Sub Culture
Crazy One-Shot #10
Type of Game
The first ocean cleanup program, likely launched by dangerous eco-terrorists
Release date on our machines
November 1997, also known as Month 11 of Year 0 of the massive hype surrounding full 3D.
Developer
Criterion Software, which also made Burnout 2—yeeeess! Now stuck in a Battlefield/Need for Speed loop.
Publisher
Ubisoft: former eco-terrorists who’ve become… um… no, didn't say anything.
Sub Culture: available on... well, nothing. Forgotten, left to rust in salt water. Way to go, you eco-warriors at Ubi.
Back in the glory days when PCs became obsolete in three weeks, I had a hard time keeping up with the machines my cousin Walter Valise was building himself, using spare parts each more futuristic than the last. Games kept popping up on his screen at an incredible pace. We had to soak up as much crazy stuff as possible to avoid the gaming FOMO that defined us all during the second half of the nineties. Well, all the kids of my generation—especially the guys—and only the ones most addicted to video games; that is, in my immediate circle, Walter and me. And only Walter, if I add, “only those who could afford to keep up with the frenzy over new video cards, RAM sticks, and ever-more-POWERFUL processors!!” Perhaps Walter himself would have a different—and slightly less simplistic—opinion on the matter. In any case, I’d sometimes discover several games in a single day spent at his house, only to never see them again. Among the ones I haven’t forgotten are Wargasm, P.O.D., and Sub Culture. I only saw it running for a few hours; I never got to pilot our avatar’s submarine, because by the time I visited again, Cousin Walter had already bought a new hard drive and a new motherboard.
Head Underwater
Sub Culture had already ended up in my closet of totally outdated junk. But this quick, semi-passive session was enough for me to add this title to my list of memorable one-shots. Sometimes, life makes us obsess over trivial things. And then these obsessions can happen more often than “sometimes”—especially when they wake me up at three in the morning, absolutely every single night since I was thirteen. I think I need an exorcism.
The beauty of water, but not of faces
Right from the start, I thought the game looked stunning when I saw the first screenshots. Not just because it was on par with the very best in terms of a mostly open 3D world, but also because it took place underwater, all in shades of blue and green—at least as far as the ocean landscapes were concerned. And then I saw Walter use a winch to pull up a cigarette butt bigger than his own submarine. “It’s to sell it, and with the money I’ll be able to reinforce the hull,” he explained to me. I realized I wasn’t just dealing with some run-of-the-mill simulation of exploring underwater reefs. My cousin played all kinds of games, but not just anything. He had his pride, which led him to try out games that were always a bit niche, always featuring fairly original gameplay. Too bad for pure RPGs or classic fighting games. I never once saw Walter playing Street Fighter II or smashing rabites in Secret of Mana—way too sad.
So, as for the lore, I learned that we play as a sort of miniature humanoid whose home was blown to smithereens by a tin can—no doubt tossed into the ocean by some climate skeptic. We find ourselves aboard our submersible—apparently the only possession we have left after the tragedy—scouring the area in search of stuff to sell. Tobacco, metal, and radioactive ore. If they’d just added plastic and mercury to the list, we wouldn’t have been doing too badly on the environmental front. Maybe there’s so much of it that nobody wants it—it probably doesn’t bring in any money, actually. But who exactly is this “nobody” referring to here? Two nations in a more-or-less simmering conflict, one more or less officially victimizing the other, and the other rebelling with more or less panache. I say “more or less” because, as you take on missions for one side or the other, the story unfolds to varying degrees, depending on which side’s perspective you’re seeing it from.
We learn more or less about the ins and outs of each one. More or less poorly explained? Absolutely! In any case, from what little I’ve seen, I loved discovering this world that’s both immense and tiny, where shrimp-sized creatures collect beer caps and extract thorium crystals to thrive—apparently without a single human ever noticing they’re there. Otherwise, people would’ve been banned from dumping trash into the ocean a long time ago, right? I mean, really banned—not just a half-hearted ban like we have today. Right? Oh, I’d rather not know. What a mess. Anyway, missions to complete mean progress, which means potential upgrades for our super-stylish submarine (which eventually becomes stylish, anyway). How could I have overlooked this feature that always makes me sob with joy in any video game? Better shields, a better engine, a more powerful taser, the addition of a side bubble cannon, a sturdier grappling hook… it’s insane.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
No need to buy a better ship, like in U.N. Squadron or Wing Commander IV; our basic vessel does the job perfectly. Now those propeller-eating fish no longer scare us, we can tow that wreck—which used to be too heavy to recycle—and those pirates blow up much more easily than before. The more scrap our submarine collects, the more it unlocks new lucrative activities. We also gain access to areas that were previously off-limits to our rookie pilot. Allying with a particular faction will lower purchase prices, but selling too much of a certain commodity to the same entity will also earn us less. Kind of like in Colonization, actually. And I’m not just talking about what we salvage from the ocean floor, but also plenty of other products like rubber, seaweed beer, methane, or caviar. What are these things used for?
