History VideoGame / HostileWatersAntaeusRising

* AwesomeYetPractical: The Longbow missile launcher. You get it early, it's cheap to outfit a vehicle with it, it has good range, homes in on a target, a full salvo takes out most human or hybrid enemies, the ammo regenerates fast enough, is excellent for hit and run assaults, oh and did we mention it's just great fun to see in use? Sure, it might not have the sustained DPS of the Scalpel chaingun or the range of the Rapier laser but it provides a more than good compromise. Even the Warhammer howitzer that both outdamages and outranges the Longbow can be used by and against turret and ground vehicle.

*** It's specifically noted that multiple copies end up fighting each other because they were fighting over who was the "real" one. Though this makes little sense for someone like Sinclair or Korolev, it DOES make sense for those more like Ransom or Kroker who would likely bicker with themselves with whatever guns were on their vehicle.

NeedsMoreLove.

* {{Jerkass}}: Your entire crew, though it's played for laughs through their banter.

** The ''Arclight'' EMP gun. Decent range and will kill any plane it hits (since they stop flying) assuming they sit still long enough to be hit by the PainfullySlowProjectile, but really slow firing and only necessary for one mission. It's easier just to kill things.

* AwesomeYetPractical: The Longbow missile launcher. You get it early, it's cheap to outfit a vehicle with it, it has good range, homes in on a target, a full salvo takes out most human or hybrid enemies, the ammo regenerates fast enough, is excellent for hit and run assaults, oh and did we mention it's just great fun to see in use? Sure, it might not have the sustained DPS of the Scalpel chaingun or the range of the Rapier laser but it provides a more than good compromise. Even the Warhammer howitzer that both outdamages and outranges it suffers in that the Longbow can be used by and against air units.

The game can be bought from [[http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/en/pc/games/action/hostile-waters-antaeus-rising/ Green Man Gaming]]. It is also available on [[http://www.gog.com/gamecard/hostile_waters_antaeus_rising GOG.com]], re-released after being pulled out of its catalog for quite a while.

** You can ''technically'' mount a Warhammer (normally a mortar weapon) on an air vehicle, and it will attempt to use it for bombing... but it's wildly inaccurate and can only target things almost immediately below the vehicle, and is useless against other air units. And if you're in position to use it, you could just use a scalpel or a flamer anyway...

* OfficerAndAGentleman: Sinclair, who was the first officer of the Antaleus back when he was alive, and is by far the single most polite person on your crew.

* HeroicSacrifice: The final mission consists simply of escorting the CoolShip, turned into a walking (well, floating) bomb, into the heart of the enemy installation. It seems to work, too. [[spoiler:Though the ending and TheStinger suggest otherwise.]]

* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: [[spoiler: The fate of Cabal leaders.]]

* TankGoodness: Patton agrees.

* EvilIsDeathlyCold: The genocidal aliens purposefully chill the atmosphere.

* BFG: The disassembler cannon. It's the size of a large building, and [[spoiler: if allowed to fire it can wipe out Central in three shots]].

* BottomlessMagazines: Ammo and fuel are infinite (except for the Antaeus' guns), limited only by the rechargeable energy meter. But in the case of [[GatlingGood Scalpel minigun]], not even that applies, since the recharge rate is ''much'' faster than the firing rate.

* [[WhamEpisode WHAM! Mission]]: In mission 5 you're tasked to take over a Cabal research outpost, steal their hovercraft design and destroy a plane carrying unknown technology before it takes off. However, blowing up the plane reveals [[spoiler: the "alien" creatures for the first time, literally ''growing'' out of the wreckage and spawning laser armaments to rip your troops to shreds. The whole scene comes out of nowhere, and your handlers are rightly ''horrified'']]. And to think that thing was headed to a populated city.
* WhatTheHellPlayer: All the Soulcatcher pilots can pilot any vehicle, but they have specific areas of expertise and ''will'' chew you out for ignoring that fact.

* DeathFromAbove: Various Air units, especially the Bomber-type Vulture and Antaeus long range guns. Ransom even says the exact words when killing something.

* IronicEcho: A Non-verbal version; [[spoiler: when you get to the fake Island Zero, you can see a statue of something large and bug-like attacking a considerably smaller human, symbolizing the Cabal using the Species they created to destroy their enemies. Fast-forward to when Antaeus gets to real Island Zero, the Cabal leaders, who a mission ago requested us to protect them from the now rogue alien forces, are impaled by the aliens on the beach, slowly dying, naked, in the middle of an unnatural winter, and near the center of the island, in the middle of the ruined headquarters, there stands an identical statue, with the upper half of the human missing, now symbolizing something completely different.]]

