me wrong, Long Dark is a good game, but it doesn't have the same sense of... dread, and danger, as Subnautica does. It's way more casual.

Depends on the difficulty, I think? I mean, sure you can just hang out in a cabin until the weather clears, but your food supply isn't infinite.

With wildlife, they can and will sneak up on you (although their "aggro range" varies with difficulty I think). You can drop a wolf if you're lucky enough to have a rifle and ammunition (which isn't a given), but bears take more than one shot and will probably charge and maul you before you can get the second one off unless you snipe them from a large distance or something. Granted, wildlife can't instakill you like in Subnautica unless you're already wounded or weak from exposure.

Subnautica does have a sense of dread, but in my experience it goes away completely about halfway through the game when you find out that the huge scary monsters really don't care about you and even if you get attacked they'll at most make a small dent in your fancy robot suit or mega-submarine before they swim off. In effect, this makes the endgame zones (Lost River and the lava zones) among the least frightening in the game. Still, for obvious reasons, an underwater alien planet will always be scarier than plain old Canadian wilderness, so you're not wrong.

jeeves
May 27, 2001

Deranged Psychopathic
Butler Extraordinaire
Play SOMA.

It has both fear of the deep sea AND existential dread! It's really great.

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist

enraged_camel posted:

Eh... not really. Once you find or craft good gear, the cold stops being a challenge almost entirely. Blizzards are the only challenge at that point, and and you can trivially avoid those by waiting them out inside any type of shelter (including an abandoned vehicle).

Wildlife is not that challenging either if you're paying attention to your surroundings. You can also easily avoid wolfs and bears, or kill them easily by lining up a good shot or two.

Don't get me wrong, Long Dark is a good game, but it doesn't have the same sense of... dread, and danger, as Subnautica does. It's way more casual.

I'm not sure what game you've been playing. Subnautica is very upbeat all the time and pretty easy.

Comrade Koba
Jul 2, 2007

jeeves posted:

Play SOMA.

It has both fear of the deep sea AND existential dread! It's really great.

SOMA is loving amazing and anyone who hasn’t played it should do so right now.

It makes deep sea exploration a thousand times more terrifying than Subnautica ever could.

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

Zesty posted:

I'm not sure what game you've been playing. Subnautica is very upbeat all the time and pretty easy.

Not when you're exploring it for the first time.

I mean come on, one of the favorite passtimes of people in this thread is to watch LPs of first-time players making GBS threads their pants when they come across something unexpected and horrifying.

Long Dark just doesn't have that. Sure, you can get jumped by a wolf or mauled by a bear or whatever, but the game doesn't really have any mechanisms for immediate punishment when you do something you aren't supposed to do (aside from the obviously stupid stuff like taking long falls) or go somewhere you aren't supposed to go. Death sort of just creeps up on you, mostly as a result of lack of proper planning on your part.

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

Away all Goats posted:

The thing that makes The Long Dark and Subnautica similiar to me is the sense of exploration.

Keep in mind this can be both good and bad.

The sense of exploration in both games goes away once you have explored an area, since the world is static.

To this day, I think Subnautica should have gone with the "random chunk" approach that has worked really well for ARPGs like Diablo. I guess the dev team here wasn't as talented though so they couldn't get it to work.

Mason Dixon
Jul 28, 2001

Crimson Butterfly

Comrade Koba posted:

SOMA is loving amazing and anyone who hasn’t played it should do so right now.

It makes deep sea exploration a thousand times more terrifying than Subnautica ever could.

Soma's is indeed a great game and its outside ocean exploration has good atmosphere, but in general it's not as scary (assuming unexplored and no Prawn suit) as the average Subnautica biome. Now, that said, the part in Soma where you're crossing the abyssal floor easily tops anything in Subnautica for me regarding tension and scariness.

Tetrabor
Oct 14, 2018

Eight points of contact at all times!
Obligatory Terraria post: it may be 2d, but making it into Hell or encountering some of the bosses for the first time can definitely give you a scare. Also has the most interactive weapon options of any biome explorer.

Skippy McPants
Mar 19, 2009

I don't think there's anything else quite like Subnautica. Even aside from the unique biome lightly peppered with story elements, it has a texture that I haven't experienced in any other survival game. The world is sometimes hostile, but it never feels... malevolent. It's not out to get you. Nature is just there and it doesn't much care about you one way or another; even the Reapers would rather you leave them alone.

