Open world island survival game Stranded Deep has arrived on Game Pass, while five other games have been announced as leaving the service on January 15th. The leavers are The Anucrusis, Nobody Saves The World, Trigger Happy Havoc, Windjammers 2, and Pupperazi.
]]>Listen, never mind that sharks are not the mindlessly violent animals we’ve been trained to fear, and simply additional victims of mankind’s global vertebrate binge. Dismiss, please, the ongoing cultural rehabilitation of this toothy swimmer, who is statistically quite poor at killing humans. Ignore also their adorable habit of falling asleep when you hold them upside-down. Forget it, forget it all. No more lovey-dovey thoughts for these wondrous aquatic beings, more maligned than malignant. This is a list about videogame sharks. And videogame sharks are the baddies. Here are the 9 deadliest sharks in PC games.
]]>What a difference a year and a half makes. And what little difference it makes too. That's how long it's been since I last wrote about Stranded Deep [official site] - a game I've returned to during its lengthy Early Access development despite its many problems. And now it's two years old, it's finally shaping up into something solid and compelling. And yet at the same time, while it's fixed so many of its issues, still doesn't feel like it knows where it wants to go.
]]>Returning to Stranded Deep [official site] after eight months of early access, I'm more surprised by what hasn't been fixed or changed, than by anything that has. The survival sim which drops you out of the sky near a network of islands showed a lot of promise, but an awful lot more bugs, glitches and limitations. I had hoped, coming back after a good while, it would be a far more cohesive thing - it really isn't. And yet I've still ended up having fun pottering around.
]]>Earlier this week I took a look at early access big-seller Stranded Deep. And was confused to find a scrappy, woefully empty game, riddled with bugs. But gosh, a game I wish they could get right. The first big patch arrived yesterday, mentioning it fixed a good few of the bigger issues, and putting in some interesting-sounding new features. So I thought I'd take another look. And record my attempt.
]]>At first glance, Stranded Deep looks like a halfway point between The Forest and Salt. Well, at first glance it looks extraordinarily like The Forest, as it opens with the extremely familiar idea of a plane crash. Stranded on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, you’re equipped with only a knife, water bottle, and whatever you can scavenge. It’s another survival game! But still, the midpoint between The Forest and Salt sounds like a brilliant place to be. Sounds like. Isn’t.
]]>The whole premise of survival games is unappealing to me, never answering a question I feel is important when everything's swamped with radiation or zombies or radioactive zombies: why survive? So as a distant observer of the genre, I tend to compare and break games down cynically. Most of Stranded Deep looks familiar - scavenging, crafting, building, exploring, hunting, and all that - but I do like how it's using its setting of Pacific islands and atolls. Come watch a new trailer to coo and aah at diving, salvaging wrecks, and avoiding sharks.
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