• 360

by TheDCD on 08.22.10

Thar she blows.  And I say that literally as I slug my way through Naval Assault: The Killing Tide, the latest from 505 Games.  Like IL-2 Sturmovik, Naval Assault takes a near-accurate historical approach to gaming as you’re in control of a submarine.  Rather than drift your way through the water and shoot everything in sight (like you could in such submarine arcade fare as In the Hunt and Battle Shark), you actually have to pace yourself, like Sean Connery in The Hunt For Red October, to win the day.  There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, it’s just that it doesn’t quite make for an entertaining night of gaming.

You’ll begin with a tutorial that introduces the basics.  You can drop down in the water and hit the surface again, though most of the action takes place with you above the waves.  You’ll be able to shoot torpedoes (only straight ahead, like a real submarine) or hop onto the deck guns should some airplanes go buzzing overhead.  From there, it’s a matter of playing things defensively, such as shutting down your engines to avoid colliding with depth charges, or getting the sneaky drop on your enemy.  That’s really all there is to Naval Assault.

While it is accurate to how real submarine physics work, it’s just never really any fun.  Defense is mostly stupid, due to the fact that enemy ships act so idiotically that they essentially defeat themselves.  You just help the cause (or in some cases, put them out of their misery) by sinking them with a torpedo.  That brings up a huge problem with the game’s controls.  When you’re shooting torpedoes, you manually have to turn the ship around in order to get aiming down right, even if you have the enemy locked in your sights through a periscope.  The deck guns aren’t any more thrilling, due to the fact that planes pass overhead, and even as you blaze your guns away at them they show no indication that they’ve been hit.  Only after they explode do you realize you’ve done any damage.  Which is ridiculous, because, um, shouldn’t a plane smoke when you hit it?  Or at least show some damage?

Naval Assault features a single-player campaign, or you can log online and take on others through naval combat, hypothetically.  I say hypothetically because, well, there is no one online.  I suppose there are some sea curmudgeons who wouldn’t mind hitting the open water, but paying $50 to do so is a bit much, especially when they can pop in said copy of The Hunt For Red October and enjoy themselves that much more.

Presentation-wise, Naval Assault simply can’t keep up.  Some of the visual effects are nice, such as the waves above the water, but the aircraft, ships and other textures look like they were lifted from a lesser game on the PlayStation 2.  The camera perspectives are okay (especially on the deck guns), but fail to spruce anything as the missions drag on.  The sound consists of poor voice acting, music that will get on your nerves (even the likes of Gwar can’t perk up the excitement) and sound effects that go bang or boom.  Nothing to write home about.

Had Naval Assault taken a more arcade-style approach and added smarter computer AI, it would be worth hunting down at retail.  As it stands, it’s a sub-par game (get it?!) that fails to rise to the occasion.  Glub, glub…

  Add to N4G

• 
• Login or register to post comments