History VideoGame / HostileWatersAntaeusRising

* ArrowCam: Warhammer rounds have built-in camera to see where they land.

* InvisibilityCloak: The cloaking device, usually used on Pumas. It renders your unit invisible to visual detection, but you can't fire (or do anything other than move for support units) while it's active. It also conflicts with energy shields, causing them to drain. Since only the Puma is invisible to radar, this makes it much less effective on other units. If their radar outposts have all been taken out, though...

* LadyOfWar / ActionGirl: Borden. She's happy in just about any vehicle as long as it's not a Scarab, and ''loves'' destroying buildings.

* FourIsDeath: Adaptive Cruiser 04 doesn't get the signal, and thus stays sunken.

-->--'''Narrator (Tom Baker)'''

* MeaningfulName: A soldier named Patton whose preferred vehicle is a big tank with a big gun on it? [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeSPatton You don't say!]]

* PostScarcityEconomy: There's Creation Engines producing free food and clothing on every street corner, the Russian member of the Cabal complains that they can no longer control the people by seizing the means of production.
* PretentiousLatinMotto: If the name of the CoolShip wasn't [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antaeus pretentious enough]], the motto is ''Pugio in Averso Belli'' (a dagger used against war).
** [[FridgeBrilliance Works well given the storyline]], though.

* SealedArmyInACan / SealedCastInAMultipack / SealedGoodInACan: Antaeus and her crew.

Okay, so that pretty much clarifies the premise of this particular RealTimeStrategy game written by WarrenEllis. There are, however, a few things that must be made clear:

* AuthorAppeal: Evil corporations plotting the downfall of an ultimately idealistic world? Nanotechnology used for the good of mankind? Nightmarish organic technology? You can tell this is a WarrenEllis script before you even know he wrote it.

* VideoGameFlamethrowersSuck: Averted. While it is the weapon with the shortest range in the entire game, the flamethrower is very useful. It deals high continuous damage, and it is possible to set both enemy structure and units on fire, which will slowly damage them until destroyed. The flamethrower is particularly effective when coupled with a cloaking device and used for quick surprise attacks on enemy facilities.

** Unfortunately, the sequel is likely never coming...

* CloningBlues: The excuse given for why you can't simply create five copies of the same guy, thus limiting your autonomous forces to whatever chips you have on hand. It's said that they attempted running multiple copies before, which just made them go berserk since the participants couldn't accept that they were no longer unique. You'd think a little psychological conditioning could take care of such a thing. Then again, given some of their psychological profiles, perhaps these are the only people they could get to willingly sign up for such a program.

* MutuallyExclusivePowerups: You can equip a unit with both a cloaking device and a shield, but the former drains the latter as long as its active, rendering the combination somewhat pointless.

* MeaningfulName: A soldier named Patton whose preferred vehicle is a big tank with a big gun on it. [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeSPatton You don't say!]]

'''1'''. This game is the apotheosis of ''awesome''. Seriously, try it.

'''2'''. It is a hybrid of real-time-turns strategy and vehicle simulator.

'''3'''. It is very, ''very'' British.

This VideoGame provides examples of:

* AdaptiveAbility: [[spoiler: The Species.]] See GoneHorriblyRight below.

* AntiAir: The AA towers. They come in a fairly weak four-barrel model, a stronger two-barrel hybrid, and a much stronger alien version. The normal type is quite weak, the hybrid type can shoot down most anything in a few shots, and the alien type is so powerful that its range exceeds any weapon you can mount to your aircraft.

* ArcWords / TitleDrop: Several times during cutscenes. [[spoiler:"These are hostile waters" is the final line of the game, cementing the DownerEnding]].

* ArtificialAtmosphericActions: The various Soulcatcher pilots will talk to each other and you, such as mocking each other for perceived differences in skill. Thing is, these responses are very limited, so they repeat them quite often. The responses are just vague enough to make it sound coherent no matter what pattern they end up in, though, and usually pretty fun, since most are [[JerkAss jerkasses]].
** They'll also chew each other out for getting blown up -- with increasing annoyance if one of them gets blown up multiple times.
** While the pilots' conversations are usually legible, they can sometimes come across... oddly.

