Below Zero...

If I was asked to compile the 10 prettiest screenshots from the two games, at least 7 of them are coming from BZ. The deep twisty bridges, the giant anemone cave, the crystal caverns, the...what's the thing you go up inside of? Subnautica really hits you with the beauty early on in the safe shallows, and otherwise goes for "cool" rather than "pretty."

I like both soundtracks. My absolute favorite track comes from Subnautica, which often uses music to establish tension. BZ has an overall nicer soundtrack that has a lot of movements that feel "wondrous," like our character feels amazed at the environment more than anything.

Subnautica's story works perfectly. It's a castaway scenario, and Riley Robinson's goal, from start to finish, never stops being "survive and escape." What working toward that goal entails takes a winding and scenic path, but at no point does your overall motivation stray far from "Survive and escape."

BZ's story belongs in the square hole. Most of the problem is they had written one story, built a lot of the game's assets including several setpieces around the map with that story in mind, and then they threw it away and had to come up with something else. You play as an idiot named Robin Ayou, whose goal of finding out what happened to her sister is a minor sidequest because Robin becomes a sidekick to the real main character, Al-An.

Subnautica could sometimes have issues with draw distance and pop-in. BZ solves this problem by making everything murkier so no matter what you can't see more than a few feet forward.

Subnautica features shallow reefs, flat plains, sloping dunes, abyssal depths, narrow canyons, giant forests, huge caverns, narrow passageways, floating islands, lots of varied terrain that present different challenges and opportunities. BZ is made almost entirely of self-similar confusing twisty turny corridors. The caves below the kelp forests, the twisty bridges, the anemone cave, the icebergs, everywhere on land, there's nowhere that isn't a twisty turny self similar corridor.

The Snowfox feels broken. That whole segment of the game, I'm amazed they shipped it.