Oh, I’ve got to go check that out, huhehehahaha. Well, honestly, I’ve always preferred collecting as many beer caps as possible, just like when I was six or seven years old and got caught up in a brief obsession. I’d pick them up off the ground whenever I could. I wanted to find one of every different beer cap in the world, and I was convinced I was going to pull it off. Great project. I narrowly escaped tetanus and scabies, in my opinion. What else? Lots of things. Impossible to list them all. The 3D engine that handles physics, for starters. It really feels like you’re in the water, with a sense of inertia that requires you to get the hang of it before you can maneuver your sub properly. Currents can sweep you along with them, and crevasses can swallow you up if you ever get too close while carrying cargo that’s too bulky. Night falls and day breaks, which affects the wildlife you might encounter.
You’re never short on resources to scavenge, since humans are still dumping just as much of their junk into the water. Thanks for being such filthy bastards, I guess! Except when it crushes houses, right? I really like the interface, too—it reminds me of Fallout with its slightly futuristic, worn-out, rusty, and patched-up style. But Fallout came out barely a month before Sub Culture, and even then, only in the U.S. So don’t read any connection into it. There is, however, one issue worth noting. While the ridiculous faces of the people you run into remind me of the worst portraits in Master of Orion II, our protagonist’s face poses a major problem. His and others’, for that matter. Please, I hope that these days, no one with a functioning brain would dare to portray Black people this way. It didn’t even shock me back then—what a nightmare!
As versatile as a fish in water
I had a really hard time figuring out who composed the soundtrack. So much so that I still don’t know. The name “Versatile” comes up a lot, but no one seems to know who it is. A studio? A composer’s pseudonym? Google’s AI that talks to me when I search on Chrome even though I didn’t ask it anything. Especially since it told me that Yuzo Koshiro composed the soundtrack. HAHAHAHA! Why not Björk or Mozart, while you’re at it? Gemini, seriously, where did you come up with that? That’s nonsense! You’re completely out of your mind, you poor thing! Don’t ever give me your opinion again, even if I ask for it—is that clear? Of course, I never told it any of this. I’m still a victim, even when faced with lines of code that write to me. Well, in that case, kudos to Versatile, whoever or whatever you are. I obviously had no memory of these tracks—I might not even have heard them before. There’s contemplative and melancholic ambient in there, dark and unsettling ambient, and a bit more lively at times—but not too much either. Obviously, it fits the world that’s constantly submerged under billions of liters of water. It could have worked for Ecco: Tides of Time as well. I just wish there had been more to listen to, because I really like it. Twenty-two minutes of soundtrack is fine for a platformer like James Pond or an action game like Gauntlet II, for instance. Not for a game about exploring, managing, refining radioactive ore, and packing tobacco. That said, I would have loved it even more if nostalgia had gotten its claws into it. Just like our submarine on a pretty beer bottle.
Waste one's submarine
Oh yeah! I would have loved to play that one! It had so much to offer, and it didn't deserve that indifference from the public. Magazine reviewers had mostly given it good scores, though. Sub Culture even missed out on GameSpot’s title for the most original game of 1997. That title went to… Dungeon Keeper. Okay, there was no way to beat it, so coming in second was actually quite an achievement. Was a GameSpot award prestigious? I don’t know, but I really want to believe it was. Cousin Walter was dead right, in any case. He knew how to spot a gem, unlike the masses who were probably swearing by Red Alert, Total Annihilation, Quake II, or Jedi Knight back then. And, uh, well, me included. All great games, by the way.
I would never have set my sights on a title like Sub Culture if I’d seen the box sitting on a store shelf. But today, here I am, staring at my computer screen while watching a gameplay video, spellbound by its atmosphere. The person who uploaded the video seems just as captivated, lounging in a quiet little area filled with cute turtles and multicolored fish, instead of going off to smash pirates. It’s a bit like people who spend hours watching live underwater broadcasts—but even creepier than that. No big deal—Sub Culture let us do it, and knew we would. With a much-needed little makeover for the characters’ designs, this game would still hold up today. Hey, no shallow conclusion with even a single attempt at a joke in it. Okay, but just this once, then.
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