By Dale Farris, Secretary
Golden Triangle PC Club
September 2003

Game Overview

The year is 1936, and once again the major powers of the world find themselves at war. An ebullient Germany, buoyed by its victorious annexation of the Europe continent, now seeks to reach out into the Atlantic and beyond, looking to extend its imperial mastery. Far to the east, the exiled British government survives aboard the still dangerous and still proud remnants of the Royal Navy in Japan's native waters. Churchill has agreed to a pact creating an imposing if uneasy alliance with the formidable oriental power.

The United States, having chosen to stay out of the conflict that saw Europe fall to Kaiser Wilhelm's forces almost 20 years earlier, enters the fray with its own expansionist intent. Seeking to ally itself with Ireland, America enrages its two adversaries, initiating a three-way clash over domination of the world's oceans.

This is the fictional premise that sets the stage for this latest action simulator from DreamCatcherGames, and the inaugural title from Eugene, Oregon-based Tesseraction Games. Formed by erstwhile members of the fêted, although regretfully now defunct developer Dynamix, the company set out to release a massively multiplayer incarnation of its promising naval combat game. In the interim, with a view to providing an opportunity for players to become proficient in virtual seamanship before that version launches, the team made the decision to release a fully-featured single-player edition, which is Enigma: Rising Tide.

Just What Kind of Game is Enigma?

Enigma is one of the most surprising games to ever reach market. Built on the principles and techniques found in so many other successful simulation games (SIMS), Enigma is not just a sim. In addition, Enigma is, according to developer Tesseraction Games, "an alternate-history, WWII, massively multiplayer first-person vehicular naval combat game."

The part about "massively multiplayer" isn't quite correct, but the description does give you an idea of what Enigma is all about. Combining an accessible simulation with some shooter and role-playing game (RPG) elements, and loads of exciting action, Enigma is a game for people who might rather watch the film Das Boot than wade through a dry-as-dust volume of official naval history. Enigma is a game that intelligently simulates the drama of World War II tactical naval combat, instead of simulating naval minutiae.

Enigma looks like a World War II game, and the name of the game calls to mind the famous Enigma code machines used by Germany during WWII. Enigma is also filled with ships based on or inspired by actual American, German, British, and Japanese designs. In reality, Enigma is an alternate-history game with a very strong WWII flavor.

Gameplay begins in 1936, with three major factions waging war across the globe. The game designers have imagined a world where Germany won World War I, took control of most of continental Europe, and brought England to its knees through unrestricted submarine warfare. The United States, with its powerful economy, is trying to expand its influence around the world, with bases from Singapore to Morocco to Ireland. The League of Free Nations is a union formed by Japan and the British Royal Navy in exile. From bases in Japan, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, and other key locales, the League fights both the Germans and the Americans in the Atlantic and Pacific.

Playing the Game

Along with a few dozen individual training and combat missions that you can tackle in any order, you take part in both surface and submarine based campaigns for each of Enigma's three factions. You start out commanding a single vessel and gradually rise through the ranks, taking on more dangerous missions while eventually getting to issue basic commands to fellow vessels while still directly controlling your own ship. Enigma does a fine job of immersing you in your role as captain and bringing this wonderfully realized world to life.

Before each mission, you read your latest orders and your captain's log entries. The logs give you some insight into shipboard life, how the crew is feeling about world events, your latest assignments, and so forth. In a neat touch, you also see simulated newspaper front pages, where the headlines flesh out the world, letting you know, for example, that Truman is America's president in the 1930s, instead of Roosevelt. Occasionally you will also see brief cut-scenes of your ship moving across the ocean.

You can let the game's intelligence handle the guns for you, or do it yourself. While some WWII history buffs might be disappointed that Enigma does not cover real history, the fictionalized world is interesting, and combat is still combat, even if it does not re-create actual battles.

The game combat is something Enigma does very well. This is essentially a tactical-scale game, where you directly control only one ship and where you rarely have to go far to find action. You won't have to deal with supply issues or engage in any long-distance patrols where you have to search for virtual weeks to find the enemy. Almost as soon as you start a mission, you'll find enemies to engage, and you'll encounter a decent variety of them, including merchant freighters, tankers, torpedo planes, and various combat vessels.

