Way back in the ’90s, AquaNox started out as a submarine-based tactical fps called Archimedean Dynasty, just a year after Kevin Costner’s Waterworld was released. Where the movie dealt with the world above, the critically acclaimed Archimedean Dynasty dived below, telling the tale of a lone mercenary trying to make it out in a world of liquid night. Then in 2001 came the frantic arcade-style shooter AquaNox that opened gates to a new face of the franchise. Unfortunately, what followed after its success were delays and cancellations of its sequels, that is, until Nordic Games (now THQ Nordic) revealed a tech demo at the Gamescom 2014, a new iteration of AquaNox games. But is the game capable enough to carry out its legacy? Read more to find out.
Welcome to the world of Aqua
The surface of our planet is in ruins, inhospitable, and frozen in a nuclear winter caused by the very souls who dwelt it. Those who survived the war fled to the oceanic depths, seeking refuge in the various deep-sea mining stations where the rich and powerful froze themselves in cryostasis. Unable to set foot on the irradiated surface again, humanity is trapped in the seas where various factions have arisen in a cutthroat dominance for power. In this new world known as Aqua where no sunlight penetrates, it’s survival of the fittest.
Your crew consisting of Kaelen, Nabila, Fedor, and Hannah, are just awakened from cryostasis, all of them being part of something called Project Nammu. The one who awakened you introduces himself as Ishmael and tries to escort you to safety, which is when you’re attacked by a swarm of organic-machine hybrid ships called Bionts. Eventually, you escape and meet Ishmael’s contact, Toshiro Okabe, captain of a much bigger ship called the Tupilaq, and thus begins your journey into the world of liquid night that will take you across all the Seven Seas of the planet. Your mission – regain your memories, learn the truth of Project Nammu, and stave off the Biont threat.
Aquanox: Deep Descent features a narrative engaging enough for a AA game. The reason that humanity can’t emerge onto the surface is that the top layer of all connected global water bodies is enshrouded by a nanoplankton layer – bio-organic plankton that can oxidize metal and mutate organic cells. And thus almost all the fauna you encounter (sharks, whales, rays, eels, etc.) have been corrupted by this nanoplankton plague and will attack you on sight. However, many things are left unexplained. Case in point, not much information about Project Nammu is shown, only that it can “change the fate of humanity”. Then there are these Senthics, a primordial race of intelligent beings who had created the Senthic Gates that would enable Aquanauts to cross great oceanic distances in a matter of seconds (kind of like the Mass Relays from Mass Effect). But, sadly we never get to see them in person nor have enough information about them. The same goes for the world-building, which is very less. The devs could have dropped more audio logs or texts just like Horizon Zero Dawn, which could’ve expanded the lore even further, but I guess it’s a missed opportunity now.
Well, at least the four crewmates of our ship do have their moments of personality and humor rather than coming out as cardboard cutouts. As for other NPCs, you can interact with them at the various docking stations. Even though while conversing you’re given a choice of dialogues, it’s a blatant illusion as the story will follow its scripted path. What’s good is that the NPCs don’t come out as archetypes and many of whom you interact with, might seem that they have ulterior motives (Captain Nemo for instance). A nice touch on part of the devs is that many NPC’s are named by the backers of Aquanox‘s Kickstarter and havetheir own small backstories. In fact, at one point in the game, I came across a monument in which the names of all the project backers were engraved. Nice touch Digital Arrow!
An underwater arcade fps
Aquanox: Deep Descent is essentially a rail-shooter because you might feel a bit claustrophobic inside your ship’s cockpit. Enemies attack you from all directions and therefore you need to track them down in the whole 360°space while dodging their attacks. At this point, the choice of ship becomes a crucial factor: tinier but faster ships like the Shade and Falcon are great for evasive maneuvers and long range assault whereas siege units like the Morrigan and Dreadnought are built like slow-moving tanks that can take most of the damage head-on. At the various docking stations, you can upgrade their engines, shields, and wings for balancing out the stats more or less but don’t expect the tiny ships to have better hull armor. Anyways, it depends on your piloting and shooting skills.
A vast array of dual weaponries are fitted on all your ships which can be swapped on the fly making up for great combos. For example, to take out distant targets you can equip the Hazard on your left (that can shoot three heat-seeking nanoplankton canisters) and the Breaker on the right (that fires homing missiles). Or you can equip the Shrapnel or Zhenka on one side (which is basically a shotgun) in case the enemy comes closer. However, the weapon switching is not at all seamless as you’ve to cycle through an entire roster to select your desired weapons. I don’t know why the devs didn’t add a weapon wheel for both left and right which could’ve made the weapon switching seamless. Because there were many instances amidst battles where my equipped weapon had run out of ammo and I had to cycle through all the other guns to get to the second desired ones. Or when my weapon charging rate was so slow that I had to cycle through everything while getting bombarded just to find something with a better rate of fire. Scenarios like this can really become a question of life and death in Aqua.
