N-Philes

Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis

Posted by Jeff.

There is an A list of Superheroes. There's Batman, Superman, Spiderman, the X-men (sorry for mixing Marvel and DC). These are the guys everybody has heard of no matter how much that person is into comic books and superheroes. Then there's the B list of superheroes. These are guys that your average human being probably doesn't know about. Daredevil was on this list until recently when he got his own movie. Still on that list is Aquaman. Who is Aquaman? He's Arthur, King of Atlantis, and he patrols the waters of the world keeping back the forces of undersea evil. His superpower is his ability to telepathically speak to sea creatures. If you didn't know who he was before, you do now, and for you TDK Mediactive and Lucky Chicken Games (I swear I didn't make that up) have brought Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis to the Gamecube. The question that must be asked is: Why?

Story

The story is your classic comic book caper. Atlantis is mysteriously under attack by Black Manta. Is that all there is to see? What does Black Manta want? There is yet more as behind Black Manta is a larger plot to dethrone King Arthur and bring Atlantis to its knees. All this is told through comic book panels. There is no cinematic FMVs or anything, just plain old comic book panels.

Gameplay

From what I can tell by this game Aquaman seems to want to be a peaceful type. He's a lover not a fighter. Yet, this game is completely about mindlessly beating up hordes of mindless drones and enemies sent by the evil nefarious minds behind this heinous plot. The game has a total of 21 missions and 17 of those will involve Aquaman swimming around his undersea world, punching and kicking his way towards regaining control of his kingdom.

Yes, since Aquaman exists in the city of Atlantis which is underwater he swims around to get from place to place, which works well enough until he hits one of those crazy invisible walls which pop up all over the place. The swimming controls fair enough, and there is even a little compass in the bottom right corner to point you in the right direction. Atlantis is in full 3D of course, so expect enemies to appear above and below Aquaman as well.

When Aquaman approaches an enemy the camera goes into a special combat cam and this is where the game goes from bad to worse. The default camera is called Dynamic. It pans back and gives a larger view of the entire area. It also lets Aquaman and his enemies to keep coming in from all angles. What this means to the player is that it is impossible to tell exactly in which direction you want to be moving, whether up, down, left, right, or some weird variation of those angles. It also means that Aquaman can look like he's a mile away from the camera fighting. Frustration automatically abounds. A quick trip to the options menu can switch from Dynamic to Close. This gives the camera a more traditional 2D view of the fight that will automatically close up on the two combatants at the time. Much less frustrating, though the camera will still be blocked by other objects frequently. Also expect many attacks from off-screen enemies. So neither camera is optimal.

The action looks like it was made for a fighting game and just tweaked to work for this game. A and X are right and left punch, Y is kick, B is block and L grabs. R will dodge in the direction you press (supposedly, if it works) and the Z button will call in a dolphin or shark for an easy automatic kill against any one enemy (yet again, if the game responds to the button press). The main way of combat is with combos. These need a certain amount of button presses in a specific order in a row. Aquaman is supposed to get more the deeper into the game he gets. In reality after three levels he has all the combos in the game. The combos themselves require some weird timing which seems impossible to get down. When you finally get it down they don't work. And it's all just another lesson in frustration in this disgustingly bad game.

All this doesn't take into account the enemy AI. It's actually decent in the sense that if you try to pull off the same combo twice in a row it'll block. Just make sure to pull off combos that start with a different move and you're set to kill them. That is if you can handle over five of them at once, who tend to shoot projectiles at you from afar. Enemies will gang up on you. Somebody will come up from behind and there's nothing to be done. Theoretically, there is a back kick, but it doesn't work. Much like everything else in this game.

There are some submarine missions as well. These work much like the levels in Rogue Squadron, except in this game they're not fun. Shooting enemy subs is next to impossible unless you use your homing missiles. Getting power ups for your special weapons which are NEEDED to complete missions are next to impossible to get. The missions though still come down to shoot at thing X until it explodes. Just not fun, though at least it provides a change from the monotony of the regular missions.

There are some pickups in the regular missions to expand the block meters and special meters needed to perform blocks and special moves (much like combos, they rarely work and are frustrating to try and pull off). Not that these make for a reason to come back and try to collect them as it is impossible to return to levels. Either you get them or you don't. There's the choice of four different characters to play the game as, each opened up after beating the game once or twice. Not that it's worth it, as, though these characters have different move sets, they play through the exact same levels. So why bother?

Visuals

Upon booting up the game for the first time, you might expect some fancy cutscenes, or something. No such luck here as the story is told through boring comic book panels. Not only that, but these are drawn in a crude, ugly fashion. Onto the game world, and everything stays as ugly. Aquaman looks decent enough, I suppose, but everyone else is plain, ugly, boring, and the same level after level. OK, to be fair, there are three different races of enemies and they all look different, but within these groups everybody looks the same. Fighting animation is boring, stilted, stiff, and anything but fluid. They seem to be walking towards each other on ground, even though they're in the sea. Draw distance is a joke, as buildings will regularly pop up right in front of your face. There is one nice particle effect as you swim, but that's about it.

Audio

Well, here's the last hope for Aquaman, and the game fails miserably here too. Obviously without any cutscenes there are no voices in them, but there is no voice in the whole game to speak of. The music is alright, but it gets repetitive very, very quickly. Strike three is the sound effects. Low and muffled for punches and the like, what's there is very bad. When ships explode they don't even make exploding sounds. You see explosions but the game is silent. One last thing. The sound was done by Tommy Tallarico Studios. I only mention this because the guy annoys the hell out of me on his game review show. So I just wanted to say, yeah, great job there Tommy.

This game gets an N-Philes score of F.

In case it isn't abundantly obvious, this game is bad. It's horrible. It's awful. Serious Aquaman fans might want to give it a rent if only because this is probably the only Aquaman game there will ever be. Anyone else should stay far far away from this game unless you want to play what might just be the worst game on the Gamecube.

Posted in: Reviews

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