AquaNox
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
AquaNox is a trademark for a series of submarine-based shooter/simulation games set in distant future. The collection includes AquaNox, AquaNox 2: Revelation and the yet unrealeased AquaNox: The Angels Tears. The predecesor and the starter of the series is the on MS-DOS released title Archimedean Dynasty. The series are known for high quality graphic and audio performances and poor scores in reviews due to a shallow character development.
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[edit] Concept
In the middle of the 21st century, the resources have become sparse, forcing the enterprises and states to find new sources below the sea level. This resulted in the construction of multiple mining stations beneath Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans. However the capital and work intensive mines were not able to cover the needs of their respective owners, thus resulting in a large number of wars and conflicts throughout the globe and finally provoking a nuclear holocaust. The few who could afford the escape, fled to the now refuge-harbouring, overfilled stations, leaving the poor and unprivileged to certain death.
The nuclear winters covered the surface of the planet with a thick layer of snow and ice, making the life outside impossible. But the life went on many thousands of metres below the sea level, in the world of Aqua. The following events take place in the middle of the 27th century.
Aqua is divided into political power blocs, such as the Aquatoria of the capitalistic, democratically governed Altantic Federation. the oligarchically ruled Arabic Clans Union and the monoarchically ruled Russo-Japanese Shogunate. In the South Pacific lies the, stirred up by surface storms, Tonardo Zone, an anarchical and ruthless community of mercenaries, pirates, buccaneers and outlaws.
A single company has long ago monopolized many industries necessary for human survival underwater - EnTrOx, which stands for "Energy-Transportation-Oxygen". ( In fact "oxygen" is an incorrect term, as oxygen becomes toxic under pressure; instead, humans breathe a special mix of helium produced and supplied exclusively by EnTrOx; as such, nobody is willing to attack them lest they be left without air). New technologies allow extremely fast underwater travel. However, many old technologies are lost or have become useless. For example, due to the high amounts of fallout in the atmosphere, satellite communication and global positioning are impossible, although some organizations are looking for ways to restore these abilities.
The player's task is to complete a series of story-related combat missions. During the course of the missions additional support and story elements are revealed by the secondary characters. The enemies range from hostile vessels to alien, or artificial, lifeforms such as bionts.
[edit] Episodes
The Aquanox series include the following games, listed by the release in a chronoligical order:
[edit] Archimedean Dynasty
| Archimedean Dynasty | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Massive Development |
| Publisher(s) | Blue Byte Software |
| Latest version | 1.120 |
| Release date(s) |  November 1996 April 4, 1997 |
| Genre(s) | Submarine Flight simulator |
| Mode(s) | Single Player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Teen |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS |
| System requirements | See below |
| Input | Joystick, mouse, keyboard |
Archimedean Dynasty (German: Schleichfahrt) was the first of the "Aqua series", developed by Massive Development and published by Blue Byte Software in 1996.
[edit] Story
The story develops around a mercenary named Emerald "Deadeye" Flint, who takes up a seemingly simple task to escort a cargo ship, transporting the nearly worthless delivery of sulphur, through quiet waters. Shortly after the beginning of the voyage, the protagonist becomes the sole hostage after an anarchistic group of Shogunate mercenaries raid the convoy. After doing several missions, the group encounter a mysterious mothership called Biont during a mission travelling at high speed. Thus doing more missions they encounter more biont scout and start attack other ships which resulting Flint to disable the scout and allow the group to analysis the ship to understand the technology of the bionts. Nearly at the end of the game the Bionts ship have increase which resulted in having to battle the Bionts and allowing Hong Long, a well known famous friend of the protagonist, to sacrifice herself to destroy the central area where the bionts exist.
[edit] Gameplay
The game splitts up into a series of primary and secondary missions, which allow the player to proceed in the storyline as well as earn additional funds. These can be used to upgrade the vessel with additional turrets, torpedeos and command software. Certain missions have been reported as unclear and blurry, however being accepted by most reviewers due to the general output of the game for its game.Hudak, Chris. "In all honesty, the mind-boggling array of tactical options and general open-endedness of the game's objectives will be very confusing to some players - not to mention the fact that the people who were responsible for outlining the player's objectives should be lined up against a wall and cream-pied - but it's this very open-endedness which makes Archimedean Dynasty so absorbing.", Gamespot.com, 1997-01-14.