You can control subs, corvettes, destroyers, and torpedo boats of various types, all with basic statistics taken from real-world counterparts. Enigma streamlines controlling all these different vessels. For example, when you command a sub you don't have to worry about deciding which type of torpedo to load or enter data into the torpedo firing computer. You simply get a target in your sights, eyeball the deflection, and fire away. Along similar lines, when you dive, you don't directly control the diving planes or regulate the dive or trim tanks. You simply select the desired depth, and after your crew rigs the boat for diving, you begin your descent. You just have to hope that you are not taking fire during the tense 20 seconds when you can't fire your deck guns before submerging.

Damage doesn't take into account hit location or ship systems. Instead, you get a simple hull health bar that shows how much damage you've sustained. Your tactical display is an amalgam of all data from hydrophones, sonar, crew lookouts, and transmissions from allied ships. While vessels handle differently and bear different armaments, they all have the same basic HUD and controls. The only differences are some necessary ones between subs and surface-restricted vessels. All these simplifications make Enigma more easily accessible. Also, there are no options for toggling on more realistic and detailed features for those who'd appreciate added depth and realism.

Enigma puts all the important command decisions in your hands and also lets you man individual gun turrets from a first-person view, so you are always in the thick of things. Even though many things in Enigma are simplified, the game is not simplistic. You will need to make lots of quick tactical decisions as you maneuver to bring your guns or torpedoes to bear, decide when it's safe to surface your sub to recharge its batteries and replenish its air supply, and so forth.

Engagements are tense. You can sneakily evade destroyers in your sub as their depth charges explode around you, barely dodge an incoming torpedo as you manically swing your corvette about, and get caught up in the chaos of surface battles where planes roar overhead, guns thunder, and smoke pours from wounded vessels.

Enigma's audio and visuals convey all the action quite well. The rolling seas and rocking ships are especially well done, and varied weather conditions add visual and tactical variety to the battles, although the sun never seems to shine particularly brightly, even in clear conditions. All the gun turrets are animated, and you can clearly see the telltale bubble trails from torpedoes as they streak toward their targets.

When you are submerged in a sub, you can hear torpedoes whiz by as they barely miss you, which is unnerving in a really entertaining way. Alarm bells and klaxons add to the tension of combat, and the game has a powerful, dynamic orchestral score filled with varied themes that really help set the mood. On the other hand, antiaircraft guns tend to sound underpowered, and there are no voice-overs, just text to represent your officers' warnings and updates.

If you have a microphone for your sound card, you can issue vocal commands to them, thanks to the integrated speech-recognition software. While Enigma's overall presentation is not necessarily cutting edge and the graphics can get a bit choppy, the game succeeds in immediately sucking you into the action, which is what ultimately counts.

The game captures the exciting feel of WWII naval combat even if it ignores many of the details. Whether you're a WWII or naval combat buff, or simply someone who loves a smooth combination of action and tactics, Enigma: Rising Tide can offer a lot of tense challenges and high-seas drama.

Loading and Setting Up The Game

After you install the game, the main menu screen presents six selectable options. Those that do not want to inspect hulls and flicking compass binnacles can steam straight into the action via the Patrols option. Alternatively, players that wish to engage in a spot of fine-tuning prior to launch can do so in a functional screen that allows changes to be made to fundamental, aesthetics-affecting attributes such as resolution, gamma, and view distance. The player may also choose a moniker on this screen, in addition to deciding with which of the three factions he or she will align prior to commencing either of the included surface-oriented or submarine-based campaigns.

Ten missions comprise the Patrols segment of the game, and these differ greatly in terms of difficulty, allowing the player to take the helm of several different types of vessel. The Feet Wet mission provides the backdrop for a familiarizing inaugural voyage, putting the player to sea in one of the three faction's comparable classes of corvettes. The player can attempt to turn some merchant shipping into desirable residences for seabed dwelling life forms. It's not all plain sailing to begin with, as several persistent enemy aircraft have to be brought to task. You can either delegate the game to attempt to shoot them down automatically, or you can occupy an anti-aircraft position in first-person mode. While operating in the latter, the sense of engagement rises greatly, in no small part due to the finely rendered gun emplacements, and the slow, swiveling motions they make as they struggle to track swift, airborne targets.

You have to rely on trial and error in order to score successful hits. That's not to say combat is haphazard. In the case of antiaircraft engagements, it is possible to become proficient quite quickly at adding lead to rounds, while for the purposes of bombarding enemy shipping, the sight through which you peer has a series of tick marks that aid you in finding the range of a desired target more easily. The conditions of the watery battlefield upon which combat unfolds also has some bearing on your aim, as a stormy sea will cause your vessel - and by extension, any sight you are looking through - to pitch up and down, necessitating an almost rhythmical approach to firing as your ship ploughs through subsequent crest after trough.

