Review

Let's make this short and sweet. I've been really busy and haven't written reviews lately, so to help clear the glut, I'm introducing a new format: The Good, Bad, Ugly, and Beautiful. I'll try it a few times, and if it doesn't help me crank out a short, but valuable analysis, then I'll have to try something else. Grikey, there's too many games!

First, note for the record that Rage Software is out of business. In all fairness, that's a shame. Sure, their signature games were light on the cerebral requirements, but they harkened back to the roots of computer gaming: the arcade. How clever did you have to be to play Asteroids, or Pac-Man. The first generation of "classics" were reactionary games, and there's nothing wrong with them. The industry has gotten a bit too big for its britches, and decided that anything that isn't a colossal, complicated, epic is verboten. This is wrong. Gaming is big enough for all tastes, and simple, reactionary games deserve their niche. Gaming should be a rich tapestry, not a plastic drop cloth of homogeneity. The indie scene, always ahead of the curve, is rebelling against this and has begun serving up simple games (Bejeweled, Serious Sam, CrimsonLand)

But enough soap-boxing. The point is, Rage is dead, and they'll be remembered for their simple, graphics-card selling, arcade shooters. The interesting thing is that Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising (HWAR) is a unique blend of Rage's bread-n-butter arcade action with a legitimate strategy element. And it works! I found HWAR after having played both Battlezone games. The reputation for the original Battlezone is that it was an exceptionally crafted, innovative title that had gotten no respect from mainstream gamers too ignorant to recognize a well-designed game. Well, I found that to be mostly true. It was good enough to make me curious whether anyone had picked up the baton and done right by the action/strategy hybrid genre. That curiosity led me to Hostile Waters, languishing in the bargain bin.

Good

• It's obvious this is a Rage game - the action is immediate and mostly unrelenting.

• The story, while cliché, is paced very well and will pull you to the end of the campaign through its sheer melodrama.

• The graphics are drop-dead gorgeous.

• The voice-acting is excellent.

• The UI is well-designed and practical. Issuing commands to your crew without leaving the thick of the fight becomes second nature.

• Not one, but two mini-maps: a 3D topo map, and an overhead map.

• An excellent iconic HUD.

• Nice mix of vehicle characteristics. What you build and whom you put in it are non-trivial decisions.

• Very good tactical command screen, well-suited to the good (but not great) strategic opportunities.

• The ability to immediately switch to user-control of any of the deployed vehicles. This keeps you in command of the most critical situations, and has Battlezone beat hands-down.

• Smart resource collectors. Just point out a general path and the harvester will gather everything it can along the way. Put it near a kill-box and set it on a looped path and it will just collect all day (and night!) long.

• The in-engine cinematics are incredible.

Bad

• The AI is uninteresting, and subsequently the combat becomes rote before long. The challenge over the course of the campaign comes in the form of increased numbers and multiple objectives. Things get pretty frenetic, to make up for the the behaviorally-homogeneous and simple enemies.

• No multiplayer. This could arguably be under 'Ugly', since the prospect of multiplayer (particularly co-op) HWAR is extremely attractive. Still, it's not a sin to make only a single-player game, so long as it's a good single-player game.

• The documentation is weak. In particular, I wanted better profiles of the crew members.

• There's at least one mission that eschews the Antaeus, and leaves you in a single vehicle, as a sort of "stealth" mission. It's more frustrating than fun, as you end up having to exploit holes in the poor AI in order to be successful. The game is at its best when the fighting is free and loose.

Ugly

• You cannot customize keybindings, or input config. Shame, shame, eternal shame on Rage. For a title whose main course is the shooting gallery, it's unforgivable that the user cannot tweak the controls to their liking. The game only gets away with it because the control of the crafts (land and air) is simple and homogeneous.

Beautiful

• Finally! A game with a day-night cycle. The setting sun, the rising moon, the dusty rose of twilight, the grainy night-vision, it's all here and it's awesome!

• Pauseable strategy! Anytime you switch to the tactical map, the game pauses and you can issue multiple-waypoint commands to any of your units, as well as build new vehicles.

• Reclaimable units! The resource management in HWAR is a lot of fun, believe it or not. When was the last time you heard that? Lure enemies into a particular area and toast them so you can harvest the wreckage. Employ flexible strategies by designing and deploying specific vehicles for brief periods of time, then reclaim them and build something else.

• The fact that the little guys run around and can be dismembered. That's a really great touch, vastly increasing the immersion factor. Someone loved making this game.

Summary

In summary, HWAR is worth the price of admission, easily. I wasn't inclined to play through again, but then I've got like 50 other games to play. It's a real loss that Rage couldn't survive and polish this diamond-in-the-rough that it had. As I understand it (and as indicated by the closing cinematics) Rage had plans for several more games in the "Hostile Waters" context. What could've been... I had enough fun with this action/strategy entry that I'll keep my eye out for the next contender, though it could be a long wait. All of the publishers seem too busy cranking out crappy clones and crappier movie tie-ins to try their hand at a genre that's thrice been snubbed by consumers.