The control of the game is designed for the use of a joystick. The player is confronted with maneuvering through narrow canyons, deep sea currents and enemy fire.
System Requirements: Intel 486 100 MHz CPU, SVGA Graphics Card, 8 MB RAM
| Aquanox | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Massive Development |
| Publisher(s) | Fishtank Interactive |
| Engine | KRASS© engine |
| Release date(s) | 30 November 2001 |
| Genre(s) | Futuristic Sub Sim |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, Multi-player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Teen |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| System requirements | See below |
| Input | Mouse, keyboard, Joystick, Gamepad |
[edit] AquaNox
The player once again jumps into the role of Emerald "Deadeye" Flint. After the Bionts are defeated, Flint goes back to being a mercenary as a leader of a Biont-hunting taskforce. Things turn for the worse when his submarine, the Succubus, is stolen on one of the stations. The game begins with one of Flint's dubious acquaintances giving him an old, barely-working sub and several missions to get him started.
Throughout the game, Flint earns money by completing missions, allowing him to purchase better subs, weapons and equipment. The new equipment appears through out the game, available for purchase, as the player progress in the storyline. Generally speaking, the player is allowed to buy a new boat and a new set of weaponry per chapter. While on stations, Flint can speak with various characters in order to get new missions and deepen the atmosphere of the game.
The former system of upgrading the vessel with a variety of defensive turrets has been simplified by fixing the player's view to the cockpit as well as permitting the usage of only two on hull installed cannons. As the result of this change, the controls of the submarine have been adapted to the first-person shooter's mouse-based layout, removing the need for the joystick, thus the game has compromised its tactical depth in order to increase the intensitivity of combat. This change has raised critique among the reviewers, stating that the developer's focus fell inadequately on the visual performance rather than the actual game play of its predecesor. Desslock. "...But while Archimedean Dynasty was a complex, mission-based simulation with trading and privateering, AquaNox is an arcade-style action game that abandons or greatly simplifies those elements. Combat is fast paced and more similar in style to Quake's, or even a rail shooter's, than it is to the more tactical battles in other underwater sims.", Gamespot.com, 2001-11-30.
The game was one of the first applications to fully use the T&L effects by supporting the NVIDIA Geforce 3 Ti graphics accelerator. Desslock. "Considering the game engine has been used for months to market Nvidia's flagship GeForce 3 video card, it's no surprise that the graphics are outstanding. The game has been designed to take advantage of all the high-end capabilities of the GeForce and its latest generation of cards, and the environments look amazing as a result. Textures are colorful and extremely detailed, and there are numerous little graphical touches, such as chips that flake off underwater hills hit by your projectile weapons.", Gamespot.com, 2001-11-30.
Aquanox's difficulty level is clearly above those of other games released in that year. The prime challenge is built by the inablity to save in any way during missions, meaning that being destroyed or aboarting an objective will result in the restart of the operation. The success of the player during each mission depends stronly on his submarine configuration and weapons aboard.
As the sole member of the series, the game includes a vast amount of true information on oceans, such as origins of different species, their specifics and man's adoptation to submarine life. The games manual consist of two chapters explaining various terms and facts that have been mentioned through out the course of the story.
- System Requirements:
- Minimum: Pentium III 500 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 500 MB Hard Drive Space, 16 MB Video RAM, 4x CD-ROM drive
- Recommended: Pentium III 1000 MHz, 256 MB RAM, 64 MB Video RAM, 800 MB Hard Drive Space
[edit] AquaNox 2: Revelation
| AquaNox 2: Revelation | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Developer(s) | Massive Development |
| Publisher(s) | Encore Software, Inc. |
| Release date(s) | 22 August 2003 |
| Genre(s) | Futuristic Sub Sim |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Mature |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| System requirements | See below |
| Input | keyboard, Mouse, Joystick |
The plot of the game is based around William Drake, the last remnant of the old aristocrat, industrialist family. After the bankrupt of the familial industry and the death of protagonist's grandmother, young William Drake sets sail for open seas on the last freighter of the Drake Enterprises. The cargo ship soon gets taken over by a group of mercenaries, while Drake rushes out to answer a distress call. While sparing his life, the group of seven invaders over the control of the boat, thus binding Williams’s fate to their own. The protagonist sees no other options than to unite himself with his new crew, hoping for the best.