It's like a really intense nature documentary. It makes me want a mod that replaces the AI voice with David Attenborough.

Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Apr 14, 2019

DEEP STATE PLOT
Aug 13, 2008

Yes...Ha ha ha...YES!



Tetrabor posted:

Obligatory Terraria post: it may be 2d, but making it into Hell or encountering some of the bosses for the first time can definitely give you a scare. Also has the most interactive weapon options of any biome explorer.

terraria extremely rules and everyone should play it

Zazz Razzamatazz
Apr 19, 2016

by sebmojo

double nine posted:

similar to the long dark or similar to subnautica?

I've never played The Long Dark, so I couldn't say. It's similar to Subnautica (survival in a beautiful but terrifying environment with some base building) but in a forest. The story is thinner, but it's a fun one.

Zazz Razzamatazz
Apr 19, 2016

by sebmojo

jeeves posted:

Play SOMA.

It has both fear of the deep sea AND existential dread! It's really great.

Yes, dear god yes. Fantastic game.

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

DEEP STATE PLOT posted:

terraria extremely rules and everyone should play it

last time i played terraria, i got tired of slimes spawning non-stop

ate shit on live tv
Feb 15, 2004

by Azathoth

Tetrabor posted:

Obligatory Terraria post: it may be 2d, but making it into Hell or encountering some of the bosses for the first time can definitely give you a scare. Also has the most interactive weapon options of any biome explorer.

Terraria is good, but it's not really a survival game on the level of subnautica. Yes you have to build a 4 tile high wall at the beginning of the game, but it's more about exploration and ore progression rather then survival.

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty

Skippy McPants posted:

The world is sometimes hostile, but it never feels... malevolent. It's not out to get you. Nature is just there and it doesn't much care about you one way or another; even the Reapers would rather you leave them alone.
This is extremely not true because Bone Sharks exist solely to ruin your day

Skippy McPants
Mar 19, 2009

Bone Sharks a loud and goofy lookin' and not much else. Just look at this goofus.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




I want Subnautica but instead of the terror I'm just building a huge cool underwater city while I explore an alien planet.

Okay a bit of terror too.

Aoi
Sep 12, 2017

Perpetually a Pain.
Man, bonesharks are a good example of that size issue I mentioned. They're, like, on average, the size of the shark in Jaws. But they feel more like annoyed bull sharks, even close-up. Someone else mentioned wanting leviathans the size of a blue whale, but here's the thing...your average reaper is twice the length of a blue whale. They're way slimmer, of course, but your average adult reefback is probably about as broad as a blue whale, and easily as long as one, but...they really, REALLY don't feel like it. I mean, their back feels about the size of a moderately large suburban garden.

I guess it's an engine issue or something, and I've heard things seem way bigger in VR (but the game is almost unplayable in VR, too, from what I hear), it's just...sad, that it couldn't really impart the size of the world you're in more viscerally. There were a couple of moments, like meeting the Sea Emperor for the first time, but...eh. I mean, your cyclops feels pretty darn big, particularly compared to the seamoth and prawn, but it's supposed to be twice the length of an adult blue whale, too, and it doesn't feel anything CLOSE to that.

Ah, well.

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

isn't the issue with bonesharks that, unlike the other small-sized predators (e.g. stalkers), they hunt in packs?

my memory is a bit hazy but i dont remember ever having to deal with a single bone shark.

Skippy McPants
Mar 19, 2009

They're just very territorial, so in the zones they occupy it's not uncommon to aggro one while running from another.

Mason Dixon
Jul 28, 2001

Crimson Butterfly

Skippy McPants posted:

Bone Sharks a loud and goofy lookin' and not much else. Just look at this goofus.



See, you say that, but it's a good thing Subnautica couldn't take place on the planet where something that looks pretty darned similar lives on the ground.

Skippy McPants
Mar 19, 2009

Sure, if the Boneshark had a creepy claw head but he don't. He's got a funny skull-face. He's like a pokemon reject.

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty

enraged_camel posted:

isn't the issue with bonesharks that, unlike the other small-sized predators (e.g. stalkers), they hunt in packs?

my memory is a bit hazy but i dont remember ever having to deal with a single bone shark.

While building an outpost in the volcanic edge zone by the submerged floater islands, I was attacked by no less than six bone sharks at once. they are jerks and got the drill

Skippy McPants posted:

Sure, if the Boneshark had a creepy claw head but he don't. He's got a funny skull-face. He's like a pokemon reject.

