Life is funny sometimes.
Take the example of the game we're going to talk about today, Submerged: Hidden Depths. When I saw the trailer, I said to myself: "It looks nice and reminds me of this zen exploration game in which you navigate and explore a world buried under water and which I could not play many years ago. Raaaah! What the fuck is his name?
So, I asked to test this Submerged: Hidden Depths while remaining in the dark. Damn memory of rotten complement names!
Then while playing the game, and as usual, I do parallel research on the developer to see his pedigree, his successes, his shames, his projects, to find myself noting that it is the same developer who had created this famous game whose name I had forgotten: no wonder it looks like him! Especially when in fact it's the sequel to that same game: Submerged. Well, it's a new intro not interesting for you, but which allowed me not only to find the name of this peaceful game that I wanted to do for a long time, but also to be able to fit in the words "funny", " pedigree" and "bagpipe" that I pass on the sly, and which is the fourth word allowing me to win the jackpot of the word lotto.
WOW! TO ME THE LIFE OF A BILLIONAIRE ON A YACHT!
In Submerged: Hidden Depths, you find yourself navigating once again in this world where the waters have flooded all modern civilization due to La Masse, a kind of disaster involving a mysterious black plant. You and your brother will be alone in search of a solution to restore hope to humanity and finally find your place. Because if your flowering power can be effective in bringing plants back to life and animating the snippets of memories of the deceased materialized by this same Mass, the survivors are afraid of you and end up chasing you every time. It is therefore the three of you (you, your brother and your modest boat) that you will sail the seas to collect the lost pieces of the history of humanity, recover and plant special energy seeds thanks to your gift . But for that, you will have to find all these points of interest, and many others, in an open world limited to a large city that is difficult to recognize, but which has a slight air of a fictional version of New York under water.
Don't expect intense fights, disasters and other situations because here the most adrenaline-charged manipulation you will have to do is boat reverse and the only use of buttons will be limited to picking up items. collectibles or the activation of a few mechanisms here and there. Everything else is done automatically whether it's jumping, climbing, clearing obstacles, etc. Just walk there and if an interaction is possible, the character will interact. This makes the grip, although passive, very accessible. But in some situations, we will end up with some confusion of camera and actions that will make the whole thing a bit of a stain.
Controller in hand, we have the impression, all things considered, of playing something close to Zelda The Wind Waker in terms of maritime exploration. The phases on foot, whether with the brother or the sister are, as specified above, much more passive and without real stakes. This allows you to take advantage of more than honest decorations, with some elements that stand out such as clouds and water (which would however have deserved a more varied animation panel).
The usual concern about this kind of zen and only exploratory games is that the lack of challenge must be compensated by something else to satisfy the player. Submerged: Hidden Depth tries to do this through many items to collect, points of interest to locate and visit, but unfortunately neither the quantity nor the variety is sufficient here to offer a lifespan greater than a handful of times. ranging from 2 to 6 hours and which will vary depending on whether you are just focusing on the main objective, the seeds, or wanting to do everything 100%. This does not prevent Submerged: Hidden Depths from being interesting and a good stress-free relaxing game, but we would have liked the experience to be longer and a little more consistent, so much the adventure is pleasant and so many games of the genre are actually not so common.
- Xbox (Test performed on Xbox Series X)
- Epic Store
- Playstation
- Steam
