Parents' Guide to Aquanox Deep Descent

While people tend to look to the stars as the great unknown, it's easy to forget that more than eighty percent of Earth's oceans still remain completely unexplored. Aquanox Deep Descent turns this vast frontier into humanity's final refuge and one massive battleground. At least, that's how it's presented in the story. The reality of the gameplay is a lot more claustrophobic. Instead of moving around through huge open areas of the sea floor, most of the maps are little more than an inexplicable network of underwater tunnels with the occasional open pocket of space to house bases or stage larger enemy encounters. For a game that touts its 360-degrees of maneuverability, the world seems even more cramped than the cockpit of your submersible. In fact, you're likely to take just as much damage bouncing off tunnel walls as you are enemy attacks.

Speaking of enemy attacks, Aquanox Deep Descent can't ever quite seem to decide just how much action it wants to give to players. There will be extended periods of seeming isolation as players explore the waterways, only for a swarm of enemy subs to suddenly surround and attack from literally every direction. It makes the Story mode feel like just a series of ambushes. If players have a couple of friends along for co-op play, it's not quite as bad, as teammates can cover each others' backs. In fact, multiplayer as a whole makes for an improved experience. In Deathmatches, the mix of narrow tunnels and open pockets makes for a more harrowing and exciting feeling, as players don't know what might be waiting just around the corner. There's still a lot of emptiness, but it's a lot more manageable.