* BodyHorror: The Species' reproductive habits. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K9uoZPldNI To wit]]: [[spoiler:[[TraumaticCSection caesarian by hooked tentacles]]]].

* CrosshairAware: Inexplicably used by a boss (of sorts). There's no real purpose to it. The attack tracks perfectly and is next to impossible to dodge unless you use cover to block the shot.

* 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 two of the Species' Culture Stones 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 monsters decide they want to come back home, the human race is '''fucked'''.]]
** YMMV, though. The ending can be viewed 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]].
*** Plus very little is mentioned on what exactly happened to Cruiser 04. For all we know, all it needed to get ready for the next war could have been just a new receiver with which it reads the re-awakening signal (although one can argue that getting the device to Cruiser 04 might be a different matter altogether).

* InvisibilityCloak: The cloaking device, usually used on Pumas. It renders your unit invisible to visual detection, but you can't fire (or do anything other than move for support units) while it's active. Since only the Puma is invisible to radar, this makes it much less effective on other units. If their radar outposts have all been taken out, though...

* {{Terraform}} / HostileTerraforming: 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.

->"''Twenty years ago this was the scene of the last war on Earth. This Pacific island is where the future was built. Where the old guard, the fossilized establishment was brought down. Twenty years have been spent building a new Earth. A world of plenty, and peace. But the old guard never went away. The remaining monsters of the 20th century, the [[PresidentEvil death-lovers]], the [[CorruptCorporateExecutive power brokers]], the old men who lived on theft and hate, have formed a [[OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness Cabal]], with the intent to break the world apart. With new machinery, unimagined by the outside world, they have incorporated the island into a newly grown chicane of similar islands, the Earth literally forced by machines to throw islands up into an artificial design. The Cabal control their operations from the shielded island in the center of the chicane. Operations for war against a world that's given war up. It's up to the new society of two thousand and thirty two to relearn war. To revive the last of the Adaptive Cruisers. Give it the ability to lend battle vehicles autonomous controls by bonding their systems with the chip-contained minds of dead soldiers; and to send them all into the chicane to fight their way through to Island Zero... and the nightmare, waiting there to be set loose upon the planet. These are [[TitleDrop Hostile Waters]]...''"
-->--'''Narrator ([[HeyItsThatVoice Tom Baker]])'''

* TitleDrop: Several times during cutscenes. [[spoiler:"These are hostile waters" is the final line of the game, cementing the DownerEnding]].

** The Behemoth Heavy Tank has double the equipment slots of any other unit and firepower to match, but is extremely expensive to outfit and you can only use it in the last three missions. In the first, by the time you've managed to secure and integrate it, you shouldn't need it. In the second, they serve as an effect scavenge/repair duo while you take out the primary targets with a Puma (which is an InstantWinCondition). Finally, the last mission is timed, has a river running between the various enemy outposts, and filled with AA, so you can't use the tanks anyway.

* CriticalExistenceFailure
* CrosshairAware: Inexplicably used by a boss (of sorts). For no good reason, since the attack cannot be dodged without putting the environment in between, either.

* DiminishingReturnsForBalance: Multiple copies of the same enhancement (reload speed, armor, shields) provide progressively less of a boost. This is a moot point early in the game, since you can only fit one or two of each, but the high-end vehicles can load a ton of enhancements.

** The Vulture in the final mission is the fastest and most lightly armored plane in the game, and you can't even mount any armor or shields to it.

* {{Invisibility}}: The cloaking device, usually used on Pumas. It's much less effective on other units if the enemy still has radar towers, since only the Puma is invisible to radar. If their radar outposts have all been taken out, though...

** You can ''technically'' mount a Warhammer (normally a mortar weapon) on an air vehicle, and it will attempt to use it for bombing, which looks cool and fiery and destructive... 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...

* AwesomeButImpractical: The quick order system, meant to let the player give orders quicker, without leaving the cockpit. The alternative is changing back to the Battle Room... [[RealTimeWithPause which pauses the game]].

