Quick Look: Submerged

Drowning in weekend quick looks!

(I'm so sorry)

So it's Ubisoft tower climbing the game?

I might pick this up. It seems like the kind of game that benefits from being played in short sittings rather than a few long ones, or the repetative nature becoms to annoying.

This should go swimmingly. I guess we shall sea. I can't wade to find out. Might just be a wash, however.

... Boats.

Looks like a game that got heavily scaled back. Too many segments of nothing, gameplay-wise.

Maybe it was a mini-Uncharted at some point?

Would be my guess, anyway.

10/10

@brad FYI, Screen Australia is a government body that provides grants for film projects and, increasingly, locally-produced indie games. They're pretty neat.

Woohoo! Weekend video!!!

I think the Thief series is spectacular.

I thought my country gave up on making video games. Glad to see some people are still trying.

inb4: "Too much water" 7.8/10 - IGN

This is like a shit Waterworld. Waterworld is rad. I'm glad both Brad and Drew like it too.

How can you not like Dennis Hopper coming out to address his crew wearing a silly pirate hat on his head?

I like how small games that aren't heavily stylized can manage to look pretty good these days.

@brad Screen Australia is a government funding body. They usually service the local film and tv industry, but they've broadened out lately into stuff like web content and games.

Edit: @comradelarko beat me to it!

Okay, hear me out...

What if there was, like, creatures that also walked on land and then they had glowing spots too and you had a gun or a sword or a gun with a sword or a chainsaw on it and if you hit them in those glowing spots they took double damage and they had guns too, but there was chest-high walls you could hide behind to not get shot?

That would be an AWESOME game!

This game feels like a combination of Journey and Shadow of the Colossus that fails on both fronts. It almost emulates the wordless, natural storytelling of Journey, but the "gameness" of the game (which includes the UI when it's on) undermines that narrative approach. Then the lack of big payoffs (partially due to its "no combat/encounter" rule) undoes any attempt to emulate Shadow of the Colossus's level/world design, which made the mechanical drudgery of navigating an environment tense at best or forgettable at worst because players could expect an awesome fight afterwards.

I'm not too keen on the random zombie/mutant thing either. Any interest I had in this title vanished immediately upon sight of it.

Like SupberUber, I can't shake the feeling that this was meant to be something else. Specifically, it appears as if a deadline got moved up.

Between this an Beyond Eyes, this must be the weekend of quick looks for games that look beautiful but have minimalist gameplay. Could be cool to mess around with for an hour or so, but would probably get pretty boring after that.

Also, just fyi, this is $20 on steam (currently on sale for $18), not $10 like Brad said.

I hope @brad at least beat the game, or doesn't care to finish this one, because I think he just pulled another I Am Alive with his saved game.

Drew always notices a big ol' gash.

Do you get a sword?

Yeah, Waterworld is kinda rad. I liked that X-COM style strategy game for PC that Interplay/Intelligent Games did back in 1995 too. Really hope it'll come to GOG at some point.

Yeah ... there's something here, but so many visual and design issues that kind put me off it. Surely even a low budget title should be able to make the surfaces of the buildings that have been in contact with the waves look wet/darker for a while afterwards? Didn't even the PS2 Tomb Raider games do that?

The window textures on that hotel she climbed didn't look good at all either, not even using the simple trick of making two layers of textures - one depicting the window and one depicting what's behind it to give some simple sense of depth.

Then there's of course the UI that seems to tell too much in written text when you consider how much else this game tries to do without dialogue.

"Brad and Drew have got to sail and climb their little hearts out."

How dare you represent Drew and Brad as having little hearts. Why I'll wager their hearts are average if not completely standard size.

Good lord Bradley says "like" a lot.

Let's record you talking about anything for 30 minutes and we will find something you say a lot.

This looks really interesting.

Dat running animation.

Looks boring, pass.

I reviewed Submerged and I found it interesting but significantly lacking in depth. As Brad says there isn't a whole lot to it. Nonetheless a unique experience.

"The sea giveth"

I was wondering if he meant to do that too. He said he was halfway through and wanted to finish.

Maybe he has a cloud save.

I'm not sure why anyone bothered to comment after this.

I'm such a sucker for style over substance games like this.

Also, I'm with Brad. Post-apocalypse terms for old stuff is the best. One of my favorite epic fantasy series is set in a future Earth. They refer to concrete as, "builder's stone," A.I. interfaces as, "ghosts," and nuclear bombs as, "suns."

