Hostile Waters (video game)
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| Hostile Waters | |
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| Developer(s) | Rage Games Limited |
| Publisher(s) | Rage Games Limited |
| Version | 1.03e |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| Release date | March 23, 2001 (EU) |
| Genre(s) | Strategy game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ELSPA 15+ |
| Media | CD (1) |
| System requirements | 266 MHz CPU, 64MB RAM, 600MB Hard disk space, 8MB GPU |
| Input methods | Keyboard, mouse |
Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising is a hybrid vehicle and strategy game released on the PC in 2001 by the British company Rage Games Limited. It was inspired by an earlier game known as Carrier Command (Realtime Games, 1988).
A number of games were released around the turn of the millennium that were essentially Real Time Strategy but played from a first-person perspective. Other examples are Battlezone, Battlezone 2, and Uprising. These games were characterised by standard first-person controls for movement of the player's avatar and the use of equipment and weapons but also supplemental controls for giving orders to other units under the control of the player.
Hostile Waters takes place in a utopian future where war has been abolished. A cabal of old-school dictators have come up with a plan to reclaim their lost power. They plan to scare the world into asking for their protection by engineering an artificial threat. The last war machine ever used is reactivated and deployed to stop them. This machine is an aircraft carrier-like ship called Antaeus. Classed as an "Adaptive Cruiser" it houses a series of massive nanorobot assemby units called Creation Engines.
The game is also notable for its narration, performed by Tom Baker, famous for his role in the long-running British science fiction show Doctor Who. Also featured in the games cutscenes were the voices of Paul Darrow and Glynis Barber from Blake's 7, another British science fiction series.
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[edit] Gameplay
Hostile Waters only has a linear campaign mode, which consists of 21 missions with a central story but little carryover in accomplishments, as with most RTS games. Each takes place on and near a fortified enemy island. The game's focus is small-scale vehicular combat, though mission objectives are generally more varied than killing everyone.
Hostile Waters features no research or base-building whatsoever. The player's only fixed 'building' is the Antaeus, immobile during missions (and destructible if very durable), which constructs units and can fire a very small number of heavy salvos in later missions after its main guns are repaired. Units are built with energy, which is gathered by recycling objects (most man-made ones are fair game) and wrecked enemy vehicles. A vehicle fitted with a recycler can reclaim and transmit energy remotely, or a transport helicopter can fly to an object and airlift it to the ship-board recycler at the rear of the carrier. The carrier can analyze objects it deconstructs, and several of the game's vehicles and items are unlocked by "sampling" them. In contrast, the enemy has extensive installations with defensive, energy-generating and unit-producing buildings. The weakness of the enemy is that it does not rebuild lost fortifications although it does replace lost troops.
Central to the game are the "soulcatcher" chips. These contain imprints of deceased former crew members of Antaeus that can be installed into vehicles. Vehicles can be built without pilots, but they then have no AI whatsoever, and the number of available chips is ten at best. Each pilot has its own distinct and colorful personality (often replete with bad language if it's enabled in the game options) along with their own preferences for vehicles, weapons and tactics. Ransom, for example, prefers helicopters and is very aggressive, often charging towards turrets that can take him down before he can do much damage to them. Patton complains loudly if his vehicle isn't fitted with the Warhammer howitzer and isn't land-based ("Son, I drive tanks!"). The personalities slowly gain experience over the course of the game and improve. Multiple copies of the same personality cannot be used simultaneously.
[edit] Control
Vehicles can be directly controlled by the player using the keyboard to move and the mouse to use weapons. A key skill is "locking on" to enemies as this allows the weapons a small degree of auto-aim. In the case of Longbow, locking on enables missiles to seek the target.
When controlling a vehicle it is possible to use hotkeys to issue orders to other units. The hot-key orders are issued in real time and require a quick sequence of key-presses. They usually represent the player selecting a unit to order, giving an order and then giving a target for that order. A target is either "Me", "The location I'm pointing at" or "The target I'm currently locked on to".
The order hotkeys are the same as the movement keys (WASD and QE as well as ZXC), so when you give an order the player can't move around. However, you can press three keys very quickly so it doesn't impair gameplay. The fact that you don't have to move your hand to give an order is a feature not normally seen in this genre.
There is also a tactical screen from which orders can be given to any vehicles equipped with a soulcatcher unit. Unlike the hotkey orders the tactical screen pauses the game. Also unlike the hotkey orders, it is possible to queue up several orders at once. This allows the player to create complex battle plans.
