In the future, the surface has been devastated by a gigantic meteor. A few lucky survivors managed to start underwater empires. The White Sharks are bent on world domination; the Black Octopi are bent on eco-terrorism of a sort. Needless to say, the two don?t get along terribly well. And then there are the aliens that seem to have arrived in the meteor itself -- the Silicons. Uh oh. All hell breaks loose underwater, and it?s your job to make sure that your side stays on top.
The demo that I previewed is primarily multiplayer, although you can try a few single-player missions as well. The Black Octopi and the White Sharks are different enough without being completely unique, sort of like the GDI and NOD in the first Command & Conquer. The Silicons, on the other hand, are wholly bizarre, using an entirely different resource base and methods of building.
There are your normal resource-gathering necessities -- oxygen, metal, and Corium, in this game?s case. The Silicons need other resources, but since you really can?t play as them in the demo, I?m not sure how different it is. You can also build devices that extract gold from the water to pay for research. The research or tech tree is one of the most impressive things about Submarine Titans -- it is bloody HUGE. I spent a good hour or two going through the tech tree, and I still hadn?t hit on everything you can do. Amazing stuff. Some of the techs are not as useful as others, of course, but none seemed thrown in ?just because.?
As for the ships themselves, they are all properly differentiated. You?ve got your heavy attack ships, your scouters, and even an occasional dolphin or two. You can select mass contingents of them and have them attack for you, or you can have them patrol your base. Overall, the controlling of the game is quite simple and intuitive. One of the things that Submarine Titans does differently from any other strategy game that I know of (besides perhaps the X-COM series) is have multiple ?depth? levels. Ships can maneuver on different levels, and to have a truly effective mine field, you must cover all of the levels possible. You can hide under rock shelves, come swooping down from above, and generally cause mayhem. There?s a lot going on in the game, and at first glance you may be overwhelmed with micromanagement. Luckily, you don?t have to be. Submarine Titans features A.I. helpers which can do the resource collection for you or even run the entire show and let you sit back and watch, just tinkering with things you think could be done better. I can?t explain just how cool this feature is because I never had to worry about resource management -- the computer did it for me. This lets you get in as deep as you like. You can fiddle with every little thing in your world under the sea, or you can let the A.I. do it for you. Anything you build or click on personally loses A.I. control, but you can toggle the A.I. off and then back on to start it back up and have it ?re-recognize? your ?tainted? units. I love it.
Multiplayer is facilitated by supporting FSGS, which lets you play against people from all around the world. And it?s free and criminally easy to set up. Woo!
