I have deathly fear of open water. Shadow of the Colossus on the PlayStation 2 had moments that nearly killed me, and though I endured about 7 hours of suffocating aquatic hell in Subnautica on the Personal Computer, an encounter with a deep sea creature had scarred me so much in that game that I had to quit playing - it's a great game though if you can stomach it. Now, we can add Stranded Deep, a game that is still in Early Access on Steam for... 3 years - oh lord - into my list of scariest experiences of my gaming life.
Basically, Stranded Deep is a survival game that places you in an open world where you have to survive its harsh environments by building stuff and keeping yourself fed. Where Stranded Deep is unique is the fact that the game takes place on an ocean map scattered with small islands and yes, there is more ocean that there are lands. What I am dreadful to learn is that the game slowly forces you to venture into the open sea to travel between these islands because there is never enough resources in each of them and if you are brave enough, dive deep into the sea surrounding these islands to scavenge rarer materials from old forgotten wreckage and debris. Apparently, there were plenty of air and water disasters that have occurred at this location.
Things are so peaceful on land.
So I was in the middle of building a small wooden raft because the emergency raft that the game gave me to start with drifted into the seas when I left it in the shallow water in the middle of a rainstorm. The game is not smart enough to allow me to complete building the raft unless I place it on water so I did just that in an attempt to attach the rudder. So guess what? The raft started drifting into the middle of the ocean and since it didn't have a sail built on it yet, I was not able to control its direction. I should have just jumped into the water while I was closer to the island but I was frozen in fear because I saw a large shark swimming near the surface close to the raft as I was drifting away. Then, something seemed to be bumping onto the raft. I was like, oh fuck. I was pretty certain that the game wouldn't dare give the sharks the ability to attack you on the raft because wouldn't that be too much? Since the weather seemed rather rough at the moment, I concluded that the sea was just playing tricks on me. I could have quit the game but I wanted to see if I could end up on one of these islands by luck no matter how long it would take. I angled the camera up so that my character couldn't see the open water around me. Then, in a blink of an eye, the flimsy raft got capsized...
Island hopping nightmare.
I was engulfed in fear. My body tensed up and I couldn't move. At that moment, the line between reality and video gaming blurred. It was such an awful, dreadful feeling. I knew that I was going to die. So what did I do? Well, I closed my eyes while clutching tightly on to the controller in my hands. I didn't want to the see the shark. I didn't want to see the dark depths of the ocean. I mustered up what was left of my courage and sneaked a peek and saw that I was fully submerged so I forced myself to dive deeper into the ocean and then I closed my eyes again. I just want it to be over, no matter how cruel the solution because the unpleasant, horrific situation I was in. It took seemingly forever but my character eventually died from drowning. I think I was attacked by a shark too while I was drowning judging from the noises. Moral of the story? Well, I should never, ever allow myself to be that close to the ocean because if something happened to me in that environment, I would just give up...
FIRST IMPRESSION: 4 out of 5
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