Post by Keith Heitmann on Jan 7, 2004 19:19:43 GMT -5
After downloading the Aquamark 3 benchmark tool, I got interested in what the Aquanox games were all about. So I decided to download the 280MB demo.
The first trick was finding a site that had it available via FTP since I'm on a dial up. 3DGamers has such access once you go through their website to download the file and find out what the actaul ftp URL is.
After two days and some 20 hours of nearly continuous downloading, I finally completed the download. I installed the demo without problems.
Aquanox 2 reminds me of an old Sierra game from about 8 years ago called Subwars 2050. Aquanox 2 (demo) is a game based on the premise that the entire world is now under water (can anyone say "Waterworld" ). There is conflict there between various factions, traders, federations and mercenaries that all do battle under water in various types of subs and "crawler" vechiles armed with everything from torpedoes and plasma weapons to a sharpshooting sniper weapon and a EMP (electro magnetic pulse) weapon used to disable ships.
The demo has two ready to run instant action missions and a small mini-campaign that I'm currently in the 4th mission of.
The dialog between characters in the A-city where your character hangs out is a little on the corny side at times and the language would probably get this game a M rating. In between missions you have to jump between 5 sites marked on the city screen and "talk" to people that are marked in various establishments to get the dope on the "next mission". The dialogue is all scripted and you just listen for the most part. The characters are just art illustrations of your character and the person being talked to and there is only minimal animation of some of the characters in the establishment. No nice BINK videos, except when you leave the city on the next mission.
Fighting in this watery 3D environment is like playing a flight sim in many ways. I'm just using the keyboard and mouse to move and turn, there are other keys that do other things, but I've gotten this far without them so far.
For the first couple of missions your small scout boat is escort to a slower lightly armed transport that must carry out a couple of retrieval missions. Crawlers are small ATV type vehicles with weapos that can move quickly across the ocean floor and are capable of destroying your boat or the transport. Taking these vehicles out is a priority in many situations. Then there are the various enemy subs or boats that you have to deal with all with various capabilities.
The one I'm stuck on at the moment is where I must capture a new boat for myself. The first boat destroys itself by "accident" during the battle, I think that boat is just there to draw down my self-regenerating ammo for my EMPactor weapon I must use. A second utility vehicle is then on the menu and it gets captured easily. The next one is much tougher. It has hard to penetrate shields that I must weaken before I can disable it and capture it for my own. So far I've been killed about 4 times and destroyed it once. I was using my energy weapons to weaken the ship before I fired my EMP weapons but I fired my pulse weapons one time too many.
The one gripe I have is that even on my hyper-threading 3 GHZ P4 system, the between mission loading time is a bit slow and bothersome. They need a quick restart from the beginning of the mission without the need to reload the entire mission each time. SWAT 3 was sort of like this at first, until the developers got the message and they changed it so the missions reloaded much quicker on the next retry.
If you have a decent machine with a good graphics card, the visuals of the game are very realistic with shadows and light all playing across the scenery below the water. Sound is at a minimum in this environment, so you won't be overwhelmed with tons of confusing sounds. You can hear a enemy firing at you and hitting the canyon walls near you and you can hear boats as they pass close by, and you can hear your own boat as it runs and fights but that's about it.
All-in-all it's not a bad game. If you have a broadband connection and want to try something a little different you may want to give this demo a shot.
The first trick was finding a site that had it available via FTP since I'm on a dial up. 3DGamers has such access once you go through their website to download the file and find out what the actaul ftp URL is.
After two days and some 20 hours of nearly continuous downloading, I finally completed the download. I installed the demo without problems.
Aquanox 2 reminds me of an old Sierra game from about 8 years ago called Subwars 2050. Aquanox 2 (demo) is a game based on the premise that the entire world is now under water (can anyone say "Waterworld" ). There is conflict there between various factions, traders, federations and mercenaries that all do battle under water in various types of subs and "crawler" vechiles armed with everything from torpedoes and plasma weapons to a sharpshooting sniper weapon and a EMP (electro magnetic pulse) weapon used to disable ships.
The demo has two ready to run instant action missions and a small mini-campaign that I'm currently in the 4th mission of.
The dialog between characters in the A-city where your character hangs out is a little on the corny side at times and the language would probably get this game a M rating. In between missions you have to jump between 5 sites marked on the city screen and "talk" to people that are marked in various establishments to get the dope on the "next mission". The dialogue is all scripted and you just listen for the most part. The characters are just art illustrations of your character and the person being talked to and there is only minimal animation of some of the characters in the establishment. No nice BINK videos, except when you leave the city on the next mission.
Fighting in this watery 3D environment is like playing a flight sim in many ways. I'm just using the keyboard and mouse to move and turn, there are other keys that do other things, but I've gotten this far without them so far.
For the first couple of missions your small scout boat is escort to a slower lightly armed transport that must carry out a couple of retrieval missions. Crawlers are small ATV type vehicles with weapos that can move quickly across the ocean floor and are capable of destroying your boat or the transport. Taking these vehicles out is a priority in many situations. Then there are the various enemy subs or boats that you have to deal with all with various capabilities.
The one I'm stuck on at the moment is where I must capture a new boat for myself. The first boat destroys itself by "accident" during the battle, I think that boat is just there to draw down my self-regenerating ammo for my EMPactor weapon I must use. A second utility vehicle is then on the menu and it gets captured easily. The next one is much tougher. It has hard to penetrate shields that I must weaken before I can disable it and capture it for my own. So far I've been killed about 4 times and destroyed it once. I was using my energy weapons to weaken the ship before I fired my EMP weapons but I fired my pulse weapons one time too many.
The one gripe I have is that even on my hyper-threading 3 GHZ P4 system, the between mission loading time is a bit slow and bothersome. They need a quick restart from the beginning of the mission without the need to reload the entire mission each time. SWAT 3 was sort of like this at first, until the developers got the message and they changed it so the missions reloaded much quicker on the next retry.
If you have a decent machine with a good graphics card, the visuals of the game are very realistic with shadows and light all playing across the scenery below the water. Sound is at a minimum in this environment, so you won't be overwhelmed with tons of confusing sounds. You can hear a enemy firing at you and hitting the canyon walls near you and you can hear boats as they pass close by, and you can hear your own boat as it runs and fights but that's about it.
All-in-all it's not a bad game. If you have a broadband connection and want to try something a little different you may want to give this demo a shot.