By John Walker on May 16th, 2011 at 3:40 pm.
When seeing the game name “Naval Warfare“, my instinct is to reach for the bright red phone that directly connects to Tim Stone. Then I clicked play on the trailer, and my hand hesitated on the receiver. This one… this one’s for me, I realised. It’s utterly mentile. I implore you to watch the trailer below, and to stick with the non-stop festival of crazy gibberish that narrates an arcadey water-based shooter, until the very end. That cackle.
From German publishers Just A Game, and Slovakian developers Games Distillery, this looks to boat battling what Attack On Pearl Harbour is to aeronautics. Except way more mad. Just watch:
Seemingly called Aqua on XBLA, why it’s been changed to such a peculiarly generic name for the PC release I’m not sure. It was also apparently released in April, but its own site doesn’t say where to buy it. And the trailer was released, er, today. But there’s plans to release it via digital distribution some time this month.
According to the publishers, Naval Warfare will see the player,
“take control of an elite cruiser and steer into the middle of a raging naval war where masses of enemies and allies engage in real-time operations. Being attacked from above and below the water surface the player has to destroy masses of enemies’ troops to be victorious. By unlocking new ship-types, weapons and upgrades, the player will have the opportunity to enhance his ship and gear up for the next fight. Choosing from various tactics and forming special supporting squadrons, the player will also have the option to command offensive and defensive troops in order to overcome large enemy formations and defensive installations.”
Can’t wait!
16/05/2011 at 15:45 Peggle20 says:
Oh this looks fun. Breeng eet to Steeeeeam.
16/05/2011 at 22:33 Peter Radiator Full Pig says:
Yes yes and yes. What are the chances something for XBLA would get onto Steam?
I have just remembered, Super MeatBoy.
16/05/2011 at 15:46 Grinnbarr says:
Whaaaa
16/05/2011 at 15:47 HermitUK says:
“This concludes our mating”?
Also, why would anyone want to invade Sylvania? They don’t look like awfully threatening opponents.
16/05/2011 at 16:25 ImperialCreed says:
You’re not the only one who heard that.
16/05/2011 at 16:42 Rii says:
“This concludes our mating.”
I say that to all the girls.
16/05/2011 at 17:53 Antsy says:
Haha, smooth.
16/05/2011 at 19:27 Muzman says:
Not that Sylvania, obviously. One with Waters.
Although it’s not that much different. The population of mind bendingly stupid drunks with lots of money should be a push over.
16/05/2011 at 22:32 Peter Radiator Full Pig says:
Surely invading people who arent a threat would be better than the alternative?
16/05/2011 at 23:45 MrPants says:
They invaded Blighty in 1993. You are fighting a war of guerilla resistance every day of your lives. Especially if you don’t even know it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyHubO1V0w0
16/05/2011 at 15:48 applecup says:
Mentile?
17/05/2011 at 00:39 Scorpi says:
Urban Dictionary says, “mentile is the same as mental but can only be used if the situation is mental to the extreme.”
I was hoping for something a bit more interesting…
16/05/2011 at 15:49 GraveyardJimmy says:
The part where they sailed round a grinder reminded me loads of this gem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LMrn0nyMt4
I’m sure it was on PC too- Overboard!
16/05/2011 at 16:13 Flameberge says:
I was thinking exactly the same thing. I remember Overboard! on my PS1. Pretty fun little game.
16/05/2011 at 16:14 Isometric says:
Gosh I thought of Overboard as soon as I saw that bit too, blimey!
16/05/2011 at 16:38 AndrewC says:
Overboard! Overboard! Yay! Just…don’t dig it up and play it today.
16/05/2011 at 17:02 skurmedel says:
Yes! ’twas fine old matey.
16/05/2011 at 18:38 DarkFenix says:
Yeah this instantly reminded me of Overboard, fun game back in the day.
16/05/2011 at 15:49 Jumwa says:
It looks very arcade-y. Which isn’t a bad thing, mind you.
16/05/2011 at 15:49 Alphabet says:
Oh my god, that’s the best trailer experience since Magicka:Vietnam. It’s one classic line of dialogue after another. I don’t care how bad the game is (and it looks like it might be good) I’m going to buy it just to hear more of that dialogue. The bad voice acting is its greatest asset!!
16/05/2011 at 17:39 bglamb says:
“Bad voice acting”? Are you mental?
That was some of the finest voice acting I’ve heard in a long while!
16/05/2011 at 18:01 Urael says:
It’s certainly better then the stuff in the new Star Wars MMO.
