Red Ocean is as close to a
Quake 2 mission pack with an enhanced graphics
engine as you are going to get in 2007. I liken
it to a mission pack because that's really all
this game is, or feels like. It's seven levels
long, so Red Ocean will only take about five
hours. I played through the entire game in a
single sitting.
The levels are basically corridors
and rooms of various sizes, all of which looks
pretty similar. There's no outdoors, no non-linear
exploration, no set-pieces. It's just cookie
cutter old skool game design from the late 90's.
It's hard to tell what the engine is capable
of, because the levels are so short and cramped.
There's a few expected post-processing effects
such as blurring and the lighting is okay, but
nothing that special that doesn't exist in any
other top shooter for the few years before Red
Ocean's 2007 release.
The gameplay is also very old
skool with similar enemies just with different
guns. There are some positives about old skool
though - quicksaving for one, but you also get
to carry and use a full arsenal of weapons.
I used every single weapon in the game quite
often, and they're all fairly fun to use. Sure
they have their problems; they're quite slow
and even the machine guns fire rounds too slow,
almost as if they're projectile weapons. But
I was still quite satisfied to get to use all
the weapons, instead of so many modern games
limiting you to carrying a couple of weapons
at a time - which of course you only ever carry
the most useful ones. And the shotgun in Red
Ocean is actually really fun to use!
The enemy A.I. is thick as
shit. Half-Life had better A.I. than this ten
years ago. But the enemy fire can do some damage
quite quickly, so the game is challenging at
times. The problem with the difficulty progression
is that the first level is probably the hardest
of all when you've only got the useless handgun.
Once you have a full range of weapons halfway
through the game things start to get a little
easier.
One thing I really have to
criticise is that selling point of this game;
namely the water, is non-existant. There's maybe
two sections in the entire game where you go
underwater, which only last for thirty seconds.
That's it. The rest of the game is completely
dry. The artists and designers couldn't even
design some underwater ocean views in this supposedly
underwater military complex. At least they could
have thrown in a window with an underwater skybox
behind it! As it is, the base could be in the
Nevada desert or anywhere on earth. It would
still be the same ugly corridor crawler.
Red Ocean is not really a game
you'd expect to pay money for in 2007. It's
only mission pack length and the gameplay and
level design belongs in the 90's and early 2000's.
Having said that, I quite enjoy going back and
playing the old custom missions for Quake II,
and this is basically what Red Ocean is; just
with a slightly better engine and no Strogg.
If you can track down a free version online
(it's not hard with a google search), it's only
a 215mb download (cut scenes not included though)
so give it a shot if your bored and with an
open mind you might actually enjoy it. I did!
