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Hostile Waters: | ||||||||||||||||
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ostile Water: Antaeus Rising is set on a near-future Earth where one final war and nanotechnology have resulted in a paradise. Unfortunately, some people can only be happy if other people are miserable, and so the game begins with missile launches from an artificial island in the Pacific, wreaking havoc. After the final war, the government dismantled its armed forces, so the only hope is one last, mighty Adaptive Carrier, rusting away at the bottom of sea. The government can raise it, but it is in bad shape. It is the player's job to get the carrier to wet dock and get it completely repaired, and then to take this single vessel against the stockpiled might of a cabal of disaffected political strongmen, villains whose allies just might be from out of this world.
The story of the Antaeus, the last of the Adaptive cruisers, and its final battle against the cabal, plays out in a series of briefings and cutscenes alternating with scenarios for the player to fight. HW:AR is a single-player game where each scenario occurs according to the script and requires certain objectives be achieved. The game does not go forward until the player has succeeded in keeping the story on track. The scripts for the cutscenes were written by comics writer Warren Ellis, creator of Transmetropolitan and Planetary, and performed by a cast of English actors including Tom Baker of Dr. Who fame.
The two things that allow HW:AR to be billed as a strategy/action game are that players don't have to spend any time creating factories to create their units, and that players can take control of any of their units at any time and fly them themselves. The Antaeus builds its own helicopters, tanks, airplanes and hovercraft using a nanotech factory on board. The player then deploys these units using a strategic screen. The game automatically pauses while the player is giving orders on this screen or building units in the build screen. There is also a shortcut system that allows the player to issue commands to other units in real time and while commanding a unit themselves.
"Raise the Yama – er, the Antaeus!"
Eric Drexler hadn’t published Engines of Creation yet when Star Blazers was created, but the Antaeus does have the Yamamoto’s raised-from-the-ocean-floor heritage and its plucky crew. In this case, the crew are personalities stored on silicon cards that are downloaded into the combat units when they are built. Not only do these computer personalities fight very well (they strafe, they hide behind terrain, they even find their own targets when needed to), but with dialogue written by Ellis and performed flawlessly by the actors, they bicker and flirt and complain and opine with one another. The player comes to feel that they are not just commanding counters, but actually leading a team.
The strength of the scripted scenario approach used in HW:AR is that players are allowed to learn the game in small chunks. Each scenario expands players' capabilities and responsibilities so that they can grow into the game rather than being overrun by it. The approach also means that despite the word "strategy" on the box, players have only tactical control over the action. They control how each challenge is fought, but not where or when it is met.
The graphics and sound are both wonderful in HW:AR. The wilds of the islands are mostly open, rocky terrain, but the cabal’s bases have a feeling of detail, mostly due to the numerous human support personnel running around. They aren’t armed and can’t damage the Antaeus’s units, but they can be killed by stray (or directed) fire.
The best part of HW:AR is the automatic pause, but the second-best part is the ability to take over and drive units. The computer’s AI is very good, but sometimes scavenging units are taking the long way around or (more often) combat units are being too gung-ho. With practice, it may be possible to rein in units using the real-time command interface, but using the tactical display to order all the computer units out of the fire zone and then mopping up with a player-controlled unit works right out of the box.
While the dialogue in the briefings and cutscenes are head and shoulders above those of any other game I’ve ever played, how I felt about Hostile Waters overall depended on where I’d left off each night. When I had to stop after I’d just failed a scenario, then I thought it was a silly, constrictive game that asked too much of me as a player. But when I had to stop after just winning a scenario, particularly if I’d kicked its ass, I thought it was the most fun, most challenging game I’d played since Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. -- Eric
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