16/05/2011 at 19:56 Dreamhacker says:
RELAKSH ENGINEAH! WOOH MAY HAVE CHANG’T, BUT AY HAVN’T!
16/05/2011 at 15:51 evilbobthebob says:
oh wow this looks like a higher budget, modern version of Battleship: Surface Thunder which I had so much fun with as a kid back in 2000 (http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/164/164564p1.html apparently the critics were ok with it too).
16/05/2011 at 20:33 Commisar says:
this looks JUST LIKE a game called OilRush, on the Uniengine engine, google it and you will be astounded by the plagiarism evident
16/05/2011 at 15:51 GenBanks says:
Haha I like the voice acting.
I especially like the line ‘war may have changed but I haven’t'… makes a nice change from the “War. War never changes.” line!
16/05/2011 at 16:13 P7uen says:
War never changes, it just gets displayed in incrementally higher resolutions.
Also becomes widescreen.
17/05/2011 at 03:22 Boozebeard says:
The thing is that surely doesn’t make any sense? If war has changed and you haven’t that’s a bad thing; unless you were really bad at war before and it changed in a way that’s made you good at it :P
17/05/2011 at 10:10 Dozer says:
It was either the British failure to win the Battle of Jutland in WW1, or the loss of the battlecruiser HMS Hood in WW2, that was at least partly due to Royal Navy emphasis on getting the maximum rate-of-fire instead of, you know, aiming properly at Jutland, or keeping the doors between the gun turrets and the ammunition storage closed as much as possible in the case of HMS Hood. Because rate-of-fire won the day at Trafalgar.
War had changed, but Royal Navy doctrine hadn’t.
16/05/2011 at 15:53 Rii says:
Teehee. Looks like fun.
Both ‘Aqua’ and ‘Naval Warfare’ are strong contenders for blandest title of the year. It’s a shame, as the game itself hardly appears wanting of character.
And I hate to be that guy, but some of those textures *are* rather muddy, yes?
16/05/2011 at 16:32 Shadowcat says:
Yes, wondering why the name was changed to something so “peculiarly generic” is a little weird when the old name was ten times worse in that regard!
16/05/2011 at 15:53 Lacessit says:
Reehlax engineeyah. Also, get to da choppah!
16/05/2011 at 15:56 ankh says:
I think the person playing the game in this trailer is uh not very good. Will this have multiplayer? I feel the need to pwn some noobs.
16/05/2011 at 16:01 Worldbeing says:
War may have changed but I haven’t?
So we can expect (the naval equivalent of) cavalry charges into machine gun fire, then?
16/05/2011 at 16:05 Peggle20 says:
“War. War never changes. Or does it? The face of war has changed. Has it? The answer is NO.”
16/05/2011 at 16:16 Teddy Leach says:
The Imperium is dominate.
16/05/2011 at 16:08 El_MUERkO says:
Something about the aesthetic reminds me of Chaos Engine.
16/05/2011 at 16:18 Diziet Sma says:
It’s a bit steampunky.
16/05/2011 at 16:10 McDan says:
War, war never changes… But I don’t. Hence why I’m in black and white.
Looks mad.
16/05/2011 at 16:14 Dana says:
Mmm, Ill wait for Navy Field 2.
16/05/2011 at 16:15 heretic says:
looks great! can’t wait for a demo
16/05/2011 at 16:17 Coins says:
GSB on sea? Want!
16/05/2011 at 16:17 Dominic White says:
Apparently the 360 version isn’t that hot. It looks like a much less detailed and interesting version of Warship Gunner 2 on the PS2, which is a very unassuming looking game, but develops into the most bizarre, spectacular take on naval combat I have EVER seen.
16/05/2011 at 17:48 Chaz says:
I tried the demo on the 360 way back when and it was essentially, if my memory serves me right, just a twin stick shooter, but one with a steam punky nautical theme.
16/05/2011 at 16:19 Diziet Sma says:
Aqua was… OK. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great. Hopefully the PC version will be more Aqua V2.
16/05/2011 at 16:20 Inigo says:
Meanwhile Tim is huddled next to his phone, weeping softly because nobody ever calls him anymore.
You bastard.
16/05/2011 at 16:33 Shadowcat says:
Did you just call Tim a bastard?
Ah well. At least you called him.
16/05/2011 at 16:44 Inigo says:
I’m pretty sure I didn’t.
16/05/2011 at 18:03 Urael says:
I’m pretty sure Shadowcat was joking, Inigo.
17/05/2011 at 03:38 MD says:
I’m pretty.
17/05/2011 at 10:14 Dozer says:
dear Tim Stone. Where’s the Il-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover review? Are you waiting for it to be patched to the point where it can run on a 2011-build computer?