When under fire from more than one enemy, it becomes expedient to cease relying solely on your own efforts, and to involve the friendly AI in the action. To this end, each weapon on your vessel can be assigned to independently track and fire upon an individual target, while it's also possible to bring every armament to bear upon a solitary foe.

The AI of the ships and subs you are pitched against is quite tactically savvy, causing tankers to make for the horizon once they see a few tell tale torpedo wakes, while their escorts move to intercept. There are also times when the enemy can become overly aggressive, as on a few occasions its ships seemed to resort deliberately to ramming tactics, which can bring an unexpectedly abrupt end to your mission if you fail to stay aware of your foe's maneuvers.

The vessels that the player may command include corvettes, submarines, destroyers and destroyer-escorts. Each faction has at least two classes of these individual types, and if you compare a U.S. submarine with an approximately equivalent German class of submersible, you'll notice subtle differences in armament, maximum speed, and appearance. Considering its vulnerability when surfaced and the surreptitious manner in which it pursues its surface bound prey, the submarine is arguably the most intriguing, and also the most challenging type of vessel to command.

You need to be wary of critical factors such as air quality and battery power - which can be monitored in the HUD - while noting that below a fairly shallow operational depth, the submarine ceases to be offensively effective. However, while close to the surface, a targeting periscope can be raised for the purpose of lining up enemy hulls for torpedo attacks. As you might expect, scoring a successful hit with these explosive devices is a little more demanding than with a deck gun, as the tubes are integrated into the hull, thus necessitating that the entire submarine be turned as you track a target.

Navigation, naturally, is an integral part of the game play, and it may be effected by any of several methods. Keyboard presses can be used to turn the rudder incrementally, while forward and reverse throttle settings can also be made in this manner. If the player is occupying one of the views where the HUD is visible on screen, the helm may be manipulated via a rudder control representation that will set a rate of turn either to starboard or port, depending on where you click on it.

While peering through periscopes, binoculars or gun sights, the HUD is removed from the screen, but the player can still set headings by clicking within the interior of a compass that occupies the top right of the display. The simplest method of navigation though, is to utilize the radar display located in the HUD. A composite of all surveillance information available to the player, the radar display can be manipulated to depict all targets within 500m, 1k, 4k and radio range, which the player can then click on to intercept.

Game Missions

While the patrols section offers a decent challenge to the initiate seaman, it pales in comparison to that presented by the two campaigns. Comprising 10 missions each, the surface and submarine campaigns may tax even the most proficient commander, with some missions requiring multiple attempts before they can be completed. Persistence is rewarded though, as even if you fail a mission, the game keeps a running tally of the total tonnage of shipping you've sunk. Once you have sent enough vessels to Davy Jones' locker you will begin to ascend the chain of command of your chosen faction. Rank has its privileges, in the form of controllable variants of the default vessel that you are assigned for each mission. This usually means providing different configurations of armament more suited for differing roles, such as anti-air or anti-shipping. These can tip the balance when it comes to completing a particularly tasking mission.

Enigma excels at conveying a wealth of effects that greatly enhance the sense of credibility. Idling on the surface, you can hear the waves lapping at the hull of your chosen vessel, while an increase in throttle setting is accompanied by an appropriate change in engine timbre that accentuates your craft's greater sense of urgency. Crash dives are punctuated by a suitably jarring klaxon noise, while projectile effects are positional and distinctive to each weapon type. The soundtrack consists of several finely composed orchestral tracks, a few of which accompany the set up screens, others being used in a dynamic manner, segueing from a tranquil, lulling ditty to a more militaristic, upbeat number when a threat is encountered.

Conditions can vary dramatically from near flat-calms to stormy squalls which have considerable impact on how any confrontation will play out. The game's other environmental expanse, the sky, is almost photo-realistic in quality, and is tied to a weather system that encompasses sunny, overcast and rainy conditions.

Stylistically, the vessels would seem to have drawn inspiration from real world counterparts of both world wars. The models are fairly well detailed, replete with rotating or moveable features such as gun emplacements, rudders and screws that churn up the steely grey ocean into a broiling white mass.