In addition to the weapons, you can equip two ability modules that grant you both offensive and defensive capabilities, ranging from creating a forcefield or an EMP blast to launching a missile barrage or dropping mines. Enemies will usually use the Countermeasure to bait away all incoming homing missiles, which means you can also do the same. Or you can use the Charge ability to collide with the enemy ships dealing massive damage, after which a quick blast of the Shrapnel can finish the job. Or just use the Charge to escape away like a goddamn coward while dropping mines from your rear.
Eventually, it all comes down to how efficiently you’re able to out-maneuver the hostiles. There’s a Regenerative Engine Boosting system, and a couple of Regenerative Pressure Jumps that can give you an instant thrust in any direction. Your ship’s shields are also regenerative however your hull’s strength ain’t. Better craft those armor and shield restoration kits to instantly heal up amidst a battle (and don’t forget to craft ammo as well). All these crafting requires resources which you can salvage from fallen ships or sunken cargos. These salvages will show up on the minimap, however, the gripe is that you can’t mark them anywhere. Quite annoyingly, Aquanox: Deep Descent doesn’t allow you to mark your own waypoints on the world map and that’s why the devs didn’t bother to display these salvage spots on the worldmap (they only appear on the cockpit’s minimap) Good luck finding those salvage spots in 3D by referring to a 2D map. Another thing that went amiss is that even though we are piloting a ship, there is no SONAR system or something, which could have highlighted these salvage spots along with their distance left from ship. Look’s like ships don’t need Batvision or Eagle Vision.
The enemy roster is pretty much cookie-cutter with just two variants – piloted ships and nanoplankton mutated fauna – which makes the gameplay extremely repetitive. Even though many different factions exist in the game, all their ships look and fire the same. The mutated Jellyfishes might pose a threat as they come in swarms but none of the other mutations are much of a challenge. The only way the game becomes challenging is when the number of enemies is more as then your maneuvering skills and ability to use different weapons in tandem are put to test. Same goes for the final boss battle (which spawned these cookie-cutter minions at half health and cloaked itself in an impenetrable shield to heal up while we were busy with the minions).
Not only the enemies, but the exploration itself is quite bland. There exists absolutely no other motive to explore the deep sea caves and trenches apart from salvaging resources. Reason, there is absolutely nothing there, except for some rocks, stalactites and the nanoplankton layers to prevent you from exploring further. The world is bleak and empty with minimal vegetation and rusted installations, kind of like Mad Max, but even Mad Max used the ‘show-don’t-tell’ approach. The devs could’ve made some sunken buildings covered in seaweed, or abandoned installations sprawling with some alien mutation, and could’ve placed some collectibles hidden there which could’ve shed some light on the world of Aqua and its people. Because we cross so many oceans but mostly find the same rocky geography with some underwater stations that all look the same.
Varied geographies like sunken pyramids or completely alien florae do appear but towards the endgame only. So, don’t expect you’ll see something like Rapture from Bioshock in Aquanox: Deep Descent. And to make matters worse you can’t fast travel. Even though the sections are all far apart from each other and the only way to travel through them is via the Travel Gates, both of manmade and alien origin. That means if you want to travel from, say from some region in the Atlantic Ocean to the somewhere in the Mahasagar, you’ve to sail all the way using the various manmade Travel Gates until you come across a Senthic Gate which will slingshot you across the Seven Seas. And even after that if your objective lies further away, you’ve slog through all the various manmade Gates till you reach your objective. It’s tedious and the lack of any incentive to explore makes it annoying because the quests are extremely repetitive – go there and scan/retrieve/destroy that. All of them fetch quests with enemies spawning right behind your back after you’ve scanned something. Even if Aquanox: Deep Descent allows drop-in 4 person co-op, it’s not fun.
Visuals, Performance and Sound
Even though it’s running on Unreal Engine 4, expect the visuals and textures of Aquanox: Deep Descent to be pretty average. The ship designs are pretty neat which you can view in 3D while upgrading them at the various docking stations. Cutscenes are presented in the form of artworks like most other AA games. However, most of the dynamic physics are neglected. For example, when you fire a shot, there’s no illumination in the cockpit even though the guns are placed very near to it on either sides. But the real brunt comes in the performance department where the fps can tank like anything and not necessarily during battles. In fact, I was lucky to face stable fps during the frantic dogfights however in other areas, it dropped to as low as 15.
As for the sound design, Aquanox: Deep Descent boasts really good voice-acting. Emotions aren’t forced unlike in a lot other games. Also the background music is pretty descent even though only a few recurring tracks are present. But don’t expect any trance rave unlike the previous AquaNox games.
Real Talk
Aquanox : Deep Descent, in terms of gameplay, is a tedious slog which is only fun for the first few hours. The narrative was perhaps the only thing that kept me going but for most sections, it was an absolute drag. Repetitive fetch quests, empty world design, obligatory recurring enemies, lack of any good Quality of Life elements (Space bar to select and Tab key to exit only), fans of the original franchise are bound to drop their controllers. Nothing in this game justifies the 1k INR price tag. But if you want to try, hope it goes 50% off on sale.