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- Nordic Games Publishing
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- Nordic Games Publishing
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- Nordic Games Publishing
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- Nordic Games Publishing
Aquanox Deep Descent
Released On: Oct 16, 2020
65
7.5
Where to Buy
Where to Buy
All Platforms
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 21 Critic Reviews
65
24% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
67% Mixed
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
10% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 21 Critic Reviews
65
24% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
67% Mixed
14 Reviews
14 Reviews
10% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Submarines, Bionts, Dystopia and shooty shoots, what’s not to love? Buy this, slap on your cowboy hat, and stick some Linda Ronstadt on as you drive “every kind of rig that’s ever been made” in the deep blue.
Duking it out underwater is a lot of fun in this game. The visuals are well-done, it plays well, and the story is quite strong too. Very much worth a look for anyone intrigued by its premise.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 30 User Ratings
7.5
63% Positive
19 Ratings
19 Ratings
10% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
27% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 30 User Ratings
7.5
63% Positive
19 Ratings
19 Ratings
10% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
27% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
Great game, unusal as the only submarine shooter. I loved the atmosphere and the story telling. Even though "old school" graphics in story telling, the game graphics are really nice with the Unreal 3 engine.
Loved the pace, sometimes moody and slow, then very quickly dangerous.
Great job making this from a Kickstarter project without a big budget. It is good fun, please make the next one longer!
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PC
I'm sure people reading reviews can get confusing, so here's my take. I'm giving this a top score because I love it. And I'm sure some will hate it. It's clearly not trying to be everyones favorite and that's a good thing imo.
I'm neither a super huge fan of the old games, nor am I going to compare this game to them. People wanting to play a compare game will either be happy or disappointed because we all remember the old games differently.
It's a good game and a great move for the genre forward. I love the vibe, the style of shooting and in general how the game feels for me. I guess the story is not important to me and might not be good for some, and for me that doesn't play a major role. I love the combat and how it pumps me to be good at it. That's probably the main thing that wins in this case.
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PC
As resurrections of near-20-year-old franchises go, Aquanox Deep Descent is a very solid effort that, with a few tweaks and a bit more polish, could potentially be special. Here’s hoping that THQ Nordic gives Digital Arrow the opportunity to make another one.
As a first project for Digital Arrow, Aquanox Deep Descent can be considered a good game, even though there are lots of issues regarding its combat and control system.
Aquanox Deep Descent isn’t a bad game. There are just plenty of opportunities for improvement. Piloting the ship throughout Aqua’s underwater world feels great. Honestly, I kind of wish the game had featured more of an open-world to explore, especially with the amount of salvaging and looting you perform throughout the campaign anyways. But that’s not the case, leaving little reason for me to dive back in after playing the game once through. Hopefully, a more robust online community will allow the game to thrive with its multiplayer component, but as it stands, Aquanox Deep Descent will likely be most enjoyed by hungry mech-genre fans who are looking for another ship to pilot. Just don’t forget to bring a towel.
AquaNox: Deep Descent is by no means a bad game, nor is it a particularly good one. It is instead exceedingly average, something for people like myself who carry fond memories of vaporizing intergalactic cat people to while away an hour or so at a time over a few weeks. If you don’t happen to fit inside this very particular demographic, then I strongly doubt AquaNox: Deep Descent is the best place to start within the genre.
Aquanox Deep Descent isn't a bad game - it's just not that great, either. Earlier this year, when THQ Nordic released Spongebob Squarepants: Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated, the game was well-received because players knew what to expect. In that right, THQ Nordic had succeeded in reviving a long-forgotten cult classic title. With Aquanox Deep Descent, THQ Nordic has attempted to resurrect an entire franchise with a brand new title, but the total package feels outdated and fails to stay afloat in today's diverse sea of video games.
I have never played the original Aquanox or the Archimedean Dynasty games so I can look at the game without nostalgia tinting my glasses pink. If what you're after is some fun shoot-em up arcade action with a beautiful underwater aesthetic and a catchy soundtrack then I believe this will fit right up your alley.
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PC
I've been following this game since the Kickstarter. Can't say I've played the last two titles as religiously as everyone else but it lived up to my expectations and I'm overall fairly pleased. The fps part of the game is refined to the max and the UI tells me everything I need. The atmosphere of the levels is on point, it easily makes me feel claustrophobic and conveys the feeling of being in an underwater sub perfectly. Overall; I don't have any gripes with the game, its a fun experience worth every penny.
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PC
[Aquanox Deep Descent: Jacques-Yves Cousteau simulator. And, surprisingly, real Jacques-Yves Cousteau is more fascinating]
Pain. That is the only feeling I experienced while playing this game. Every aspect of Aquanox is excruciatingly painful, from gameplay, especially combat-wise, to plot. In fact, I have not found a single feature that this game could be commended for.
First, game mechanics. To better understand what this game feels like, try to imagine an incredibly boring and, at the same time, unreasonably difficult side mission in an otherwise good game. Like searching for minerals in Mako-truck in Mass Effect 1. Now, imagine that someone played this side mission and said to themselves: “Wow! That is so perfectly useless and anticlimactic! I should make a whole game out of it!” As a result, Aquanox Deep Descent was born.
Nominally, the game positions itself as a shooter but it is anything but. “Doom” series are exemplar shooters: apart from the fact that there is fire everywhere, they are fast and captivating. On the other hand, watery Aquanox is a complete opposite of those: the game is slow and depressing. In addition to lame combat-regime, the submarine interface is extremely inconvenient. I mean, for real deep-sea explorers such an interface might be perfect. However, for a player it is extremely annoying to do a 360-turn every time they need to find the objective or strain their eyes to discern the remaining level of oxygen.
Then, Aquanox has a plot. Or, well, it is said that the game has a plot. In fact, the story is a combination of endless loose ends that, even if they are tied up in the end, do not spur the player to beat the game. For example, the surface of the Earth was destroyed. How? Why? Who is responsible? What is more, while at the very beginning of the game, I was interested in such questions; 5 hours into the game the only problem that bothered me was “how do I not die of boredom?”.
Besides, the main characters of the game are as stale as the plot. First, there are four of them. Having multiple protagonists is not a bad idea of itself (remember “Heavy Rain”), but in that case, they need to be equally well-developed. Conversely, in Aquanox, the main characters are not interesting at all. I did not know their past but I cannot say I cared about their future. Plus, the dialogues in the game are so pompous, pretentious and, at the same time, mostly meaningless that I do not want the characters to speak ever again. Like, a person asks the ship captain (sic!) if the fauna is dangerous, but the latter answers with a pathetically meaningful intonation: “It is different from what you experienced before. You will see…” I am off to a dangerous mission, you drama queen! I need an appropriate brief!
To recap, painful gameplay and the atmosphere of pompous boredom are major flaws of Aquanox Deep Descent. There are numerous smaller shortcomings but the ones mentioned are already enough for me to advise not to play this game. After a 5-hours walkthrough, I could not force myself to go further.
3 out of 10
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PC
This is an action game with terrible combat and poor writing. Okay for a 2010 independent title, but not a 2020 game with a famous name attached.
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PC
Summary Aquanox Deep Descent is a first person underwater vehicle shooter, in which players control a variety of customizable ships to engage in fierce battles in the dystopian deep sea world of Aqua. In the near future the Earth's surface has become uninhabitable. What remains of humankind lives in former mining and research stations, deep belo...
Rated T
for Teen
Platforms:
- PC
- PlayStation 4
- Xbox One
Initial Release Date: Oct 16, 2020
Developer:
- Digital Arrow
Publisher: Nordic Games Publishing
Genres:
