Graphics and Sound

Almost New

The graphics in Hostile Waters are slightly dated. You can tell from the minimum system requirements - who's still running a 266 MHz processor? While there are huge outdoor areas a la Tribes 2, all of the terrain is dirt or water. There are a few trees but no forests, foliage, or interesting landscape. Most of the time you'll be cruising over a hill that looks like every other hill in the game.

The graphics suffer from putting too many polys in the terrain and particle effects, and not enough in the buildings and units. Tragically the terrain isn't detailed either, there's just a lot of it. The concepts behind the units are good, but the units need more polys (thus more detail) to make them up to today's standards. You'll see a lot of sharp edges and blocky designs reminiscent of games from a few years back. Thankfully, the only time I ever experienced a frame rate drop was during the end of the last mission, where there's about one hundred enemy units and buildings all trying to blow up the Antaeus (I am running a 1GHz/GeForce 2 setup however).

Hostile Waters has a mix of good and bad textures. In general the "alien" buildings and units have great textures, giving the impression of man-made structures overtaken by an organic disease. The textures on the Antaeus and friendly units are good as well, but the rest of the game is fairly bland.

Lots of blocks and hills

An alien nest

One annoying aspect of the game that didn't translate as well as the designers intended is the day/night cycle. An entire day is compressed into roughly 30 minutes, which wouldn't be so bad in a video game except that at everything that's not in bright daylight is hard to see. The night vision makes everything look a shade of green - objects are hard to distinguish from their surroundings unless they're moving. When the sun is coming up or going down, it's dark enough to make objects hard to see, but too light to use the night vision I understand the charge for "realism" in games, but if there's also a need to balance that with pure gameplay value - if you're going to have "realistic" night sorties, at least make available a reasonable means to enjoy the challenge. We're not playing a flight sim after all. In the end, rather than feeling like a "real" day/night setting, the gamer just ends up slightly annoyed.

In general the graphics reminded me a lot of Ground Control, but not nearly as good - and Ground Control was also released over a year ago. There are a lot of effects that exist purely as eye-candy. Smoke trails, particle effects from explosions, sunsets - all things that are pretty but nothing we haven't seen before in other games.

^$#@* You!

The music and sound of Hostile Waters are nothing to write home about, but the voice acting is great. Be warned that this game is rated M, and they really mean it. To put it frankly, they cuss. A lot. They cuss way past the point of, "Hah, he said the S word," and more towards the way gamers talk when they're playing online head-to-head. Not exactly a game you want to play around a four year-old, but hey you're supposed to be 17, right? Luckily you can turn the gratuitous profanity off.

Ransom going down	Calm before the storm
Everything is destructable	A big Slurpee

Each soldier recovered from the Soulcatcher chips has a very unique personality. Patton, the hard-nosed American tank driver, will say, "God had more fun at Sodom and Gomorra than I'm having right now!" when nothing's going on. Obviously a lot more than the standard RTS "Yes sir." During battles the soldiers will also tell you what's going on, from "This bastard's mine," to "You're lucky I'm so good, that was not easy." You'll hear comments on each other, from compliments to insults if they're hit with friendly fire. They also come complete with stereotypical accents, from Korelev's Russian to McKenzie's Australian.