AQUA Review

6.0

Review Score:

AQUA is the first release by new indie developers, Games Distillery and is available exclusively for Xbox LIVE Arcade. The game features naval combat between ships in an arcade dual-stick shooting format, similar to that of Geometry Wars or Asteroids. Although AQUA is not quite to the standard of Geometry Wars, it’s definitely still a good deal of fun.

The games storyline is somewhat reminiscent of the movie Waterworld, a cataclysmal event has occurred and the world is flooded and continents have disappeared. The survivors of the world have formed nations and empires to gain control over oceanic territories. The game is set in a “steampunk” era and features you, the protagonist Captain Grey, of the Emperan Empire waging war against the Gothean Empire to gain control of the seas. It’s your task to save the day and destroy the evil Gothean forces. Without a doubt, for a downloadable title, the game has an extremely extensive and in-depth story, however, this can be completely bypassed if that’s not your thing and you’re more into just blowing stuff up.

The gameplay is no different to any other arcade shooter of the genre, the left stick moves your ship and the right stick shoots in that direction. This works fine and is easy to use; you can also lay mines and fire torpedoes which extend the gameplay significantly and add an element of strategy to the combat as you can lay stun mines for approaching ships, leaving them vulnerable to your guns. The main campaign mode is fairly short and only features a handful of missions, the majority of these being escort missions. Escort missions are probably my least favourite type in any game, simply because no matter how good you are, if the AI makes a dumb move then it fails the mission for you too and you have limited control of the result of the mission. AQUA is no exception to this pattern and several escort missions were overwhelming and often resulted in failure and a significant loss of game time when you are taken back to the previous checkpoint which generally was at the start of the escort.

The game offers a limited amount of customization for you ships and there are also three different types of ships you can use; an offensive ship, a defensive ship and an agile ship. These do allow for some customization but it’s all very limited as you’ll simply end up using the same one or two upgrades or weapons for the majority of the games missions and with upgrades, there’s actually very little difference between the three ships which seemed a bit of a waste. The game also features a local multiplayer mode which is unfortunately rather bland and I had little to no interest in the multiplayer mode after trying a checkpoint race and an arena deathmatch.

AQUA doesn’t really have that much wrong with it; it just doesn’t really have much right with it either (maybe other than a spiffing naval outfit for your Xbox LIVE avatar!). The campaign is short and rather dull and full of difficulty and somewhat annoying escort missions that lack checkpoints to save headache. But it’s by no means a bad game, it provides a fair amount of fun and will keep you entertained or a good hour or two. There are much better arcade shooters available but if naval combat is your thing, then AQUA is probably the game for you.

NXT Score: 6/10

Pros

• Attempts an in-depth story
• Provides a fair amount of fun and maintains the arcade-shooting gameplay we’ve come to love
• A truly spiffing naval Xbox LIVE avatar outfit can be unlocked

Cons

• Escort missions during the games campaign mode can soon become frustrating with a lack of checkpoints
• Ship customization is wasted and often useless
• A local multiplayer mode is present but adds very little to the game.