Hostile Waters - nothing to do with fishing disputes! (Hostile Waters PC (PC))

Member Name: Iclements

Product:	Hostile Waters PC (PC)
Date:	06/08/01 (119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Graphics, excellent interface, involving gameplay

Disadvantages: no multiplayer, somewhat short lived

It’s difficult to be all things for all people. As anyone who has attempted to transform themselves into a dancefloor guru after seven pints would attest to, and usually ends up in misery for all concerned – not least the people who have to suffer your drunken thrashing and flailing.
Hostile Waters is one piece of art that doesn’t imitate life however, and sacrifices none of it’s broad, innovative values to appeal to just one sect of gamer. Like other modern classics of our time, the superb Deus Ex for example; Hostile Waters succeeds in a dozen tiny details which, alone, seem unimportant, but when combined succeed utterly in bringing the gamer into it’s detailed and lovingly constructed world.
Graphics? It has stunning terrain stretching to the distance, split by stretches of rippling ocean water, natural and man-made constructions – which all fall apart beautifully when you send your troops in with guns blazing. Gameplay? Perhaps the most impressive achievement of Hostile Waters is that it manages to place you in the role of both the commander and the soldier, without ever seeming deficient in either area.
You can control your vehicles, which are manned by the ‘bio-chip’ preserved personalities and skills of dead soldiers, from the tactical screen like a General safely leading his troops into combat, or you can man the lead helicopter yourself and order the others to watch your back while you rain missile-death on the enemy.
As missions progress, new technologies and newly discovered bio-chip personalities are made available to you, each introduced seamlessly through the professionally-written plot. Keeping the balance between making do with what vehicles you have, and being awarded one in time for a particularly difficult mission, just right.
Ah yes, the plot. Scripted by master penman ‘Warren Ellis’, Hostile Waters lacks the flag-waving of Hollywood yet still mana
ges to affect the player with it’s scope and sincerity. This is a world worth saving, but you’re not controlling someone who enjoys killing, creating an emotional conflict which develops in tandem with the morally ambiguous ‘nano-technology’
sub-plot of the title.
The voice of Tom Baker as narrator is simply the icing on the cake, and adds a highly polished, professional feel which leaves no strings untied.
Let’s not let this masterpiece go the way of System Shock, shall we?

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