It’s funny how release schedules can throw up gaming coincidences that lead to an unintentional feeling of déjà vu. For example, a couple of months ago I reviewed The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human, a post-apocalyptic game with a flooded Earth, where a single submarine was expected to bring down a series of bosses. Now, I find myself reviewing Earth Atlantis, a post-apocalyptic game with a flooded Earth, where a single submarine is tasked with defeating a series of bosses. Aesthetically, the two games couldn’t be more different, but mechanically, they’re remarkably similar, with a 2D presentation, upgradeable weapons, and boss fights that unlock further portions of the map.
This isn’t meant to come across as an accusation of plagiarism on anybody’s part, but merely an observation on the strange reality that brings these two games to my system in such a short space of time. It’s a little like the summer of 1998, with both Deep Impact and Armageddon depicting an asteroid striking the earth and releasing within weeks of each other. In fact, the end of Deep Impact saw a large proportion of the Earth underwater, so I guess this long and winding introduction has eventually found a tenuous link back to Earth Atlantis.
Piloting a submarine through the depths, you’ll come across multiple boss battles (41 in total), with the task of defeating them and making the seas safe to travel once again. Though Earth Atlantis is labeled as an exploration game, it’s a lot less Metroidvania and a lot more bullet-hell, with a lot of your time spent avoiding projectiles and praying that you hold out just enough health to defeat a particular enemy.
The first thing that drew me into Earth Atlantis was its visuals, which are quite unique for a videogame. If you’ve ever seen an early ocean-faring map (the kind with ‘here be dragons’ or something similar), you’ll recognize the visual style on offer here. It’s simple, but distinct, and works remarkable well at making an otherwise basically animated experience feel more than the sum of its parts. One particular sequence where you see the Statue of Liberty in the background stood out for me, but I spent much of my time admiring the world around me as I explored it.
Unfortunately, the world of Earth Atlantis isn’t particularly large, and you’ll spend a lot of your time making your way to and fro, from one boss battle to another. With 41 different battles to fight through, and small map to house them in, you’ll find yourself battling in the same area multiple times through the course of the game. The game initially limits the amount of map available to you, and while it opens up as you defeat more bosses, you’ll soon start to recognize the same places again and again. There are often only three or four bosses available to you at one time, and they’re usually located in different corners of the map, making traversal a necessity.
For the most part, the boss fights are varied challenging and entertaining. Many of the encounters pit you against a single large creature, but occasionally you’ll be required to defeat a large group of a particular kind of smaller enemy. The fights themselves follow a familiar formula of recognizing a pattern of attacks, avoiding the enemy’s projectiles, and attempting to hit them with your own weapons. There’s a definite sense of relief and accomplishment when you bring down a boss, and I must admit that I had a couple of personal feuds with some monsters that just seemed to have my number each time that I faced them.
Please excuse the awful pun, but for a game based in the ocean, Earth Atlantis doesn’t have a lot of depth to its experience. There’s the standard mode, which sees you defeating bosses one after the other, and a timed mode, where you defeat as many bosses as you can, and there are a few different submarines to unlock, but that’s pretty much it. I didn’t find much reason to return once I’d finished the base mode and messed around a bit with the timed option, and I can’t imagine many other players would find much to keep them interested either. The initial experience is enough to keep you entertained for a few hours, but this feels like a game that you’d play for a few days and then put away, and wouldn’t be able to find much reason to dig it out again.
I had fun with Earth Atlantis, and I imagine that a lot of players looking for a bullet-hell experience with a bit of a twist would enjoy the experience also. However, I found that the game’s most defining feature was its visuals, and apart from that, it offers a fairly basic and unremarkable experience. That’s not to say that it’s bad, more that it won’t be something that you’ll remember a few months down the line, or have much of an urge to return to once you’re finished with it. It’s a perfectly serviceable example of the genre, that happens to look great, and should be solid enough to find an audience of its own, if only for a short time.