* [[spoiler:TheEndOrIsIt]]

** The Warhammer artillery launcher. It fires ArrwCam shells with a massive area of effect. Patton loves it and complains if given anything else.

* BodyHorror: The Species' reproductive habits. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K9uoZPldNI To wit]]: [[spoiler:[[TraumaticCSection cesarian by hooked tentacles]]]].

* AntiAir: The AA towers. They come in a fairly weak four-barrel model, a stronger two-barrel hybrid, and a much stronger alien version. The normal type is quite weak, but the hybrid and alien types are very powerful and can target you from quite long ranges.

* AirborneMook: Enemy Apaches and [[spoiler: Alien light flyers]].
** Note that [[spoiler: the Species was originally meant to be purely land-based; the forms they evolved for aircraft are usually very weakly armored.]]

--> '''Sinclair:''' (cheerfully) That was sheer quality; well done!
--> '''Ransom:''' (bitterly) Save it for someone who ''gives a [[PrecisionFStrike fuck]]''.
--> '''Sinclair:''' (still cheerful) Don't mention it. Keep it up and you may get a special mention!
* ArtificialStupidity: Your units have no sense of self-preservation and will happily throw themselves against unending hordes of enemies if allowed to, pathfinding can be finicky, especially for ground units on rough terrain, and it's quite possible for massed units to slaughter one another through friendly fire.

** 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. It is more useful against slow moving land vehicle and turrets.

* {{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]].

* [[spoiler:BugWar]]: The last stages of the game.
* CloningBlues: The excuse given for why you can't simply create five copies of the same guy, thus limiting your autonomous forces to whatever chips you have on hand. It's said that they attempted running multiple copies before, which just made them go berserk since the participants couldn't accept that they were no longer unique. You'd think a little psychological conditioning could take care of such a thing.
** This is especially strange since none of these people display any other psychological problems when faced with being turned into a bodiless mind bound to a machine for the sole purpose of waging war.
*** 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. As for the idea of being bodiless minds -- many of them act as though they AREN'T. Only Ransom during a cutscene and Kroker seem to actually display any sort of knowledge that they aren't actually "there" -- everyone else just acts like they woke up from a 20-year sleep.
* CloudCuckoolander: Kroker isn't the kind of person you'd call sane. He'll complain any time you take over his vehicle, talk about how he can kill you just by looking at you, and is generally a bit loopy.

* 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.]]

* [[spoiler: KillEmAll: The Antaeus' entire crew, PlayerCharacter included, sacrifice themselves in the ending sequence]].
* KillItWithFire: In one of the latter missions, you're given the schematics for a vehicle-mounted flamethrower. Its short range is offset by the fact that it has the highest DPS of any weapon in the game.

* NotPlayingFairWithResources: Though it is fair in the sense that your methods and their methods are completely distinct, the enemy has literally infinite resources so long as at least one oil rig is intact. Bust that and they run out of resources within a minute. This is what makes the Puma such a GameBreaker; properly-equipped, it can sneak behind enemy lines and destroy the rigs, making the mission a cakewalk. Of course, later on, the game does tend to screw you by spawning more rigs mid-mission.

* 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. Several will complain if you take control of their vehicle away from them.

* ArtificialAtmosphericActions: The various Soulcatcher pilots will talk to each other and you, such as mocking each other for perceived differences in skill. Thing is, these response are very limited, so they repeat them quite often. The responses are just vague enough to make it sound coherent no matter what pattern they end up in, though, and usually pretty fun, since most are [[JerkAss jerkasses]].

** 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.It is more useful against slow moving land vehicle and turrets.

* {{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]].
* BodyHorror: The Species' reproductive habits. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K9uoZPldNI To wit]]: [[spoiler: [[TraumaticCSection cesarian by hooked tentacles]]]].
* BookEnds: [[spoiler: Antaeus rises from the seabed in the opening cutscene. In the ending, she sinks, and is last seen settling back onto the ocean floor]].
* BottomlessMagazines: Ammo and fuel are infinite (except for the Antaeus' guns, which get a limited number of shots depending on the mission), 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.
* BrainUploading: The new peaceful future has the unfortunate side effect of nobody being qualified to crew the ''Antaeus''. Fortunately some of the soldiers in its last battle were trialing prototype 'Soulcatcher' chips which [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp3wPdM5Dz8&feature=related preserved their minds on death]].
* [[spoiler: BugWar]]: The last stages of the game.

