Not a Soul Alive Remembers AquaNox
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ก.ค. 2024
- A deep dive into the obscure German aquatic space sim AquaNox.
0:00 Intro
2:02 Lore Background
4:43 Characters
17:04 Factions
18:49 Main Story
21:17 Music and Sound
23:49 Gameplay
27:43 Technical Issues
30:25 Prequel
31:18 Sequels
34:25 Conclusion
Note: Apparently I was wrong on the definition of a six degrees of freedom game so AquaNox may not in fact be one. My apologies on the oversight. - เกม
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Fun fact, due to it high scalability it was used as one of PC benchmarks for a few years until Far Cry came out.
There's not a day that goes by that I don't miss this universe. I keep daydreaming about an open world game set in Aqua... But like a good one...
To help hold you over until someone has the balls to do it I recommend the game Rebel Galaxy it's basically Aquanox but in Space which actually leads to playing almost identically as well just don't bother with Rebel Galaxy Outlaws it's a terrible watered sequel that removes more than half of the features of the first game
@@NotThatJonesShow Appreciate the recommendation, I saw it and thought it looked like Wing Commander Privateer, so it's been on my radar, I just never got around to pulling the trigger on it. :)
When I was a young german boy, the first game of the francise was "Schleichfahrt" aka "Archimedian Dynasty", which creates the whole world of Aqua, with pre-rendert stills (asthonishing for a DOS Game), sim-style submarine combat (you REALLY NEED A JOYSTICK and it's a blast) :) Aquanox 1 was a little step back from the presentation going to a more arcade style of gameplay and Aquanox 2 tried to get back to the roots. I wish there would be a modern continuation of this underwater cyberpunk setting.
EVE Online style Aquanox... Now thats something i would kill to see!
Jeebus chrysler, I felt like this game was a fever dream and here is youtube, doing its magic again. Thank you, good person.
Happy to help ensure it's not forgotten!
I still play AquaNox and AquaNox 2 to this day and they support my 3840x2160. And it looks amazing.
Play my retrofit mod. It adds HQ textures and new gameplay.
This was one of the first games I ever played on my own PC, I thought the it was so cool. Only years later did I realize it was so niche.
I have no idea why I got the kick to play this game again 20 years later but I did not expect a video like this to even exist.
Thanks for the memberberries and I can assure you the original German VO is just as nuts as the English dub but 11 year old me did not care back in 2001 ;)
Must give this a try. Darkstar one was another great German made game I enjoyed.
Having just watched your recent video because it got recommendet to me and then finding that you had one on AquaNox *hearteyes* I have to admit though, that I grew up with aquanox 2 as I got that as a kid from some games magazine cd I believe. And I have to say, that I loved the story SO much back then. Hell, I have no idea how old or rather young I was back then but following the story, first Angelina and later May Ling must have been my first (game) crushes ever xD just now seeing the avatar pics again, teenage me inside calls with these strange fuzzy feelings xD
"Anything I can't SMOOOKEEE, SWALLLLOOW or INJEEEEECT is a WAAAASTE of my TIIIME" -- Atahualpa Jones
I love these games, the world they take part is great and so well crafted, Schleichfahrt (not Schei* fahrt, Schei* would be sh*t actually, but the sch and especially the ch is difficult for non-native speakers) Aquanox and Aquanox 2 have such a high level of great world building in a rare and intriguing scenario and while the new Deep Descent doesn't has the depth in that case they improved on the gameplay a lot, which is also a good thing. These games should have been more popular, if you ask me, but the familiar space shooters aren't either, that's both a shame. Thanks for the review, maybe it helps for a bit late popularity.
To answer your question from 17:00...no, it doesn't. It's not a German word and doesn't exist here in Germany, I've only heard it in Aquanox. Since they're using a lot of slang and overall words from different places, like Sobinoso Chaka, I always figured there are some roots somewhere.
I've played both games in the original German as well as the English version and in Aquanox the German voice actors did a much better job and in Aquanox 2 they've chosen really good and fitting voice actors but the quality of the English version also improved, so the difference wasn't that big althouth still better than part one.
They probably should have put more money into the international version, since this reaches more people and a lot of German players would choose the English version as well, it wouldn't have effected the ratings here, since they would have counted in the, in this case, good English version.
But I think they were aware this underwater subgenre is kind of a German thing for whatever reason, I mean studios here are called Deck13, Fishlabs, Rockfish, Piranha Bytes, we have about two meters of coast but for some reason we love the ocean, the book The Swarm is from a German author and the numbers also show this wasn't a bit hit outside of Germany and Austria although having good overall ratings and graphics way ahead of it's time, back then this was a huge selling point, much more than nowadays, at least it feels that way.
Just fyi, this isn't a 6DOF game, this stands for degrees of freedom and not many games have those, not even many space shooters. You have only five of them in the Aquanox games since you can't roll and technically pitching 360° isn't possible either, so you have four. Not even Forsaken has all, Freelancer has even less, you have to play the Descent games or the spiritual sequel Overload to have them all. Although I think it's ok the way it is for the underwater scenario and also the flying bikes scenario of Forsaken, in space it's different and welcome to have them all for a change...
that's not what 6 degrees of freedom means. 3 dimensions of linear movement, 3 axes of rotation.
Well shoot, guess I've always always been wrong about that definition, serves me right for not confirming fully.