[edit] Vehicle Management
The game has a number of vehicles that are progressively unlocked as the missions progress. Vehicles contain a number of slots for equipment. Smaller vehicles contain a few unconnected small internal spaces, one or two squares in size, while larger ones have huge grids of internal space. Equipment items take up a number of squares and more powerful ones are shaped so that light vehicles are only able to contain them in limited amounts, if at all.
Vehicles have a single external weapon slot and the choice of weapon only affects the price, not the internal space. Some of the larger vehicles actually double-up their weapon, making it much more powerful.
Vehicles are given a keyboard shortcut on the numerical row (1 to 0), with the carrier activated by the ` key. Vehicles can also be grouped together using the ctrl-number combination typical of RTS.
Vehicles have an individual damage multiplier such that different vehicles with the same weapon will do different damage.
[edit] Vehicle Roster
[edit] Combat Vehicles
Hornet - Light recon helicopter. Incredibly agile. The first combat vehicle available.
Phoenix - Heavy helicopter. Considerably larger internal space than the Hornet.
Vulture - VTOL jet available in the final mission. Massive damage bonus if armed with Warhammer. Unusual in the way that it has no space to fit equipment.
Salamander - Light hovercraft. Can navigate water and land. Gained early in the campaign.
Shark - Heavy hovercraft. Double the internal space of the Salamander. First vehicle to have a dual weapon mount (i.e. you can still only pick one weapon but the turret sports two instances of it).
Rhino - Medium tank. Excellent terrain handling ability.
Behemoth - Heavy tank. Largest internal equipment space of all the vehicles. So large that it can mount recyclers and repair units simultaneously as other equipment.
Puma - Very small, light stealth land vehicle. No radar signature. Best used in combination with Cloak.
Sentinel - Static defence turret. Can only be moved by Pegasus and Magpie. Large amount of internal space although not enough for a recycler or repair unit.
[edit] Non-Combat Vehicles
Scarab - Land support unit. No weapon mount. Large internal space suitable for a recycler or a repair unit. When attacked it retracts it's external nano-projector automatically. This means it cannot recycle or repair other units when under fire.
Pegasus - Weaponless helicopter. Has an internal winch which can be used to transport objects such as vehicles or scrap. In a number of missions it is used to capture critical objects.
Magpie - Automated lifter unit. Cannot be directly controlled. The Magpie allows newly built units to be airlifted to the "Rally Point" - a special waypoint the player can designate. The presence of the Magpie on later levels means that the player doesn't have to use one of the ten vehicle slots on a Pegasus in order to get land units from the carrier to the current island.
[edit] Weapon Systems
All weapons are fitted with a miniature creation engine which is able to replicate ammunition, thus giving all weapons effectively infinite ammunition. However some weapons need more time to replicate their ammunition than others, thus preventing continuous fire on all weapons except the Scalpel.
Scalpel - Light minigun. It is the first weapon to be retrieved. It has a short range and low damage but this is offset by the fact that it's ammunition regenerates faster than it can fire, meaning there are no pauses while the player waits for the ammunition to regenerate.
Longbow - Medium range missile launcher. The missiles can be fired unaimed if no target is locked and will track locked targets. It is almost impossible to hit air units without locking on first.
Rapier - Long range laser. It has relatively low damage, but a longer range than any turret encountered in the game. Directly controlling a vehicle fitted with a Rapier allows the player to zoom up to 16x.
Arclight - Long range EMP cannon. It has a large area of effect, but is very slow moving. Disables any turret(weapon or radar) or land vehicle for a short duration and destroys aircraft caught in the EMP splash.
Warhammer - Very long range artillery. Huge area of effect and excellent for engaging groups of weak land-based enemies. One of the best weapons for demolishing buildings from beyond visual range as when fired, a small window appears showing a chase-camera view of the most recently fired projectile. This is invaluable for allowing the player to fire with pinpoint accuracy at maximum range. It is also able to hit airborne aircraft, but the target must be quite close or stationary.
Firestorm - Short range flamethrower. Incredibly effective against land units and buildings, but less so against air units due to the short range and time to target of the flames. If a target undergoes a sustained flame attack it may set on fire, resulting in it continually taking damage separate from other weapon effects.