*** 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. As for the idea of being bodiless minds - many of them act as though they AREN'T. Only Ransom during a cutscene and Kroker seem to actually display any sort of knowledge that they aren't actually "there" - everyone else just acts like they woke up from a 20-year sleep.

* CosmopolitanCouncil: The Cabal Council 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 "[[DirtyCommunists de old dayz]]", a German chick that wants to ''"take major urban areas back to the Stone Age"'', plus an assortment of evil guys who look like gangsters, drug lords and corrupt politicians. Oh and the obligatory cigar-smoking ''El Presidente'' lookalike. See the whole thing [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcVxeXiL57I here]].

* 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 Species, 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 two of the Species' Culture Stones 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 monsters 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]].

* FlyingSaucer: Apparently human-made, created in order to control the populace through fear of unknown and to divert their attention from real conspiracies.

* FriendlySniper: Madsen is, to quote the game's personnel files "a good human being and scary as hell". His radio banter is friendly and supportive, and his combat behaviour reflects his sniper nature in that he tends to stay still and fire carefully aimed shots.

* GreyGoo: The [[spoiler: "alien"]] antagonists have a grey goo disassembler cannon. It's up to you to blow up the cooling radiators before it destroys Central, the world capital. Once you do that, the next shot blows it to hell and spreads disassemblers throughout their base. If you feel like being merciful, you can take it out before it destroys the first two cities on its list, though this is a mite harder to do.

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

* {{Invisibility}}: The cloaking device, usually used on Pumas. It's much less effective on other units if the enemy still has radar towers since only the Puma is invisible to radar. If their radar outposts have all been taken out, though...

* 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.]]

* NanoMachines: The plotline is based on nanotechnology. In the year 2012, nanotech "Creation Engines" were developed and released to the world at large. Able to dispense anything a person could want, at any time - on demand - they cause [[TheSingularity "the world to go sane"]]; revolution happened, [[ObstructiveBureaucrat power cliques]] were overthrown and the world becomes a {{Utopia}}. The game takes place is the fictional year 2032, where the old power elites have perverted nanotechnology for their own uses, creating weapons of war with which to blackmail the rest of the world into servitude again. [[spoiler:Or so it seems, at first...]]

* NotPlayingFairWithResources: Though it is fair in the sense that your methods and their methods are completely distinct, the enemy has literally infinite resources so long as at least one oil rig is intact. Bust that and they run out of resources within a minute. This is what makes the Puma such a GameBreaker; properly-equipped, it can sneak behind enemy lines and destroy the rigs, making the mission a cakewalk. Of course, later on the game does tend to screw you by spawning more rigs mid-mission.

* 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 Species themselves are ''all'' this.]]

* ShipShapeShipwreck: Makes an effort to play this as straight as possible while also subverting it. Antaeus Cruiser 00 is in remarkably good condition after spending 20 years on the ocean bed. It manages to surface and set sail just fine despite the long rest. Thankfully, nothing essential got damaged too badly, so after a visit in a wet-dock the ship is at (or at least, near) full operational capacity, though they are signs she never gets as good as new. 00's sister ship, 04 isn't as lucky. She doesn't wake from her nap on the ocean bed. They justify this through the use of advanced nanotechnology. Both 00 and 04 have creation engines on board with trillions of the little things, which would have repaired 04, too, if it had received the signal.

* {{Terraform}} / HostileTerraforming: 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.
* TitleDrop: Several times during cutscenes. [[spoiler: "These are hostile waters" is the final line of the game, cementing the DownerEnding]].

** 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.
** Island Zero. [[spoiler: Both of them. The first is a trap and introduces several new hybrid units for you to contend with, even spawning alien factories within spitting distance of the carrier. The second has you arrive at the actual Island Zero to find the Cabal's leaders brutally killed, leaving Antaeus and her crew as the only ones capable of fighting back against the Species]].