Undertow

Fight to survive in a world covered by oceans

Release: November 21, 2007 (Xbox 360)

By Ian Coppock

Today's review has to do with the notion of supporting your local economy. Shopping at everything from farmer's markets to mom-and-pop stores helps keep money in the community and results in a better combined economy overall. I say these things because today's game comes from an independent studio near Salt Lake City, Utah, where I live: ChAIR Entertainment. SLC has a growing independent developers' community whose products I hope deserve support. Is Undertow worthy of this prestige? Let's see.

The Story

With Undertow, ChAIR envisioned a world in which all continents have been flooded, and the planet reduced to a worldwide ocean. Years before the events of the game, a mysterious race of aliens called the Elect arrived to Earth and melted the polar ice caps. The resultant flood killed most of the human population.

Though there were few humans left, groups of them banded together to develop aquatic technology. The game focuses on Jason Rake, a pirate-turned-mercenary. Rake is captured by the British during a daring raid over the submerged ruins of London, and is pressed into service with the Iron Marines, an elite group of divers. In exchange, he'll be allowed to live.

I guess that's it for the phrase "a spot of tea out by Big Ben."

Rake begrudgingly begins working for his former enemies, attacking pirates and defending British interests in the Atlantic. After a few missions, matters get turned on their head when his divers are duped into attacking another nation's base.

The assault sparks the attention of other factions, and Jason is soon at the heart of a conflict between not just two, but four, groups all fighting for control of the ocean.

When Rake attacks what he thinks are pirates, the other faction responds with a declaration of war, plunging the sea into chaos.

The game's factions are diverse and cool-looking, but when you put all of them together, the story sounds a bit ridiculous. After the human group, the second faction is led by none other than Jules Verne's Captain Nemo. In Undertow's continuity, Nemo survived the events of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and founded a massive underwater metropolis for other humane expatriates. Nemo is kept alive by... actually, it never really says how Nemo is still alive after about 300 years. Plot hole.

Captain Nemo is one of the game's main characters, but it's never explained how he's still alive. That's Undertow's rendition of the Nautilus in the background. The Nemo-ites were my favorite faction because of their cool steampunk submarines.

The game's third faction is the Atlanteans, who are presented in Undertow as half-human, half-fish immortals with magical powers. The Atlanteans see the alien attack as their chance to restore their rule over humanity, and are led by the bloodthirsty Helena in this endeavor.

Atlanteans now? Okay, I'm stumbling a bit, Undertow, but I'm trying to follow you.

The fourth faction are the aliens who attacked Earth, the Elect, who are presented as the common enemy of the other three factions. Undertow's story is pretty weak, overall. There's no character development, we never see the faces behind all those diving masks, and though the dialogue is reasonably well-written, the Atlantean stuff is riddled with all sorts of cliches.

Undertow plays like Star Wars: Battlefront II were it a sidescroller. Players pick one of four soldier classes and zoom around submerged maps, picking off enemies until the opposing faction's army counter runs down to 0. Players must also capture spawning points for their units. Whoever runs out of units first loses the match. Undertow's single-player campaign isn't really a narrative so much as a bunch of multiplayer maps against the computer, sprinkled with very quick cutscenes.

Players must side-scroll around the map, taking out enemy subs and divers.

Undertow is reasonably fun once you get the hang of it, but it's extremely repetitive and grind-heavy. I'd kill 200 enemy units in one match, take a 5-second cutscene break, and then sigh as I faced off against another batch of baddies, just in a different map. 

Also, this game has a vicious learning curve. The normal difficulty is soul-crushingly difficult. I couldn't even get past the first level on anything higher than Easy difficulty. I think this game was aimed at quick-fingered Call of Duty maniacs, because I noticed similar patterns of suckage between my performance in Undertow and my Call of Duty matches.

Sloth-like reflexes have no place in the future. If the earth floods, I'm screwed.

Undertow's AI is also pretty predictable. Once I caught onto its nuances, I could usually beat maps with a single tactic. The most effective one I used was taking control of a sub, driving it to a place near the surface, and just pooping endless volleys of missiles onto enemy installations.

Undertow isn't bad so much as mediocre. Repetitive gameplay, super-weak story, high difficulty and AI predictability all combine to make a super-streamlined but simplistic game.

The Artwork

Undertow's graphics are... well they're not terrible, but they're not great, either. I'll give ChAIR a bit of a break because indie studios can't afford Crysis-level graphics engines, but I was still expecting better than this, even for a game released in 2007.

Undertow's graphics were sub-average. The character animations were shaky, and the lack of facial animations was disguised by everyone always wearing a frickin' mask.

 Undertow's underwater environments are beautifully designed. A lot more detail was put into the maps and the environments you visit than the character models. Jason Rake and his friends visit forests of giant kelp, submerged ruins, shipwrecks, buttes, and other formations in the campaign. I thought these were the most impressive feature of the game.

Undertow's environments are cool enough to explore, if you can get past the chaos that is the campaign.

I can't remember any of Undertow's music, which means that it either had none or the music isn't worthy of mentioning. The voice acting and other sound effects weren't anything special. I didn't really think positively or negatively of them, they were just kind of... there.

Should I get it?

Meh. I was hoping to find a better locally-made game, and they definitely are out there, like Shadow Complex and the Infinity Blade series. I wish that everything that came out of my general living space was awesome, but, like with everywhere else that makes games, I've got to cover the good and bad, and what the community can do to make things better. Undertow is perfectly playable, but unless you're into really repetitive, grinding, chaotic battles, I'm not sure I'd bother. $10 on Xbox LIVE.

I've received a request to review the craziest, most insane game I've ever played. It has some surprising redeeming qualities and I had a lot of fun with it, but still, these thoughts can't help but enter my head when I'm battling an angel the size of the moon.