AQUANOX 2: Revelation
For those that liked Descent, here comes its more interesting cousin
Tags: AQUANOX 2: Revelations Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Andrew on Oct 20th, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| AQUANOX 2: Revelations (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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Going about and reinventing a revolutionary game design is a risky proposition, but Massive Development managed a successful reinvention of the game, coming just over a year after the first title’s release.
In AQUANOX 2, you are reintroduced into a underwater world of the future. Humanity has been forced under the water in bubble like cities as the surface has been destroyed. You play the role of William Drake (I loved the use of the famous explorer’s name) the last member of Drake Enterprises, who is out to see the world and discover himself. On your first mission, you respond to a distress call, and while you are out, a group of pirates and refuges takes over your Simi-abandoned freighter.
From there an intense soap opera like storyline takes place as you find yourself working for these pirates. Its obvious that a lot of time has been put into creating a compelling storyline and characters who engross the player and gets them to identify with the story. Aside from some interesting voice acting, the story line is very good, and keeps the game with a good flow.
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The basic gameplay of AQUANOX 2 is a Descent like 3D first person shooter, where you explore the bottom of the sea and dodge various pirates, global terrorists and natural objects. Unlike its anime styled predecessor, the look and feel of Aquanox 2 is very intense and realistic. You are able to use various different types of weapons, from guns to torpedoes, EMP weapons and energy weapons all which can be used to either destroy or disable your enemy. If you disable the enemy ships, you are able to scavenge various parts and money from their scraps. You also are given buzzers and scramblers so that you can avoid the same weapons when targeted at you.
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The missions in the game, and there are over 50, will fall into two basic categories (for the most part): protect someone or go investigate something. Usually given a basic goal, you will find yourself doing all types of in mission side quest, some of which are fruitful and others are not, make the game seem much more realistic in its approach. While there is not a lot of variety, they do a good job of incorporating the storyline enough and the other crew members to make everything interesting.
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In between missions you find yourself exploring your frigate and talking to the various other crew members or modifying your ship. Overall the ship movement and the crews attitude in a lot of ways reminded me of Wing Commander games, and if it wasn’t for the obvious ocean feel in graphics and gameplay, the game would be a very good update on that series.
Unfortunately, one of the problems with the game is a lack of any type of multiplayer version. The game would seem to have made as good as any other type of FPS for its multiplayer, but probably because of the accelerated time table in the release as a sequel
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Graphically, the game is impressive, with about 10,000 polygons per ship and some very good environments and despite the fact that the characters do very little actual movement on the ship, the ship graphics are also well done. There is not a lot of strain on the computer and the frame rates are very good.
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Another of the few gripes I have with the game is the very limited number of ships, four in all, which the game offers. Each of the ships is basically just a different movement and strafe rate, and overall this is one of the few areas where the overall gameplay and replay value could have been increased. As far as replay value goes, there are a number of ways that you can successful complete each mission. Without a multiplayer option, the appeal is limited, but the story line is intense and the game has enough to serious take a look at.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Storyline + Graphics and underwater feel + Engrossing characters |
8.9 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Lack of multiplayer - Lack of ship variety |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| I was a huge Descent and Wing Commander fan, and this game manages to take a lot of what made those games so interesting and integrate them into something new. | |
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Tags: AQUANOX 2: Revelations
Posted by Andrew on Oct 20th, 2003 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