16/05/2011 at 16:26 The Hammer says:
“Relax engineer: war may have changed, but I haven’t.”
AHAHAHAHAHHAA.
Gold dust, right there.
16/05/2011 at 16:29 The Magic says:
The excitable voice acting is very nostalgiac. Puts me in mind of MechCommander
16/05/2011 at 17:10 -Spooky- says:
More Day of Defeat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BRYhg7MKec
16/05/2011 at 16:29 Vexing Vision says:
I hope there’ll be a Let’s Play just featuring all the voice-overs and cutscenes.
I don’t want to play that game, but I want to hear more of these hilarious voice-acting and scripting!
Relaaaaax…
16/05/2011 at 16:48 Teddy Leach says:
KABOOM. SPLOOSH. WHOOSH. BANG. DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA. KABOOM. SPLASH. WHOOSH. KABOOM. SPLOOSH. DAKKA-DAKKA-DAKKA.
16/05/2011 at 17:07 TsunamiWombat says:
Words of wisdom and grace, sir.
Here’s hoping this comes to Steam.
16/05/2011 at 16:59 Yosharian says:
Mentile? Seriously?
16/05/2011 at 17:20 Freud says:
We shall fight them not on the beaches but the water besides it. We shall never surrender.
17/05/2011 at 10:24 Dozer says:
Which if Germany had actually attempted an invasion in 1940 is exactly what would have happened. 80 Royal Navy destroyers in the Home Fleet, baby, along with a handful of battlecruisers and battleships, while the Kriegsmarine’s surface forces pretty much didn’t exist after the invasion of Norway and the aircraft of the day proved themselves ineffective against ships. River barges vs even a handful of destroyers == lots of sunk barges and a failed invasion.
Seems that much of what Churchill said was purely morale-boosting propaganda without much actual substance. The “special relationship” with the United States for example.
16/05/2011 at 18:48 Daiv says:
That sounds exactly like every single voice from Nexus: The Jupiter Incident.
A game for which I mourn the lack of a sequel every day. At noon. For fifteen seconds. Then I have tea and biscuits.
16/05/2011 at 19:51 fenriz says:
but… it’s just childish shoosting, how’s this good, it’s arcadey, it’s old. How can a 30 years old gameplay concept be good today? Just because it’s all pretty in the art dep.?
16/05/2011 at 23:54 Veracity says:
For the same reason Super Meat Boy and Bit.Trip * are indie darlings, surely? 2d shooters still exist. The 360′s over-full of them, if anything, PSN has some, and there’s always a few around on PC. What fifteen-year-old “gameplay concept” should I prefer?
Am I just missing your humour?
17/05/2011 at 07:40 Thants says:
“How can a 30 years old gameplay concept be good today?”
I dunno, people are still playing Chess. Not to mention Go.
17/05/2011 at 10:25 Dozer says:
Games may have changed but this hasn’t.
16/05/2011 at 20:34 Commisar says:
Looks like somebody copied OilRush- google it, and you will see
16/05/2011 at 22:02 MythArcana says:
Great. Another console port that will be sloppy seconds on the PC. It looks like a cool arcade shooter, but don’t expect extended options for the PC platform. I’m getting a bit tired of the reversed target platform syndrome we’ve been seeing ’cause I require more meat to my games than simple button mashing.
16/05/2011 at 23:02 Matzerath says:
Super Bathtub Fun: Pew Pew!
16/05/2011 at 23:11 phlebas says:
I’ll teach them to misjudge my mettle.
16/05/2011 at 23:34 Dances to Podcasts says:
Someone should make a list of all the features of Castle Shotgun, in case we need to meticulously reproduce it for some outlandish reason.
1) Red Tim Stone hotline.
17/05/2011 at 10:30 CMaster says:
2) Moat with radio control Yachts.
17/05/2011 at 01:29 Eightball says:
I was excited until I saw there’s a steal mission…
17/05/2011 at 02:11 MD says:
Hah, I was wondering whether ‘mentile’ was some sort of massive typo, but I had enough faith to google it. Apparently “mentile is the same as mental but can only be used if the situation is mental to the extreme.” It’s probably the last word I can imagine John Walker using in real life (well, I don’t know him personally, so I guess I mean ‘on a podcast’), but for that reason I find it extra funny.
17/05/2011 at 05:56 Neskobar says:
I just don’t know what to believe anymore. Does war ever change or not?
17/05/2011 at 06:38 Dhatz says:
ah, so many failed naval warfate games, just look at Age of Wind which is hell to play, then Cursed Winds is with only one ship and this one too.