Ever since WarCraft 2, most real-time strategy games featured air, land, and sea units. Submarine Titans may very well be the first RTS to contain only marine units. Submarine units, that is. The game, developed by Ellipse Studios, will allow players to assume the role of three different races as they battle it out in the oceans of post-apocalyptic earth.
The maps in Submarine Titans have multiple levels of depth and the battles fully take advantage of this fact. If an enemy shoots a torpedo at your sub and misses, the torpedo will keep sailing along until it smashes into a cliff or a building (it will be interesting to see how an innocent player reacts when getting hit with stray fire from other people fighting). If you prefer "flight" instead of "fight", your units can cruise under rocky overhangs and hide themselves.
While the game takes place underwater, most of the resources will be familiar to anyone who has ever played an RTS. Instead of producing food, you need to create oxygen. Gold, metal, and corium are also essential for survival. Maybe it's just me, but I found that I rarely ran out of resources and usually could build whatever I desired. This is a nice touch, and hopefully the final build of the game will continue this trend. I don't feel it will promote the "tank rush" tactic, because many of the structures take a long time to build anyway. Much like Age of Empires II, I found that you will need to apply strategy in order to win the battles (this isn't true for all RTS games). A poorly managed army, no matter how big, can be cut down in no time flat.
It wasn't until I had been playing Submarine Titans for a while that I started to notice the unique little touches. Several of the structures are very well though out, my favorite so far being the sonar radar. The sonar radar reveals the enemy locations on the mini-map, but the fog of war remains on the main game screen. A little blip may be a harmless Transport or a top-of-the-line battle sub. I thought that was a very smart representation of what a sonar actually does.
Another building I constructed allowed me to hack into the enemy's computer system. It takes a long time to accomplish (similar to researching something) and can possibly fail. Of course, even if you do succeed, the information can become outdated in a matter of moments. Making use of the data in a timely manner is the trick.
In most RTS games, it is easy to become overwhelmed with all the little details involved in managing your base. Submarine Titans will aid players in this respect, giving them access to computer controlled managers for resource gathering, building, and even fighting. In a multiplayer game, players will need to agree on whether or not the managers can be used. I found the resource manager to be a big help, but generally avoided the managers that would build structures for me (I like to make my bases nice and symmetric).
The graphics are crisp and sharp (the resolution can go as high as 1280x1024 for those who are a little ahead of the times and have built their own 32" monitors). Schools of fish and other sea creatures scurry along the ocean floor, adding to the atmosphere. Several different tile sets spice things up, from the typical underwater environments (i.e. blue and more blue) to toxic and polluted areas. The maps can be rotated and zoomed in and out for the best view. The audio is also handled well. The music is appropriately "damp" and muted, reminding me a lot of X-COM: Terror From The Deep's score.
Submarine Titans' biggest challenge will be keeping players interested in the underwater environment. If the maps start to feel repetitive, the player's interest will plummet. The copy I played contained stand-alone battles and no campaigns, so it remains to be seen how a story is implemented into the game. Clearly, it better be done well or else Submarine Titans will be doomed. The three races certainly contain lots of dramatic potential, and it will be great if the characters are as well defined as in some other RTS's.
Submarine Titans will be packaged with a map editor should give the game the replayability that most players expect these days. Along with the typical options for map building, prologs and epilogs can be edited, along with the “win” goals. In the build I played it was also very easy to import images.
With so many RTS's going fully 3D (Dark Reign 2, Force Commander, WarCraft3, the list goes on...), it remains to be seen how this game will be received. The underwater world is a fresh setting, and practically every gaming genre can use more of those. Submarine Titans will be hitting store shelves Q2 2000, but curious gamers can get the demo right now at www.subtitans.com.
