Aquanox Deep Descent

 PC
User Score
7.7

Generally favorable reviews- based on 28 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 19 out of 28
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 28
  3. Negative: 7 out of 28

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  1. Kirill_Klimov
    Oct 30, 2020
    3
    [Aquanox Deep Descent: Jacques-Yves Cousteau simulator. And, surprisingly, real Jacques-Yves Cousteau is more fascinating]

    Pain. That is the only feeling I experienced while playing this game. Every aspect of Aquanox is excruciatingly painful, from gameplay, especially combat-wise, to plot. In fact, I have not found a single feature that this game could be commended for. First, game    [Aquanox Deep Descent: Jacques-Yves Cousteau simulator. And, surprisingly, real Jacques-Yves Cousteau is more fascinating]

    Pain. That is the only feeling I experienced while playing this game. Every aspect of Aquanox is excruciatingly painful, from gameplay, especially combat-wise, to plot. In fact, I have not found a single feature that this game could be commended for.

    First, game mechanics. To better understand what this game feels like, try to imagine an incredibly boring and, at the same time, unreasonably difficult side mission in an otherwise good game. Like searching for minerals in Mako-truck in Mass Effect 1. Now, imagine that someone played this side mission and said to themselves: “Wow! That is so perfectly useless and anticlimactic! I should make a whole game out of it!” As a result, Aquanox Deep Descent was born.

    Nominally, the game positions itself as a shooter but it is anything but. “Doom” series are exemplar shooters: apart from the fact that there is fire everywhere, they are fast and captivating. On the other hand, watery Aquanox is a complete opposite of those: the game is slow and depressing. In addition to lame combat-regime, the submarine interface is extremely inconvenient. I mean, for real deep-sea explorers such an interface might be perfect. However, for a player it is extremely annoying to do a 360-turn every time they need to find the objective or strain their eyes to discern the remaining level of oxygen.

    Then, Aquanox has a plot. Or, well, it is said that the game has a plot. In fact, the story is a combination of endless loose ends that, even if they are tied up in the end, do not spur the player to beat the game. For example, the surface of the Earth was destroyed. How? Why? Who is responsible? What is more, while at the very beginning of the game, I was interested in such questions; 5 hours into the game the only problem that bothered me was “how do I not die of boredom?”.

    Besides, the main characters of the game are as stale as the plot. First, there are four of them. Having multiple protagonists is not a bad idea of itself (remember “Heavy Rain”), but in that case, they need to be equally well-developed. Conversely, in Aquanox, the main characters are not interesting at all. I did not know their past but I cannot say I cared about their future. Plus, the dialogues in the game are so pompous, pretentious and, at the same time, mostly meaningless that I do not want the characters to speak ever again. Like, a person asks the ship captain (sic!) if the fauna is dangerous, but the latter answers with a pathetically meaningful intonation: “It is different from what you experienced before. You will see…” I am off to a dangerous mission, you drama queen! I need an appropriate brief!

    To recap, painful gameplay and the atmosphere of pompous boredom are major flaws of Aquanox Deep Descent. There are numerous smaller shortcomings but the ones mentioned are already enough for me to advise not to play this game. After a 5-hours walkthrough, I could not force myself to go further.

    3 out of 10    … Expand
  2. JonnysBeard
    Oct 18, 2020
    3
    This is an action game with terrible combat and poor writing. Okay for a 2010 independent title, but not a 2020 game with a famous name attached.

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
65

Mixed or average reviews - based on 21 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 21
  2. Mixed: 14 out of 21
  3. Negative: 2 out of 21
  1. Cubed3
    May 6, 2022
    50
    Aquanox Deep Descent is the "perfect" mediocre game. It does nothing bad, but nothing that good either. From the weak story, characters, and atmosphere, to the almost uninvolving gunfights, and unimaginative quests, this fails at being a big recommendation - especially to fans of the series. Oh, sure it has no competitors in the 'First-person Subaquatic Dystopian RPG' genre, but this doesn't mean it gets a free pass.
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  2. Game World Navigator Magazine
    Feb 17, 2021
    48
    Deep Descent ended up hitting the rock bottom. Instead of breathtaking underwater adventures we’ve got a very basic shooter. [Issue#251, p.64]
  3. GameGrin
    Feb 8, 2021
    80
    Submarines, Bionts, Dystopia and shooty shoots, what’s not to love? Buy this, slap on your cowboy hat, and stick some Linda Ronstadt on as you drive “every kind of rig that’s ever been made” in the deep blue.
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