Sea Wolves
Score: 73% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: Alawar Developer: Ghost Software Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Action/ Shooter/ Arcade
Graphics & Sound: Despite its three-dimensional appearance, Sea Wolves has more of a two-dimensional arcade feel to it. All models are rendered in stylish polygons, but the color scheme and layouts of levels will remind you more of good old move-and-shoot games that are normally found in the dark recesses of bowling alleys. This isn’t to say that Sea Wolves has a bad atmosphere to it; it has a simple and unique style of its own with outlandish ships instead of good old classic sailboats. The worst it has going for it is a slight lack of variety as you are on a ship, and the biggest difference you see from level to level is the color of the water. The sound takes a page out of the graphic’s book, but runs a bit farther with it. It’s good, but the variety department is lacking. Cannon shots and what seems like a single looping track are most of what you’ll hear throughout the course of the game. You’d better hope you like what you hear, because there is a lot of it. All others are doomed to an audio experience from hell, unless you turn your speakers off.
Gameplay: As mentioned earlier, Sea Wolves is a game involving boats and, of course, lots of water. As the captain of one of these boats, you sail around the aforementioned waters in search of money, gate keys, and of course, enemies to fight. Pretty simple stuff from beginning to end; Sea Wolves is certainly not the Half-Life of boat based arcade games. Before you begin your journey you decide which captain to sail as. There are three to choose from and each excels at one of three skills: gunnery, extra armor, or speed. Once that difficult task has been hurdled, you are faced with the decision of which boat to sail on. Again you have three choices, whose traits somehow span the whole of the boating spectrum. On one side you have a speedy little demon with relatively little firepower. On the other is a lumbering behemoth with tons of firepower but little in the way of speed. And smack in the middle is the all around little tug boat that could. Your choices have a significant impact on the way you play the game. If you’re not in a daring mood, you can opt for a balanced mix of mobility and firepower, or you can go to either extreme and risk being overrun or outgunned. Both outcomes are very possible due to the diversity in your enemies. Everything from planes, stationary fortresses, and myriad types of boats will be thrown your way. Though you will have to tailor your playing style to the boat and captain you are using, the game ultimately boils down to you coping with a screen full of suicidal enemies who stop at nothing to make your life a living hell. There is little in the way of strategy when dealing with this many bad guys, other than smashing the firing buttons and running like mad. This is where Sea Wolves’s arcade roots come out in full force. Find a couple of keys, collect some money, and kill a whole lot of enemies.
Difficulty: Arcade games like Sea Wolves are notorious for the exponential difficulty curve. Sea Wolves is no different. The game starts you out slow and simple with a run through of the buttons, and then launches you head first into the fray. After that, its wave after wave of mindless enemies, interrupted by key hunts (to unlock gates) and fortress assaults (the repeated bombardment of a stationary object). Things can get monotonously hard, but not impossible.
Game Mechanics: The watery world of Sea Wolves is full of islands to sail around, bad guys to blow up, treasure to collect, and color coded keys to find. The controls are simple and allow you to do all of these things relatively easily. Players don’t have to be experienced sailors to get the most out of this game. Simple forward, back, turn, and shoot buttons are about all there is to it. The most complicated feature to Sea Wolves is the ability to lob your shots different distances by holding down the firing button. You hardly ever use this ability though, as enemies run straight up to you at incredible speeds, leaving you to mash the button most of the time. These controls help you get through the not so elaborate objectives in the game. You generally have to find keys to get through locked gates, shoot all of the enemies around you, and destroy a fortress to continue on to the next level. This is one of Sea Wolves’s two major drawbacks. The complexity of this game’s objectives is so minimal that things get boring very quickly. The other major drawback is the lack of any multiplayer mode. Including multiplayer support might have helped out with the monotony of things a little, but it is doubtful that it would have been enough to save this sinking ship. Sea Wolves will be best enjoyed in moderation.
-Snow Chainz, GameVortex Communications AKA Andrew Horwitz
Minimum System Requirements: 600 MHz Processor, 64MB RAM, 3MB Video Card 3D, DirectX 9.0   Test System: Windows XP, 1.4GHz AMD Athlon, GeForce FX 128 MB video card, 40 gig hard drive, 56x CD-ROM, 256MB DDR Ram, Sound Blaster Live! sound card, Cable Modem Internet connection
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