think you got a little bit of complexity in my Northwest Passage Naval Simulator. Oh, don’t worry about that– just give me a few hours, a couple of beverages, maybe an aspirin or two, and a Naval dictionary, then we will be right as rain. Won’t you sit down and stay awhile?
Naval War: Arctic Circle is the latest outing by strategy powerhouse, Paradox Interactive and Norwegian Independent developer, Turbo Tape Games. In Naval War: Arctic Circle the player is tasked with defending the realm of the Northwest passage; a cold and desolate maze of rocky islands and inhospitable waters. To brave the storm of these icy waters you can either play as the unified Russian forces or the Nato peacekeepers. To be honest, I only played as the Nato peacekeeping forces for a few reasons — one of which I will go into greater detail now before I go any further. Even though preview copies are never clear representations of a finished product you would hope that while playing, for multiple hours, you wouldn’t encounter any game changing bugs. Well, during my testing of the tutorial and the campaign, my game would freeze without actually exiting me out of the game, still letting me exit and return to the main menu. This led to countless retries as my strategies were cut short due to a frozen screen. With that in mind, I tried to learn the game the best I could and take from it what I think will add up to a better than average Naval military simulator.
You are given a barebones approach when dealing with Naval War: Arctic Circle. No flashy menus or up beat music to set the tone. Instead you are presented with a more sombre and somewhat antiquated approach to modern gaming. There is no need for the extra fluff — there is no need to wildly zipping though the air like a Top gun pilot, here you are tasked with protecting fishing vessels, deploying sensors to scout out an area, and generally staying as non-combative for as long as possible. You are trying to keep some semblance of major world powers vying for control of the seas without declaring all out war. You would be remiss in thinking that there is no combat in NW:AC, but you will have to learn a little bit and think a little bit more before you send your enemy to the cold bottomless depths.
THOSE SEAS LOOK RATHER UNFRIENDLY
The objective of NW:AC is to either stop the pushy Nato forces from encroaching on your naval territory, or to push back the Russian advances of non-commissioned naval activity. In either campaign you will feel the intensity creep ever closer towards the boiling point by the end of each level. Instead of gradually giving you the basics of maneuverability and naval tactics, you instead are given various toys and gadgets right off the bat, but you need to know when and how to use them. I can’t emphasize enough how much I enjoy a game that takes its time when building up tension, especially with such a simple overlay and simplistic graphical interface. From what I have played, the game only takes place on one very large area of the Northwest Passage, but this games size is still massive; it will take your missiles minutes to reach their target if you fire from far away enough. Whenever you complete a game it will show the actual time played, accompanied by a cheesy shot of generic city with fireworks going off (which is truly bizarre), and then it will also show you “game” time, or the time it would have taken if you had kept it at a normal speed. A six minute game will be around “five” hours of naval maneuvering, give or take a few hours. It’s in the game mechanics where the NW:AC truly shines; not so much in the lackluster campaign or the per-usual broken tutorials. An interesting note about the development of NW:AC — It is actually sponsored by and closely developed with the Royal Norwegian Navy as well as a Norwegian Research council, and a Norwegian film institute. It seems like the Norse want us to indoctrinate us with their pickled codfish and marinated trout! Well, not on my watch.
AN ACTION FILLED MOMENT AS YOU BLAZE ACROSS THE SEAS.
Naval War:Arctic Circle is shaping up to to be an accessible simulator within the same vein as other Paradox backed titles. I can’t say wether or not the bug I encountered was common or not since there is not much information on this game as of yet, but it still doesn’t detract from what NW:AC brings to the table. If you are given the chance, I implore you to at least try NW:AC — It really is unlike anything that is coming out in 2012.
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