The game features a total of four unique, playable and upgradeable gunships. For the completion of the game the player will most likely switch boats depending on the mission's content. While certain missions will require speed and stealth, the others will virtually enforce the presence of heavy arsenal and thick plating.The game features a large variety of projectile armament as well as a set of torpedoes and a collection of energy based weaponry, including lasers and EMP launchers. While most weapons do not necessarily counterverse with game’s underwater environments, the presence of laser-based arms decreases the plausibility of such fights. The torpedo combat is similar to the missile engagements of most flight simulators and space shooters, where the pilot is expected to release flares and perform a classic evasion maneuvers.
The transportation is generally a simple matter of following the navigation points spread out through the game. The ship’s controls can be switched from the FPS mode to Simulation Mode via a predefined shortcut, where the later steering scheme switches the horizontal scrolling of the mouse from turning the cockpit horizontally to rotating the hull around its axis. Reaching the surface is not possible due to the depth-range limitation, which binds the player to the closer to the underwater world yet gives certain disadvantages during the combat.
In response to the poor interaction with other characters claim in AquaNox, a new dialogue system has been added to the sequel. Between the missions the player is able to enter a desired area and initiate conversations. This option is available on board of the freighter as well as in the oceanic cities. The initiation of the conversations is mandatory; however due the absence of interaction during the dialogues, the outcome of the game is not open-ended. The actions and replies of the protagonist often appear irrational and unnatural. Gerstmann, Jeff. "Clicking on the person opens up another window that shows the conversation between your character, the absurdly naive William Drake, and the person you've clicked on. These conversations are designed to give the game a plot, but more often than not, the sequences are filled with near-meaningless babble.", Gamespot.com, 2003-09-29.
Like William, the other characters in the game do not tend to come over as natural by neither showing conscious thought, nor having distinct goals and nor developing at all over the period of the adventure. While perhaps being the intention of the playwright, the secondary personages do not show any depth or authenticity, resulting in a group of stereotypic knights, pirates, outcasts and nymphomaniacs. Deim, I.. "As in Aquanox the story is once more handled via boring, unsubstantial and sometimes even featherbrained dialogues, which fortunately can be stopped by using the Escape-button. This one flaw renders the story of the game completely useless, as only few fragments of it actually find their way to the player.", Gamershell.com.
According to various reviewers, the main drawback of AquaNox 2: Revelation’s characters is the lack of appeal towards the player caused by the poor voice acting. These claims however come to the greater part from the English speaking reviewers, while the continental releases, especially the French and the German versions, have been given the credit for the professionalism of the actors.
AquaNox 2: Revelation's difficulty level lies significantly above the average of the release year. The missions are challenging as the player is often confronted with the situation where he has to decide between saving his own ship or that of an ally, where the destruction of either leads to mission over. As in its predecesor, saving is only available between the missions and no checkpoints are present.
The ending creates more questions than answers and hints on the coming of a sequel, AquaNox: The Angels Tears. A hint is given that the protagonists of Aquanox and Aquanox 2: Revelation will be enemies.
- System Requirements:
- Minimum: Pentium III 750MHz, 256 MB RAM, 32 MB Video RAM, 2 GB Hard Drive Space
- Recommended: 1GHz processor, 256 MB RAM, 64 MB Video RAM
[edit] Aquanox: Angel's Tears
Aquanox: Angel's Tears is the announced sequel to the series, however due to the fact that the Massive Development no longer exists, its appearance is highly questionable. The game was supposed to be released for PS2 console only.
[edit] Trivia
- One of the early weapons in AquaNox allows sniping enemies. A hit on the cockpit glass will result in the implosion of most small vessels. This is, however, extremely difficult to achieve due to the small size of the target, building a direct parallel to the headshots from other First-person shooter games.
- A popular greeting in the world of Aqua is "Light", probably due to the fact that very little sunlight reaches the underwater depths at which the humans live.
- AquaNox's and Aquanox 2: Revelation's stories take place during the same time, thus creating two simultaneous independent scenarios, which cross once during the course of the second game.
[edit] External links
- Archimedean Dynasty:
- Blue Byte Software Official Site
- Archimedean Dynasty at Home of the Underdogs
- Aquanox:
- Aquanox 2: Revelation:
- Aquanox: Angel's Tears:
- The AquaNox series at MobyGames
