Archimedean Dynasty

The Good
Sort of prequel to Aqua Nox games with better plot, better voice characters, better simulation and everything, Archimedean Dynasty still stands as one of my favourite games in simulation genre.

Still, after all these years it is a beautiful game, although you can't see much under the sea you can find the sea floor teeming with life. There's a number of enemies, big complexes, factories and other compounds where people are trying to survive in the harsh underwater world. Radio messages, sonar sounds and the fully voiced narration and discussion add immersion.

Also there's a nice detail in if you try to go too high, the systems warn you about immense radiation and begin to fail, effectively stopping you from advancing any further. Also you can see the dead crew members of the enemy ship floating in the water along the debris after their ship has exploded. It's rather useless, but gives a nice touch and continuity for the game.

Controls are still good, joystick or keyboard do fine, although the latter lacks the precision in nailing those non-guided torpedo launches. It's ok, I played it well past the half-ways of the game when I was a kid without a proper joystick. The game has quite a few extra-ish buttons that are rarely used, but add up to the atmosphere (like so many other things), such as turning off the ship systems/engines in order to avoid active sonar detection. H key is your best friend, until you learn the ropes.

Game play is simply well done. You can pitch, yaw, roll, accelerate, decelerate, etc. the basic stuff, ship responds well to the given movements and it's a pleasure to be in a head-to-head combat against another ship. The viscosity of the water makes the playing slightly sluggish on poorer ships, but it's part of the game, when you get the best ship, you'll be like a shark in the water. You can target different ship systems on the enemy ships, launch torpedoes with active or passive sonar or just simply straight-on ones too. My favourite is the huge and slow torpedo that will blast the enemy out of the water (figuratively) if it hits. Also evasive manoeuvres work well and if you're skilled enough you can avoid most of the torpedo hits. Remember though, your systems will break too and it won't be fun if you can't out manoeuvre your chaser.

If you see this game, anywhere, get it and try to make it work somehow. It's still a great game after all these years, although the graphics are slightly dated, there are a number of other things that make the game a unique experience even for people who only got in to the gaming on 2000's.

The Bad
The downside of this is that the game is a real pain to get working on modern hardware, as it involves glide wrappers, tricks and some rain dance in order to get it working, if you get it working at all. Your best bet would be to get an old computer with 3DFX card and run it on that one.. As for other problems.. there really aren't too many. One could be that some missions might be immensely hard if you don't prepare well enough for them, but other than that AD is a really tight packet of adventure and action.

The Bottom Line
Game is placed on earth after a nuclear holocaust induced floods and nuclear winter that forced the humanity to move into the oceans. Player is mercenary Emerald "Dead Eye" Flint and he takes up on a mission to protect a sulfur transportation when it's ambushed by a criminal gang. He's stripped of his ship, his wealth and he's left in an escape pod for others to pick up. This is where the game begins, you get to travel around, accomplish missions, talk to people and find out what, who and why of the plot. Also after gathering enough money, you can buy new ships, upgrade them and pick from a variety of weaponry to go with. All in neatly rendered CG video.

The game missions are from the cockpit, that has all the necessary information about your ship, surrounding areas, underwater streams, enemies, sonar etc. or, if you prefer, you can play from the 3rd person losing some of the claustrophobic feeling from being in a sub. The visuals are combined 3D and 2D sprites that are smoothed up a little bit depending on if you have a HW acceleration on or if you're using SW.

In-between the missions you'll be exploring the different compounds that have been built on the ocean floor, talking with people and doing some simple detective job, eventually evolving into an interesting storyline. The lines are mostly spoken and the voice actors are pretty good (unlike in the sequels AquaNox and AquaNox 2).

If I had to describe it this game with one sentence, I'd say it's a well put together game that manages to tell a good story and provide excellent gameplay for many hours to come.