Cuboneshark

Whitenoise Poster
Mar 26, 2010

EimiYoshikawa posted:

Man, bonesharks are a good example of that size issue I mentioned. They're, like, on average, the size of the shark in Jaws. But they feel more like annoyed bull sharks, even close-up. Someone else mentioned wanting leviathans the size of a blue whale, but here's the thing...your average reaper is twice the length of a blue whale. They're way slimmer, of course, but your average adult reefback is probably about as broad as a blue whale, and easily as long as one, but...they really, REALLY don't feel like it. I mean, their back feels about the size of a moderately large suburban garden.

I guess it's an engine issue or something, and I've heard things seem way bigger in VR (but the game is almost unplayable in VR, too, from what I hear), it's just...sad, that it couldn't really impart the size of the world you're in more viscerally. There were a couple of moments, like meeting the Sea Emperor for the first time, but...eh. I mean, your cyclops feels pretty darn big, particularly compared to the seamoth and prawn, but it's supposed to be twice the length of an adult blue whale, too, and it doesn't feel anything CLOSE to that.

Ah, well.

The best example I can think of is some guy doing videos for the new sub zero expansion was looking at some new animal and from the normal view it looks roughly chest high to you. But then he pops out into free cam where you can see you own body and BAM the thing is actually like twice as tall as you.

I'll be drat if I know why that is or how it could be fixed.

Skippy McPants
Mar 19, 2009

The FoV is set to 90 by default, which messed with the scale. If you want stuff to look bigger you can try setting it to ~80 or lower.

Oasx
Oct 11, 2006

Freshly Squeezed

Comrade Koba posted:

SOMA is loving amazing and anyone who hasn’t played it should do so right now.

It makes deep sea exploration a thousand times more terrifying than Subnautica ever could.

You can’t really compare the two. SOMA is a horror game, and even if you make the monsters passive it is still super creepy.
Subnautica has scary moments, but the dangerous animals are mostly there to be avoided, and are not that dangerous when you have that in mind.

Dreadwroth2
Feb 28, 2019

by Cyrano4747
If you guys want giant sea monsters I have two words for you: shadow leviathan.
It looks like a cross between a squid and a centipede and is utterly horrifying. Its also the biggest critter so far afaik in the new expac.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




Skippy McPants posted:

The FoV is set to 90 by default, which messed with the scale. If you want stuff to look bigger you can try setting it to ~80 or lower.

Generally you'd probably want something under 70 to replicate an equivalent rectangle of real human vision on your monitor, but most people want some peripheral awareness in games, which has the unfortunate side effect of reducing scale. It's a balance. I think 90 was probably higher than ideal for what subnautica wanted to be.

I was surprised when I saw a reaper third-person screenshot, I never realised it was that big in-game.



It's a real pity that they weren't able to pull off the size properly.

MikeJF fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Apr 15, 2019

Comrade Koba
Jul 2, 2007

Dreadwroth2 posted:

If you guys want giant sea monsters I have two words for you: shadow leviathan.
It looks like a cross between a squid and a centipede and is utterly horrifying. Its also the biggest critter so far afaik in the new expac.

It’s also not even in the game yet, AFAIK. :smith:

Ambaire
Sep 4, 2009

by Shine
Oven Wrangler

enraged_camel posted:

last time i played terraria, i got tired of slimes spawning non-stop

Talking about the Slime Rain? That's a boss leadup event, and if you kill enough, the King Slime spawns.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




Dreadwroth2 posted:

If you guys want giant sea monsters I have two words for you: shadow leviathan
It looks like a cross between a squid and a centipede and is utterly horrifying. Its also the biggest critter so far afaik in the new expac.
.

The concept art pieces for this next to the seamoth makes it look a bit smaller than a reaper? Although thicker.

Whitenoise Poster
Mar 26, 2010

They should just go insane from everyone wanting even bigger monsters and add a thing that is so long it takes a solid ten minutes to drive a seamoth from its head to the tip of it's tail.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




The Sea Dragon Leviathans were originally three times the size but they kept breaking. Then there was an accidental bug that made them the size they are now and they decided to leave it so they could actually navigate.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Having the lategame area be a relatively confined cave was probably a bad idea in retrospect.

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Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty

Whitenoise Poster posted:

They should just go insane from everyone wanting even bigger monsters and add a thing that is so long it takes a solid ten minutes to drive a seamoth from its head to the tip of it's tail.

Ah, the spaceballs method

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