Submarine Titans Hands-On Preview - PAGE 1Prairie Wolfe - Wednesday, July 5th, 2000
Boring. This was my sentiment when I first encountered this underwater real-time strategy from Ellipse Studios. With my StarCraft, WarCraft II and C&C experience, I doubted that surreal squid and bubbles could offer anything to peak my interest. But every statement has a "but". Zoom into things and you'll discover that the fractal of apparent appearance is not as it seems. Never judge a game by its graphics or its creepy Jaws music.
So here we are, a few thousand leagues under the sea where giant cephalopods are being blasted out of the water by two bitchy human factions. The story read thus: In the year 2047, Earth is devastated by the Clark Comet. The only humans that survive are the quick-thinking sobs who dove for the protective waves of the ocean. Following a twelve-year winter and all sorts of plague-like catastrophes, positive feedback creates massive global warming. As anyone who's taken first year Geography knows, the result is the melting of polar ice and a rise in ocean levels. Anyhoo, oblivious to all this are those blasted humans, who have been bickering amongst themselves under the ocean. A civil war of sorts ensues and the humans separate into the two factions of the Black Octopi and the White Sharks. First of all, I doubt sharks and octopi are nemeses. Second, notice the blatantly obvious yin-yang symbolism, as if we need to have it spelled out for us... but I digress. To make the game more interesting, the humans discover an alien race-the Silicons (for Silicon-based life forms, get it?)-living in the crater of the comet. And of course there is no love lost in this triangle.