Successful hits on your vessel or those of the enemy seem to do little to affect performance, merely depleting the hull integrity bar located in the HUD. Ship hulls aren't deformable, so don't expect to see any flying chunks of metal, but if your craft takes enough damage it will throw up black palls of smoke, which in first person mode can effectively hinder your gunnery efforts. Should you sufficiently bombard an enemy vessel with enough projectiles or set running a well aimed torpedo, you'll witness one of the game's sublime moments, as the stricken hull of your foe momentarily rears up before sliding gracefully into the deep.

Game Saves

The inability to save progress mid-mission is a little disappointing, especially when you consider the game's apparent desire to appeal to a broader range of gamers outside the domain of hardcore simmers. Yet the overall experience is so compelling that you can't help but forgive the title's demanding nature, and make one more attempt that may thrust you that bit closer to naval military greatness. You will just have to restart the missions, and practice the maneuvers and the combat well enough to successfully accomplish the mission, and then save your game.

Features

Join one of three dynamic factions in an alternate universe: United States, Imperial Germany, or the League of Free Nations

Pilot submarines, corvettes, destroyers, armed merchantmen, battleships, cruisers and more

Real-time cinematic action

Voice-activated command and control of your vessel

Dynamically assigned missions based on strategic priorities

Dynamic ocean effects and vehicle physics that respond to weather conditions

Evolving alternate history backstory

Targeted Customers

Enigma: Rising Tide is a super new game that combines elements of role-playing with simulation and action in this unique twist on naval war games. If you have the right system with enough horses to support the voice command and control, this will make this game even more interesting to anyone who favors simulation or action games. Enigma will most certainly appeal to all simulation game fans and fans of board war games.

Install and Setup

I loaded the game on a Win XP Pro, SP 1 machine (P III-850, 256MB SDRAM) that had a Creative Labs Annihilator 2, 32MB video card (an nVidia GeForce 2 GTS board), and a Creative Labs Live X Gamer! sound board, and the latest drivers for each. An HP CD RW 9200 drive served as the CD ROM drive, and I had a 12X DVD ROM drive for the DVD ROM version. The mouse and keyboard were both PS/2 connections. I also had already installed the DirectX 8.1 files, and did not need to install the DirectX files that came with the game. My machine also had an internal Zip 250 drive, standard floppy, two 8-port USB hubs, a Logitech Wingman Extreme joystick, standard microphone, Cambridge Soundworks DTS 2000 speaker system, and a NIC board connected to SW Bell's DSL modem.

Note that this configuration is not the best designed for this game, and I did notice performance hits while playing the game, mostly because this system is no longer powerful enough to handle the massive amounts of data processing demanded by this game. I suggest folks consider loading this game on as highly configured a system as you can afford.

Price

$39.99

Minimum System Configuration Requirements

P-III 500MHz processor (P-IV 1GHz processor recommended)
Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP (Win XP Pro recommended)
256MB RAM (512k swap space)
1.5GB free hard disk space
32MB DirectX 8.1 compatible GeForce2 Pro level video card
DirectX 9 compatible 64MB GeForce2Pro or higher video card recommended
4X CD ROM drive
Hardware audio card (SoundBlaster sound card recommended)

At the time of this writing, there was a game patch file available at the game's web site. The problem occurs after installing the game and being prompted to reboot your computer. Certain driver configurations may cause your system to freeze up. Should you experience this problem, reboot and uninstall the game. Download the driver fix, then reinstall the game. When prompted again to reboot, do not do so -- run the driver fix instead.

The above system configuration requirements indicate the minimum system configuration requirements, and as any experienced gamer knows, you just don't ever want to load and run any computer game on minimally configured systems. With this game, we have an example of how quickly game software design is overtaking computer hardware systems. Note that the recommended CPU is a P-IV 1.0GHz processor, and the recommended video card is at least a 64MB card. With the continued drop in hardware pricing, it is easy today to get a powerful "gamer" PC for relatively less money, something this game designer, Tesseraction Games, seems to have taken advantage of in the design of this game.

About Tesseraction Games, Inc.

Tesseraction Games, Inc. is an Oregon corporation and a vital new member of the Eugene high-tech community. The company develops interactive entertainment software -video games- for the online gaming market.

Their focus is the online gaming market, a solid and rapidly expanding segment of the video game industry. Marketing research indicates 58.2 million households in America possess at least one PC, and of these, 9.8 million (almost 17%) have players who participate in online gaming using the Internet.

