Submerged Reviews
Submerged turned out pretty horrible, and while its concept sounded okay on paper, sadly, the execution is an unbelievable disaster. Ugly, extremely rough, buggy and boring; Submerged should be cast off and is not worth the asking price at all. Anyone who might be interested in a, atmospheric exploration game should just play the HD collection of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, or get Journey.
Submerged can only be described as a huge disappointment that squandered its potential thanks to some terrible design decisions and being let out the door far too early. Its story is laughable at best, we couldn't muster up any care for the main character Miku and gameplay itself becomes a drag very quickly. The controls are dreadful and the core mechanic within gameplay, the climbing, is clunky and unresponsive. While the soundtrack is fantastic, it isn't enough to make us ignore the glaring problems the game has in terms of performance.
There might have been a good idea at the heart of Submerged, but its execution is such a catastrophe that it's practically impossible to find it. Any emotional impact outside of pure anger that this short, repetitive title may have had is completely lost due to a number of technical issues and flat-out design flaws.
Submerged could have been interesting. It could have offered a nice challenge, a good setting, a good story, but it did none of these things. Submerged ended up being so samey and monotonous that it isn't really worth playing through when you realize the first half hour is what the entire game is.
Submerged is not a broken game. It functions and provides an intriguing little story over its three hour timespan. However, there's no sense of joy to actually playing. Why isn't there even a feeling of awe when exploring this flooded cityscape? It's incredibly strange how this game managed to flounder so badly but it seems the key factor is uncompelling (and sometimes aggravating) gameplay. Even the most diehard collectible hunters will find it tough to slog through the slow ascent up samey buildings multiple times to grab a new drawing. Submerged had a fabulous idea but its execution simply couldn't stand up to the concept.
Sunk by lacklustre gameplay, cliched storytelling and technical hiccups, Submerged is one of the biggest missed opportunities in recent memory.
I am here to say it isn't. A game so proud of its lack of combat needs something else. Otherwise it's simply a game with a great big hole in it.
After only ten minutes in the game you've already experienced everything that Submerged has to offer. It's a rather dull and shallow title in what could have been an exciting and scary world. There is no combat, no urgency, and no chance of failure. The gameplay is boring, the landmarks and scenery are mediocre, and the story is almost nonexistent. Submerged is a rapidly sinking ship that never even left the harbor.
As much as I wanted to fall in love with Submerged, it's standing proof that a game needs more than good looks and a unique angle to win me over. With the 'emotional' story-driven approach slowly receding from the frontline of gaming, I'm left craving fun and challenging experiences that have us do more than haplessly roam within the confines of a digital sandbox.
You're better off saving your money instead of sinking it on the titanic failure that is Submerged.
Submerged is very pretty, but there isn't much to keep you playing and it's not worth the price tag.
Submerged is...Well, it exists. It wants to stand beside games like Journey, yet missed the mark so much on why Journey worked. It puts you in a world and expects you to be amazed, but never delivers any reason to become attached or really, a world pretty enough to just become absorbed into visually. Float on.
Even at only three-to-four hours in length, Submerged feels padded.
A slow-moving pace and undemanding platforming might be a draw to the more brain-addled gamer, perhaps enduring a slow-moving Sunday afternoon or a comedown from a particularly Red Bull-heavy Friday night. Nevertheless, there's still an aching sense of potential behind Miku's adventure that will leave you thinking what could've been. As it is, Submerged is pretty forgettable, and sinks rather than swims in the wake of other superior indie journeys. Journey in particular.
Submerged is skeletal and unoiled. It is damned by competence: a short story that checks the boxes, but in doing so leaves no mark. I fell asleep twice while playing it, shaken awake by Miku's worsening cough, just looking to fix up Taku and motorboat out as fast as possible. It's a game that has no ambition and says nothing, and through that, quietly stumbles, erodes, and disappears, leaving no impression, no haunting memories.
Submerged has an interesting concept and artistic presentations very well built. Navigation and exploration are exciting at first until you notice the constant reuse of textures and similarities of some constructions. Some of the most different buildings cannot be climbed which is a bit frustrating. But the game's biggest downs are in the weak history and in the climbing mechanics, which presents no challenge at all and is extremely boring at some points. Despite some beautiful vistas the game has little to offer and I do not recommend it on its base price.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
On a surface level, it looks like it ticks all the boxes for this new-wave of exploration games – that are rapidly gaining popularity with developers and gamers alike – but at a deeper conceptual and technical level is falls far short of it sources of reference.
Combined with no challenge to its climbing, other than a few misdirections that effectively punish you with the tedium of having to go backwards, the game misses the mark on taking its promising and, at least, baseline effective parts and turning them into something as strong as Shadow of the Colossus. Even if you were to remove that comparison, the game stumbles to create a consistent experience on its own. And at some point, it would be fair to argue that the comparison is being a little generous.
The title's biggest downfall, then, is not any one single thing, but rather its overwhelming ambition. And in the grand scheme of things, perhaps that's not the worst problem to have. Indeed, despite its admittedly frequent rough patches, it's very hard to not admire the way this humble indie game so earnestly reaches for the stars.
Submerged feels like a concept rather than a complete game. What's here is so slight, the story so flimsy, that it left almost no impression on me.