Posted on: July 30, 2015
XenonEngine
Verified ownerGames: Reviews: 2
Initial impressions of GOG version
I've never played Archimedean Dynasty ('Schleichfahrt' in German) before. Just now I played the Gog version for a couple of missions. The atmosphere is pretty great. This is accomplished by a mix of rendered cutscenes with lots of voice-over from the main character, individual screens for underwater stations and their locations (similar to Wing Commander and Privateer), and missions embedded in a continuous story. The story is transported via extensive dialogues, which are not voiced however. The game world is unique, interesting and believable. It's got a real 1990's oldschool vibe. You play a mercenary who has to pay for his submarine himself, so in contrast to Wing Commander, you have a budget, earn money from missions, and upgrade your ship with better sonars, weapons and armor. In contrast to Privateer, you can't go where you want - you have to follow the storyline mission by mission. The 3D graphics are low-poly but impressive anyway. The combat is deliberately slower than in WC or Privateer, and the ocean floor landscape and the buildings play a role too. The vision range is a bit low. You have to follow ever-changing objectives transmitted via radio messages, which aren't voiced either. There are a lot of keybindings, check them with the 'h' key. The game supports (but doesn't require) a joystick. If you want to use more than 4 buttons on your controller, you'll have to bind them to keyboard keys with the Dosbox mapper (CTRL-F1). What I dislike is that like in other simulations of this kind, missions contain sequences of navigation points with scripted events and you can't save in a mission. So if you die in a later section of the mision, you need to replay the earlier sections, which can be pretty tedious because it's just busywork. Gog currently does not supply any manual, which is a pretty stunning flaw. Check the forum where a user has posted links to the manuals. The game originally used software rendering, and later offered a 3DFX mode, which is what Gog uses. On my PC the 3DFX mode doesn't work. I had to change the line 'ad3dfx.exe' to 'ad.exe' in the file 'dosbox_ad_single.conf' to get the game running in software mode. All in all, a big, serious, fun game that exemplifies the strengths of 1990's games.
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