"Look at that big ol' gash"

-Drew Scanlon

Aw, I wish games stole more from I Am Alive. Even though that game disintegrates as it goes on (and has an "oops we ran out of money" ending), the puzzle-like early combat encounters and the climbing mechanics were really good. If you were hanging, you'd start losing stamina and you'd have to get to another safe position before you ran out. Of course, Shadow of the Colossus had that system, but if you ran out of grip it was usually because you were holding onto a shaking colossus. They never timed climbing sequences themselves down to the point of being a puzzle, where you'd have to figure out your course and estimate how long it'd take you before you set out.

I Am Alive put in more risk-reward subtlety to that by letting you go into "stamina burn", which lets you go further but reduces your maximum stamina until you eat something that restores it (in the early goings, you'd have to make do with lower stamina sometimes because you had to make the most out of your supplies). And they added strategy with pitons, which give you a place to rest but can't be removed, so they're ideal if you're going to be crossing a certain area multiple times (or from different paths). So in many cases you'd have to make a climb much farther than you could in one stamina bar and make decisions about what you were going to do, both before and during the climb, or be exposed to a surface you couldn't see when you started out so you had to figure out a path on the fly.

The point is that I Am Alive in the early part was just as cut down as this game - all you could do was walk around, climb stuff, and work through combat encounter puzzles. But each element was carefully made to be complex and challenging to compensate, not just take a long time to do.

this game looked pretty interesting from the little i'd seen of it before now but honestly i'm more than happy to skip it less its on ps+ or something , i mean it still looks really nice specially the style and its different narrative of sorts but it doesn't look like something i wanna buy, if i wanted to climb stuff n sail around i'd go play more assassin's creed 4 ( not really into 4 )

I bought it after the quick look aired and finished it that day. Took me 2 sittings, maybe 5-6 hours. I got all the trophies (PS4) and thought it was interesting. It definitely has a Journey vibe to it. I like collect-a-thons though, so it was right up my alley.

By the way, It's on sale for $15.99 U.S.D on PSN right now and normally $20.

As a side note, this game made my PS4 really loud the whole time I played it, but my system is a little over a year old and constantly used.

I read something that compared this game to Enslaved, a game I absolutely loved. After seeing this QL, this doesn't look like it can hold Enslaved's jock strap.

This kinda reminds me of the Ubisoft game I Am Alive but without the combat. Speaking of boat exploration games, Ocean Heart is a really promising indie game. Its early in development but it already looks quite neat and invokes Wind Waker quite heavily.

Do we really just live in a world where a one year old system is expected to lose performance? These modern machines are so delicate. I have a PS1 that I probably played more than any system I ever had and it still works great. Not that I actually use it anymore but if I wanted to I know that thing would work. Anyway I would be really sad if my PS4 tried to die on me or started randomly hitching or sound like a jet about to take off.

I would take less powerful machines that actually lasted a long time over what we have now.

Is the girl going to turn into stone people? Her hands look odd after the second story building.

I was given a review copy of this game and am enjoying it so far. My biggest issue is the climbing does get quite repetitive. That is my only issue so far.

Haha, Brad totally deleted his old save when he started a new game. Should read that warning text ;)

What happens when you make a postcard?!

I feel people are being way too negative about a neat little game. It rather sad that just because a game avoids conflict and high tension that it gets slammed because it wants to have a serene and tender story. It won't be for everyone, but is telling that people who like it feel like they have to apologize for this not being about killing everything that moves or showing grotesque fall damage if you make a mistake.


I'm going to pick this up.

I don't think this looks very good, visually. I don't mean to be harsh, but the water ripples are not all that impressive (it's a fairly standard graphical touch by now) and objects seem to flicker in the distance. I'm surprised it's powered by UE4. If your game is wholly about exploring an environment, I expect a little more from the quality of the world. I know the following is a flawed argument inherently because the games are trying to be very different things, but I can't help but think: I can do better looking sailing and climbing in a more fully featured game like The Witcher 3. I know, I know - not a fair comparison. But when your game is focused on such few things, I expect these things to be substantially polished and more impressive than a larger game that also includes those features.

I'm not against games that don't feature combat, or games that prefer to focus on exploration and story (a disclaimer that is becoming tiresome to have to repeat, as so many see critiques of these kinds of games as damning the style as a whole). Some of my favourite games are like this, though I don't think these qualities give games a free pass when evaluating them. It's just that this doesn't look like a good One Of Those Games.

It's not being slammed for having a serene and tender story, it's being slammed because the traversal "puzzles" are just rote going-through-the-motions.

This looks cool. I hope I can get it while it's on sale.

I got it last week. It is no Journey, but what is except Journey that level of story, movement and gravatas of theme? WIth that said Submergedis a neat little game that has few obvious bugs or problems. It is beautifully rendered, the climbing around can be enjoyable, and the only thing really missing is a bit more punch to the story.

It is no GOTY contender, but its is a neat little game worth playing for $15.

Not much here for me.