Sub Culture and Deep Fighter
Hello all,
I don't really have any news of a new upcoming PC or console game I am really looking forwards too so instead I am opening a topic about a favorite old game of mine and its sequel.
I wouldn't be surprised if Harrison knew this game. Subculture is kind of like Elite but then underwater with more arcade like game play, difference between other sub games is the setting.
Instead of playing a human the player is a member of a species that resembles humans but on a far smaller scale, as a result the already mysterious underwater world becomes even more bigger, and the animel and plant life is a lot larger now.
The game is rather basic when it comes to trading, like the old Elite games its still just you and your single sub travelling between the various colonies, you can't set up factories and hire/buy other ships and crews like in the X series.
Background of the game is the conflict between the Procha and the Bohine, two underwater cultures who are competing for the available resources such as fish and ore for their oxygen and power manufacturing plants.
The other two parties in the game are the Brotherhood, a mysterious religious group who controls a fast refinement factory on which both the Procha and the Bohine rely, and the Pirates who only take and don't give.
The fifth faction could be considered Aquatraz, a large underwater prison but it neither sells nor buys and is controlled by the Bohine.
During the game the player can participate in the war between the two factions and even end the conflict later on. After this the player becomes a pirate hunter who must take on the increasingly aggressive pirates who wish to become the new super power of the ocean.
By the time I got the game it wasn't that technical impressive anymore but I still found it nice looking. The game has a day and night schedule although this doesn't influence the gameplay, but once it gets dark you really can't see anything anymore and become more careful as you move around.
The game has a pretty big region for you to explore but after a while you have seen most of it if you focus the first hour to explore.
There are also a series of caverns for the player to explore but there isn't much interesting things to find there outside the missions, no hidden treasures, mining colonies or strange monsters.
I found that a little disappoining, a whole network of caverns under the sea bottom filled with all kinds of creatures and secrets would have been great.
Enemies consist of enemy submarines of various types but during the game you will also have to face sea mutants such as mutant jellyfish or a mutated eel, and later on several walker type robots who are far stronger than a regular enemy.
Deep Fighter is a sort of sequel to the game which appeared both on the PC and the Dreamcast. However only small references are made to Sub Culture so I think it is save to say that it exists within another universe.
Unlike the first game which only had a few movies and spoken dialogue, this game has some FMV segments but as is usual in most of these cases the acting was rather questionable and I have never heard of the actors before.
In Deep Fighter you are a pilot working for the defence force of a underwater colony. The colony has been under threat for some time now by geological instability which have forced its leaders to make preperations for an evacuation.
The colony is also threatened by various mutant wildlife and the Shadowkin, a group of breakaway colonists who have turned pirate and have started to experiment on themselves.
The player must undertake a couple of missions critical for the construction of a large evacuation ship such as fighting various enemies and creatures and locating materials and artefacts of importance.
Unlike Sub Culture the region is a lot larger this time but you don't have much time exploring these as you play the game, there is a conventional sea bottom where the colony is located as well as several mining platforms, the Abyss; a large underwater cavern you can only explore later with special modified submarines, the rain forrest, and later an ancient underwater city that was apparently built by the colonists ancestors.
Were you in Sub Culture could only pilot one kind of submarine, in Deep Fighter you can pilot five different ones, with the exception of two most of these submarines have different capabilities.
One submarine is equipped with a magnetic grapple arm and carries a ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle) while another submarine is designed for combat and speed.
Another thing that also makes these subs differ is their ability to cope with pressure, the deeper you go the more pressure increases, and if you are no careful your sub can end up being crushed.
As expected the last and more powerful sub is the only one that can go to the bottom of the Abyss.
While in general the game plays pretty much like its predecessor, once in a while the gameplay changes so that you can only move up down and left and right but not forwards and backwards.
This is during the boss segments which the game has several off, and to be honest, these aren't always fun.
The new regions to explore are fun and quite some work has been spend on those, rainforest river is alive with all kinds of animals and in the Abyss you will find a sunken submarine made by us surface humans later.
As the pilot still plays a human like creature that is far smaller than us the submarine is very large in comparison.
Unfortunate I have to say the game went somewhat downhill as it progressed, I didn't always like the boss sequences. In the end itself its revealed that you and the colonists are actually the decendants of aliens and that the large colony ship is actually a space ship.
You will also have to fight an alien enemy that somewhat resembles a cancerous growth.
Deep Fighter was okay but not as fun as Sub Culture.
