Submersed 2 The Hive Review

Submersed 2 The Hive tells the story of Celeste Brody, who awakens, with no recollection of past events, in a mysterious, abandoned underwater research facility called The Hive located in the Atlantic Ocean. Celeste will have to explore the facility in order to find survivors and discover what horrors happened that lead to the facility being filled with death.

Submersed 2 The Hive is a first person survival horror title where players will not only explore the desolate Hive facility, but some of the navigating requires players to step outside underwater in order to move from underwater building to underwater building to find hints, clues and items to keep the story moving. While our heroine starts off with no means to defend herself, she’ll find a handful of items to defend herself such as hammer, flare gun and a cattle prod.

Considering that enemies hit *very* hard (avg. 3 hits and you’re dead), Celeste can block. Combat ends up being hit and run situations; hit, run away, wait for the enemy to miss, run up to enemy, hit; and repeat. Not really thrilling, but it does the job somewhat. As you explore you’ll also find items such as bandages and medicine to heal yourself. Annoyingly enough however to use medicine, you need a syringe. It adds a layer of difficulty because it’s annoying if have a bevy of medicine, but can’t find syringes.

In some circumstances, you’ll be required to walk around underwater to reach another section of the facility. However, you’re not alone as a shark will be roaming the waters for a snack. Thankfully, your suit is equipped with useful tools such as a flashlight, sonar and the ability to “run”. While the flashlight isn’t really necessary and well you can’t really run underwater, the sonar is key as it’ll indicate when the shark is close. However, your suit has a battery. The more you use the tools at your disposal, the faster the battery drains.

You’ll find a few recharge stations underwater, however due to the clunky movement, it can be unnecessarily difficult for the prompt to appear for you to press. Also while the battery charges, if the sonar shows the shark closing in, you can’t interrupt the charging, so you’re screwed. You’ll also be able to find cages in to hide when the shark roams around, but again, clunky movement and slowness of the game’s reactiveness, if the shark is like 10 clicks or less away, chances are the doors won’t be closed (yes you have to open AND close the doors) in time.

The game looks fine; nothing inherently wrong. The visuals look early seventh generation of console; but the developer did nail the atmosphere right. Walking around the lifeless facility nails the tension as you never know if and when something will pop out from somewhere. Due to being a single facility, the color palette is limited and sometimes can be confusing trying to find your way. When underwater, it’s even better in terms of atmosphere knowing a shark is roaming around. There are a few visual glitches; some times dead bodies would slide around like on a slip and slide; so I didn’t encounter any really game breaking. The soundtrack and atmosphere is quite well done. It’s tense and creepy. Voiceover works leaves a *lot* to be desired.

There’s one major issue with Submersed 2 The Hive and it comes in the shape of the controls! One of the most important aspect of any game. Celeste controls as if she was walking in a gravity-less area and coming off a 3 day long alcohol fuel bender. This is the walking equivalent of GTA IV’s floaty driving mechanic. This make precise movement, such as opening a protective cage when a shark is barring down on you, way harder than it should. I’m baffled that if anyone play tested it they said “Oh yeah control’s fine“. There’s also a single save file available; so if you screw up, you can’t load a previous save to correct your mistake meaning you have to start over. Or if the game decides to take away resources (Had 4 flare ammo before dying, died, reloaded save, only had 1). Melee combat is also incredibly clunky, thanks in part to the character movement.

Submersed 2 The Hive definitely gets an A for effort, but F for execution. I forced myself to play this; I *really* wanted to enjoy it, but how the character moves made it impossible and mostly frustrating as some sequences require precise movement. It’s so “drunk-y” and slippery in terms of movement that it’ll cause uncalled for deaths; mostly underwater because of the shark. The atmosphere is great, the mix of surface and underwater is not a common theme, combat is passable, but having a single save slot might require players to restart from scratch if they discover things too late or screwed up and can’t fix their mistake. If a sequel is supposed to improve on the original’s mistake, I absolutely do not want to play the first game. That being said, if you’ve survived the original, chances are you’ll enjoy the sequel. If not and you’re looking for a terrifying indie horror experience, buy Eternal Evil instead.