[edit] Equipment
Soulcatcher Interface - Installs the mind of a long-dead soldier into the vehicle. This is the only way to give the vehicles artificial intelligence. Vehicles without a soulcatcher interface cannot be given orders and do not respond to their surroundings but can still be controlled directly.
Armour - Allows units to take more damage before being destroyed. Does not regenerate but can be repaired.
Recycler Unit - Converts scrap metal to energy. Can be used to recycle unwanted combat units in the field.
Repair Unit - Slowly repairs the hull, armour and shields (if present) of any targeted, damaged, friendly units.
Shield - Allows the vehicle to take more damage before being destroyed. Shields slowly recharge, effectively giving vehicles some limited self-repair ability. They can be made to recharge faster under the effects of a repair unit.
Cloak - When activated it renders the vehicle invisible, although it is still detectable by radar and any unit that gets very close or collides with the cloaked vehicle. Best used in conjunction with Puma (which has no radar signature) although any vehicle can use it for hit-and-run tactics. Not compatible with shields. If the cloak is activated on a shielded vehicle it will cause the shields to drain. The vehicle will not become cloaked until the shields are down.
Recharge Unit - Increases the output of the internal ammunition creation engine, reducing the amount of time it takes to reload the weapon, effectively increasing damage output.
[edit] Limitations
The game was generally well reviewed, but a recurring criticism is a lack of a multiplayer mode. A developer on the game commented that the reason for the lack of multiplayer was due the amount of bandwidth it would require and internet connections at the time and some slow LANs would not be able to cope. Replay value comes instead from experimenting with different combinations of vehicles, weapons and equipment in each of the missions. There is no "skirmish" option to play against the computer on neither random maps nor maps from the campaign. There is only a campaign mode which has no difficulty options. After the campaign mode is finished, there is very little to entice the player to continue. The campaign is considerable in length, however. No material is "unlocked" by completing the campaign either, except the movie clips viewed along the campaign, although this is an attribute more typical of console games.
[edit] Story
The storyline was written by award-wining author Warren Ellis.
Earth 2032: twenty years ago the last war on Earth was fought, a battle not between nations but between the corrupt establishment and the people. The old guard fell and war was ended. For twenty years the world has been rebuilt as a utopia of plenty "whose grasp exceeds the moon and stands on the cusp of greatness". Until now.
From nowhere missiles begin landing worldwide killing tens of thousands. The location of the launch sites is discovered and a special ops team sent in to shut it down. They vanish... In desperation the order is given to reactivate the Antaeus program, a series of warships able to create any weapon using their on-board nanotech "creation engine". (The series never states who created them but it's possible they were created by the old guard and then defected to the people). Twenty years ago they were all destroyed. All but two were left on the seabed in case they were ever needed again. One never responds to the reactivation signal, but the other, Antaeus prototype 00, comes online. On-board are a series of "soulcatcher" chips containing downloaded minds of dead soldiers. The ship builds one human around one chip, you. The others will be used to pilot the weapons it creates, weapons for a war in a world that has forgotten how to fight.
But all is not good, because the people firing the missiles are the leftovers of the old guard fighting with thousands of troops and weapons they hid away when they knew the war was lost. They outnumber you a thousand to one, and there is worse because they have created something else. Something worse, something alien, something evil...
[edit] Crew
With the exception of the captain (the player), who is stated to be "corporeal and real", the entirety of the Antaeus crew are Soulcatcher chips which are implanted into specialised vehicles. Below is a listing of the crew available throughout the game:
Ransom AJ, 01/07/1979 - 01/05/2012
Attack helicopter pilot, solo operator.
Madsen K, 31/12/1985 - 03/05/2012
A quiet man, skilled with long distance weaponry and in sniping.
Patton PH, 08/01/1965 - 03/05/2012
Veteran American tank commander who led the amphibious assault on the island fortress in 2012.
Kenzie KM, 31/12/1990 - 02/05/2012
Female ANZAC beach fighter: an Australian stormtrooper.
Borden JR, 28/11/1980 - 03/05/2012
Demolition expert serving with the Royal Marines.
Kroker, 07/07/1980 - 02/05/2012
Combat Programmer; previously used to operate from armoured workstations within battle vehicles prior to resurrection via Soul Catcher system.
Korolev
Speaks in an Eastern European accent, possibly Russian.
Sinclair
First Officer, speaks with an English accent.
Lazare
Speaks with a French accent. Bears a strong resemblance to Jean Reno.
Elroy
Black man who's soulcatcher chip you will gain in the last mission if even then.