* PatchworkMap: The game takes place entirely on an island chicane (artificial archipelago) located somewhere around New Zealand. The environment varies from hot to frozen over. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] by the chicane undergoing rapid, hostile (un)terraforming. Especially visible in the last mission.

* {{Terraform}}: The [[spoiler: Species]] embark on a great un-terraforming project of Earth itself, starting with Greenland. Given that they are, in part, living universal constructors, it becomes of vital importance to stop them.

* YouRequireMoreVespeneGas: The Energy Units, harvested using recycle-unit equipped Scarabs (or Behemoths in specific situations) to disassemble various structures, junk and enemy remains on field, with the energy instantly going to Antaeus. Another, less efficient way is to gather energy is to use the Pegasus helicopter to lift something and deliver it to Antaeus' own disassembler.

* MilitaryMashUpMachine: The Antaeus Cruiser; it's a dual-hull catamaran-type warship-carrier with 4 battleship-style turrets, cold-fusion engines that allow it to circumnavigate the globe in days if needed, sensors that make it almost impossible to sneak up on, and it has unparalleled manufacturing and deployment capabilities. It can field, command, and support almost a dozen units - be they aircraft (helicopters and VTOLs), hovercraft, or ground vehicles, any of which can be assembled within ''seconds''.
* MyHeroZero: Antaeus Double Zero.

** The artillery guns. Powerful enough to kill pretty much anything. Limited enough ammo that you usually can't wipe out any one thing of vital importance to your enemy (they almost always have a few backups).

* CosmopolitanCouncil: The Cabal fits this trope to perfection: there's a sinister American radicalist who thinks that "Without control, we may as well end all life on this planet and see if the cockroaches can get it right", a Russian who remembers "de old days", a German chick that wants to "take major urban areas back to the Stone Age", plus an assortment of guys who look like gangsters, ganglords and corrupt politicians. Oh and the obligatory cigar-smoking El Presidente lookalike. See the whole thing [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcVxeXiL57I here]].

--> '''Walker:''' Streets lined with plants that capture pollution and sequester it as the pigment in flowers, decontaminating it as they bloom. Public Creation Engines on every corner that make free food and clothes and goods and anything out of dirt and waste. Tiny organic medicines, riding the air, that heal us as we breathe. Disease-free immortality. Our grasp exceeds the moon, and we stand on the verge of greatness.

* DeathWorld: The chances of humans surviving on unterraformed islands are non-existent. [[spoiler: As one of the characters realizes, that's the whole point. The aliens, having outgrown the weakness to hot temperatures, are now simply unterraforming in order to wipe out humanity.]]

* DownerEnding: A pretty hard-hitting one. [[spoiler: In the final mission, after much (and I mean ''much'') effort, your ship, converted into a makeshift nuke, destroys a structure designed to launch genetically engineered alien creatures into space. ItMakesSenseInContext. Anyway, in the credits, you and your crew go down with the ship. The ship's nanotech creation engine hits the ocean floor with the alien launch platform, which promptly beings to assimilate it. As if this weren't bad enough, TheStinger shows that the aliens managed to get into space anyway. Congrats, humanity's last weapon was sacrificed for little more than spare time (which the humans won't use because they think they've won), and if those aliens decide they want to come back home, the human race is '''fucked'''.]]
** YMMV, though. The ending can be viewed it as rather hopeful... [[spoiler: Yeah, there's the "bright and awful spark of creation" in the ocean abyss, but the aliens were running scared. Yeah, 2 culture seeds got away, but why would they return? They can live practically anywhere. That last scene simply showed that genocide had been averted]].

* EnergyWeapon: The Rapier long-range laser, and practically everything the Aliens shoot at you.

* IronicEcho: A Non-verbal version; [[spoiler: when you get to the fake Island Zero, you can see a statue of something large and bug-like attacking a considerably smaller human, symbolizing the Cabal using the aliens to destroy their enemies. Fast-forward to when Antaeus gets to real Island Zero, the Cabal leaders, who a mission ago requested us to protect them from the now rogue alien forces, are impaled by the aliens on the beach, slowly dying, naked, in the middle of an unnatural winter, and near the center of the island, in the middle of the ruined headquarters, there stands an identical statue, with the upper half of the human missing, now symbolizing something completely different.]]

* OrganicTechnology: In stages. An organic defense tower sprouts up in an early mission as a sign of things to come. The Cabal then starts using organically-augmented vehicles (think Apaches and Abrams tanks with ''[[{{Squick}} meat]]'' on them). [[spoiler: The aliens themselves are all this.]]

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