I admit it, I'm guilty. Guilty of a crime amongst reviewers - I didn't complete this game. I've read reviews where the writer clearly played no more than the first few levels of a game, and the abysmal Thumb Bandits currently airing on British Channel 4 even quite blatantly reviewed the first Aliens versus Predator 2 demo and passed it off as a review of the full game. But I have not sunk so low. I have my reasons for not finishing this particular title, though goodness knows I've tried. Is it particularly long or just unbearably bad? Well, you'll see.
Like a baby Tiger, Aquanox starts off looking innocent enough. In fact, it starts off looking gorgeous. The visuals are slicker than polished marble though fittingly enough they come at a high cost as it's been optimised for the GeForce 3. A vanilla GeForce 2 will run it smoothly on a decent details level though. Just don't expect to be able to crank up the details and not suffer ugly frame rates. Weapon effects look great and the firing sounds are particularly solid and satisfying, but the weapons suffer from a serious flaw. Mud-wrestling a greased ox would be easier than controlling Aquanox. The problem lies with the extremely sluggish crosshair - there can be a delay of up to half a second between moving your mouse and the crosshair moving. This is obviously intended to give the impression of turning your ship in water, though why these futuristic craft don't have separately swivelling guns is beyond me.
The sluggish crosshair movements prove easy to overcome at first but when the enemy ships become faster and tougher your knuckles will whiten as they try to crush your mouse in frustration. Even worse, none of the weapons hit instantly, far from it. So even if you line up the enemy in your sights you'll often have to lead that target. Thanks to the sluggish crosshair movements and the lack of a leading reticle like there was in Freespace 2 if the enemy is at anything beyond medium range you'll often have to blast them randomly, unable to draw a solid bead on them. Seeker missiles alleviate frustration to an extent, but only while they last and it's pretty poor compensation for the uselessness of the other weapons. It's such a shame the game is a complete pain in the arse to control because it could at the very least have been an enjoyable action title in a unique setting, a kind of Descent 3 underwater.
