Aquanox
Play Aquanox if it came to you via a weekly humble bundle in October 2014, the “Nordic 2” bundle. Play Aquanox if you have to play it because you’re doing this blog thing where you play all your games in your steam library in the hope of making the most of the things you’ve already paid for - you’re looking to be more adventurous but not in a way that actually takes you out of the house or makes you a better person. Play Aquanox for hours longer than you should because you don’t want to give up too soon “in case it gets better”. Then when you realise it isn’t going to get better, play Aquanox because you are stubborn and “just want to finish the game, okay?” Play Aquanox.
Play Aquanox if you want to play a game from the indeterminable past that has aged badly due to myriad design decisions (you can research it later and find out it was released in 2001 although it feels like a polygonal shooter from the late 80’s running on your parents’ mac classic). Play Aquanox if you want to see that game standards really have improved in every possible way.
Play Aquanox to enjoy an excess of comically bad voice acting, which you’ll be pretty sure is just the developers/friends/family attempting to flamboyantly read the script in as few takes as possible with very little regard to pronunciation. Play Aquanox for the pulpy dystopian technofuture and awful characters that inhabit it, enjoy the cheesiness of it and wish it was enough to hold the game up on it’s own. Play Aquanox to savour the long dialogue sections doing all they can to create a world colourful enough to invest your time in - they are by far the best part of the game. Play Aquanox for the unwieldy, sprawling mess of a (somehow) linear plot, in which you’ll end up fighting like four or five groups of bad guys, many whom you’re not totally sure why they are the bad guys but the game said so and ohwell. Play Aquanox especially because the main character is just the worst and his voice sucks so much.
Play Aquanox for the incredibly bloated intro video which you’ll then make your girlfriend also watch in its entirety for lols. It turns out said video is covering all the ground in the games’ predecessor - you didn’t know Aquanox was a sequel but you’ll look this up later and realise this makes a lot of sense given how many random characters showed up that acted like we were meant to know who they were.
Play Aquanox for the grindy, tensionless gameplay and to wonder if this was really what people were prepared to put up with in 2001. Play Aquanox to drive a submarine and shoot repetitively at dull objects. Play Aquanox to enjoy the desolate scenery while driving from A to B to C for some unknown reason at the start of the mission (yes! I can follow this navigation marker!). Play Aquanox to replay the easy beginning bits of the harder missions over and over again because there are no checkpoints. Play Aquanox to get given terrible advice by the game as to how to complete certain missions, only to look up a walkthrough which contradicts this sanctioned advice at every turn. Play Aquanox to be like, “woah, this game had multiplayer? I can’t even imagine.” Play Aquanox to write a burn review, perhaps unfairly judging it some fifteen years out from it’s original context. Play Aquanox because in the two possible futures you imagined - one where you did play Aquanox and one where you didn’t play Aquanox - you somehow foresaw the one which included Aquanox as the only serious path because of your, what? Your FOMO? Your self-destructive inability to pick and choose your battles sensibly? Your desire to be thorough? Your worry that someday a situation will come up where knowledge of the game, Aquanox, would be extremely beneficial?
Or, you know, don’t play Aquanox.
Up next is, oh lord, Aquanox 2: Revelation