Aquanox 1 and 2 are one of my favorite games of all time and this series is just underrated. The writing and character dialogues ontop of the gameplay are just great. It's sad that the English version of Aquanox 2 is just terrible in terms of voice acting and wirting as you remarked. In the German version voices and dialogues are so much better, and Atahualpa Jones does thankfully sound like himself in German. Thanks for covering this series, great video!
I literally hadn't heard of this before! If I had to pick what this game was inspired by, I would say G-Police, even though popular 6DOF games already appeared 2 years earlier.
-big cities in terraforming domes on mars vs big cities underwater
-identical minimap
-identical failstate/winstate camera pan
-very similar missions
Aquanox knocks it out of the park with character drama though, whereas GP its all about faceless corporations.
I recommend both GP1 and 2 if you haven't played them yet sardonic.
May have to try those someday, thanks!
Loved it - and 2 and 3 and 4 in VR
Great video for an underrated game!
Of course I remember and play Aquanix. No other game managed to create the same atmosphere
I got the Anachronox reference^^ If it makes you feel good.
Played it not too long ago.
What a great dystopian sci.fi
Just found it on GOG's summer sale, looks damn interesting
*peers at the title of the video, checks his pulse* Well... golly gee... I never realised I was dead... I mean.. i MUST be dead according to this video since i DO remember that gem of a game verry clearly :P
The name and portrait for Lt. Boston Harper really didn't prepare me for hist character, I was expecting him to be more like Anderson from Mass Effect.
Ha, right?
I literally just finished replaying Aquanox 2: Revelation from one of the original CDs that I still own from when I was a kid. I never got to play the original when I was young, but 2 has a special place in heart. It helps that I can play the game with its original German dialogue, since I'm German myself. I can assure you, the original voice acting is LEAGUES better than the English translation.
There's not really a game series that uses an underwater setting quite like Aquanox, at least not to my knowledge. For how short-lived the series was, the world felt really fleshed out. A damn shame that the recent Deep Descent wasn't good enough to pull some interest in the series, meaning it's likely the last we'll ever see of Aqua.
PS: No, Brewmeister's catchphrase does not make more sense in German.
I just got Aquanox 1 and 2 today for super cheap. I'm a couple hours in to the first game and it's pretty cool. A bit simple so far but I like it. It runs perfect in 4K.
I remember Aquanox, and the sequel! Very odd games.
After reading the wikipedia page, I may just remember Aquanox 2. Time is strange.
HA jokes on you!i played this and aquanox two some years ago!
That list! I remember this genre, I played the last one! They promised a fucking MMO!!! AN MMO!!! I pre-paid for it, a miner wars 2081 mmo.. it was never gonna happen but I was a dumb kid.
I bought this shit at a Big Lots for like $5 a billion years ago. Visually it blew my mind that my computer could even play this despite it even being old at the time. It just looked so nice. Underwater Descent. Hell yeah.
I remember having a copy of aquanox when i was younger and just not understanding wtf was going on in it
Oh, he even mentions the prequel! Of course he calls it "schei*e fahrt", being American. Thanks a lot buddy, I was looking forward to this. :-(
I played this game as a kid and enjoyed the hell out of it and it's sequel and then I spent years trying to find a game similar to it and just couldn't ever find one until one day I stumbled across Rebel Galaxy and by god it's the same game but in space and it's amazing shame the sequel to rebel Galaxy sucks though
Agreed, I definitely steered clear of the rebel galaxy sequel, which is a shame because it looked like they were trying to do the freelancer thing. Fortunately Everspace 2 did the freelancer thing exceptionally well later on
@@SardonicSays still haven't gotten around to Everspace 2 it's been sitting on my wishlist forever now but I'm focused on finally clearing that backlog out
Oh, I absolutely remember this gem of a game, and also it’s glorious predecessor and successor. I can’t even remember how often I‘ve finished the entire series. Yes, the dialogues were very cheesy at times (I‘m looking at you AquaNox 2)but the gameplay and even the graphics were impressive at that time.
It‘s also one of the few games with great native voice acting (I‘m a German native and let me tell you, some of the synchros we get nowadays are TERRIBLE).
Too bad that Deep Descent was such a horrible game.
When next video?
Working on a big one, it may be December.
i do love aquanox, but only the first one. aquanox 2 and aquanox deep descent were just straight up bad games. ESPECIALLY deep descent was a bad one. felt unfinished and if you were alone, best thing to do was to try and snipe your enemies from a long distance.
but the first aquanox was good and had so much potential for a great series or even some sort of pvp game with clan/guild structures for group events and such. to bad it never went that way
This is the only good simulator game.
This was one of the most disappointing experiences I had recently while playing games. I remember this from childhood for the interesting underwater setting but never got to play it until now. The conversations are painful to listen to, terrible voice acting, little informational value, most is just crap talking. Main character very unappealing smartass who's got a comment for everything with a jerkass voice. You understand maybe 1/4 of the conversations due to the game's fascination with scifi and made up terminology. Story difficult to follow, in the heat of the battle NPCs sometimes start giving objectives in a very lengthy way you really cannot focus on when there are turrets and ships targeting you at the same time. In one of the earlier missions you're supposed to turn off the engine to sneak past turrets. The game doesn't bother to tell you how to do it, it's not in the Options either. Only Google search reveals you are apparently supposed to double tap 's'. What a comedy show.