Reviewed: August 14, 2003
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
TDK Mediactive
Developer
TDK Mediactive
Released: August 5, 2003
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen
3
2
1
2
1.8
Supported Features
My momma always told me, “If you can’t say something nice then don’t say anything at all.” With that in mind I will conclude my review of Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis at this time. Seriously…move along…nothing to see here.
OK, you’re right. (Sorry, mom). TDK was nice enough to send me this game and my entire staff was wise enough to avoid this review leaving me to tell you about this latest bucket of chum for your Xbox.
I guess the first question I have to ask is “Why Aquaman?” Of all the superheroes currently out there who haven’t been granted their own videogame what rookie game designer sat down and said, “Aquaman…we have to do a game about Aquaman!” Frankly, I would have preferred a game about Daredevil; even an FPS Daredevil game would be better than this. You see, Daredevil is blind so an FPS game would be a black screen but still better than Aquaman – I hate explaining my jokes.
My personal experience with the King of Atlantis is limited to my pre-teen viewings of the Saturday morning installments of the Superfriends, and even then I knew this guy was the weakest excuse for a superhero going. Even those clumsy teenagers and Dynomutt were more valuable to the team.
Regardless, the decision was made and now you get to slip into green spandex (eww…) and fight your way through numerous levels of mindless combat. To mix things up they let you pilot a mini-sub for a few of the levels…woohoo!
So what does Aquaman bring to the table in the way of superpowers and gameplay? He can talk to fish (hmm…) and he has a cybernetic hook-hand (resistance is futile), and he can swim around at 20 knots kicking up a vortex with his feet like he has a 25hp trolling motor strapped to his ass. He can kick and punch and you even get individual control over left and right hands, which really adds nothing to the mix.
Gameplay consists of you engaging in numerous (too many to count) fights of 2-3 enemy fishmen. You swim around in a third-person action view until you “engage” the enemy then the game turns into a weak fighting game in a zero-g environment. How anyone (even Aquaman) can punch and kick with any effectiveness in the denseness of water is beyond me.
Once you have defeated said bad guys you swim some more until you locate the next cluster and repeat. To its credit you have some special movies and combos in your bag of tricks and you can summon the occasional fish to aid you, but the sad thing is none of this stuff is ever required. You can easily punch your way to the end of the game by randomly mashing left, right, and kick.
Aquaman will auto-lock on a target (not necessarily the nearest one) so you seldom have to worry about directional control during combat. Once an enemy is defeated and you need to move to the next things can get crazy. The control scheme is relational to the camera and the camera sucks. It will often pan and tilt at crazy angles, which constantly keeps you second-guessing your movement.
Just when you think you can’t stand anymore fighting you are put into a mini-sub. Of the 21 total levels there are only four of these sub levels in the entire game leaving you with 17 agonizing fist-fighting levels of variable (but always too long) length.
I guess having your game take place on the bottom of the ocean is the perfect excuse to have horrible dark graphics with muddy textures and poor draw distance. The architecture of Atlantis is futuristically simple and streamlined and gives the impression of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants yet throughout the entire game you will only see Aquaman and those who oppose him. The occasional fish or underwater shuttle might break up the monotony, but even these get repetitive and even predictable.
With the exception of Aquaman, the character designs are very repetitive with no more than two or three models for the typical encounter. And regardless of how they look they all fight using the same animation.
Framerate is acceptable considering there isn’t a lot of complex graphics and what there is isn’t moving very fast. Once you get into the sub the framerate spirals into the unplayable region and the short draw distance becomes even more pronounced.
The story is told through static comic book story panels that are poorly drawn with text that was barely legible on my big-screen TV and S-Video connection. It’s not narrated so you have to read everything assuming you care enough to do so.
There is no speech, and what few effects are in the game are as simple as it gets from standard punching and kick effects to the gurgling swirl of water as you swim around. Everything is suitably muffled almost as if I had water in my ears.
The music is equally as generic as it attempts to create a heroic atmosphere and fails.
Assuming you can stand to play the game to its unrewarding climax you will have wasted 8-12 hours of your life. You also get the “privilege” of unlocking bonus characters and replaying the game as Black Manta or Tempest. You get a new character model but little else changes.
Even at $19 this game just isn’t worth your time. Go rent 2-4 other games and have some real fun. Even if you are the most devout Aquaman fan on the planet you are going to have a rude awakening if you play this game.
Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis is a game that probably should have never been made and certainly not released, at least in its current state. There are plenty of more deserving (and interesting) superheroes out there just waiting for their own videogame. If you see this game on a store shelf, swim, don’t dog paddle, as fast as you can in the opposite direction.