Tesseraction Games has a ten-employee team who bring over fifty years of experience in video game and software development, including veterans of "AAA" titles such as Tribes 2, Super Street Fighter 2, X-Men, Trophy Bass Fishing, Dungeons and Dragons, and Darkstalkers.

They take their name from a tesseract (tes'er·act), a four-dimensional figure bounded by 8 cubes, and having 16 vertices, 24 faces and 32 edges. In other words, a hypercube.

About Dreamcatcher Interactive

DreamCatcher Interactive is a fast-growing publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment for both core gamers and the mass-market audience. DreamCatcher is committed to publishing games that deliver maximum value on multiple platforms including PC, Playstation2, GameCube, and Xbox.

DreamCatcher launched its first title in 1996, with a small band of people who believed in providing customers with quality entertainment software at affordable prices. Since that time, DreamCatcher has become one of the most successful small-sized publisher in the entertainment software industry, and was the fastest growing publisher in 2000, growing over 800%, according to PC Data. DreamCatcher Interactive was listed in Profitguide.com's article: CANADA'S FASTEST GROWING COMPANIES 2002 and ranked #5.

The Adventure Company

The Adventure Company, a division of DreamCatcher, is a leading publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment devoted exclusively to releasing titles geared towards adventure gamers. The Adventure Company is committed to publishing games that deliver maximum value on multiple platforms, including PC, Playstation2 computer entertainment system, GameCube, and Xbox.

The Adventure Company’s parent, DreamCatcher, launched its first title in 1996, with a small band of people who believed in providing customers with quality entertainment software at affordable prices. Since that time, DreamCatcher has become one of the most successful small-sized publisher in the entertainment software industry, and was the fastest growing publisher in 2000, growing over 800% according to PC Data.

Bringing to market titles that are affordable, without jeopardizing content quality, is another significant factor that helps distinguish this company from the many that flood the market with countless game titles. DreamCatcher thrives on innovative marketing strategies, solid retail and developer partnerships, and on providing excellent customer support that is well above industry standards.

A new partnership with Her Interactive has enabled DreamCatcher to now sell the super games in the Nancy Drew series, including Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill, Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger, and Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion. Check this link to read a review of these Nancy Drew Interactive Mystery Adventure Games.

Dracula: The Resurrection and In Cold Blood are two current games for the PC that will soon be released for the Playstation, and DreamCatcher also plans to release more games in the future for the Playstation 2 and the GameBoy Color platforms.

Necronomicon ($19.99) and The Legend of the Prophet and the Assassin ($19.99) are two of DreamCatcher's newer games that should also prove to be successful titles in their long list of super adventure games.

Other super games from DreamCatcher Interactive include Traitor's Gate, The Messenger, Riddle of the Sphinx, Jewels of the Oracle, Jewels II, Egypt 1156 B.C., Odyssey, TimeScape, Ancient Conquest, Beyond Time, Beyond Atlantis, Lightbringer, Legend of Lotus Spring, Nightlong, Seven Games of the Soul (also sold in Europe as Faust), SafeCracker, The Forgotten, The Sacred Amulet, and Time Machine.

All these are similarly designed adventure games, and all are priced very reasonably, the most expensive being $29.99 (In Cold Blood), with most around $14.99, and many even priced at $9.99, which I think are super prices for these super games. At the time of this writing, I have purchased and played nearly all these games, and these reasonable price points have always gotten my attention.

I think these affordable price points represent a very important strategy of DreamCatcher that has helped them achieve their success. When you consider the very expensive proposition to invest in the coding and other very expensive costs to develop and produce a computer game today, I think it is quite remarkable that this company markets their products at such a reasonable price.

I also think it is important to remember that DreamCatcher is still very much in the business of producing quality computer games, something many other companies can no longer attest to since they have gone out of business. What is even more remarkable, in my opinion, is that at the time of this writing, DreamCatcher Interactive remains wholly owned and self-sufficient, and has not yet been absorbed by a larger company.

So, with the easy on the pocket-book price of the game, and the also minimal price of the solution guides, you have the makings of a winner in the hotly contested battle for our limited disposable income and free time to invest in playing computer games. DreamCatcher Interactive is certainly a company worth watching and supporting.

Contact Information

DreamCatcher
The Adventure Company
5000 Dufferin Street
Toronto, Ontario
M3H 5T5
www.dreamcatchergames.com
info@dreamcatchergames.com

You can also order from other retailers or online vendors.