Earth Atlantis

Review

Well, bugger me - it’s now the end of the 21^st century and the argument that has been circulating the world for more than 100 years about the earth getting warmer has ended on the 31^st of December 2100. And let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty! This sphere with beautiful landscapes and cities, spread across five . . . maybe six or even seven, continents (to make everyone happy), has significantly shrunk. What that means is that our land mass has reduced to 20 million km² from its original 510.1 million km². And yes, most of it is now underwater. This world is now called Earth Atlantis!

Earth Atlantis is a side scroller shooter developed by Pixel Perfex and published by Headup Games. With the use of one of 4 submersibles (one at the start and three to unlock), you’ll dive deep into a post-apocalypse ocean world and hunt mechanical sea monsters.

There are two modes of play: the Quest mode (which is available straight away) and the Hunter mode (which needs to be unlocked). With this, there are the usual three levels of difficulty - easy, normal and hard. 

As you start your first playthrough, you’ll have no choice about which submersible to use; it will be the Nautilus. The other subs are basically pirate ships which will appear as you go through the game and you’ll need to defeat each one to acquire them. Then they’ll be available for selection if you restart a game, or at your last save point, which are mechanical beacons scattered around the map. Each sub has its own unique shooting style, as well as three main skills with a slight variety; one might be faster, or have more armour or better weapons than another, and they all look different!

The world map will be on the top left of your screen, and will display only two icons:  large white dots, and two swords crossing over each other. The swords will pinpoint where the next big fight or boss is located, while the large white dots are where you’ll find the item boxes, which will give you access to deadly secondary weapons. Out of the four weapons available, my favourites are the bouncing bombs and the homing missiles. Some of the bosses will take more time to defeat if you choose the wrong secondary weapon, as they are more or less immune to them. The best part is that you’ll never know before you get there.  As there is no path displayed on the map, it can take a while to reach a location, which is a lot of fun too.

The artwork is just sublime, as is the gameplay. I am always apprehensive when I play these types of games, because they must have fluidity, good controls, challenging, fun action, and plenty of different foe to keep you entertained in order for you to want to see more. Well I can tell you, Earth Atlantis hit all these spots for me!

From the start, you’ll have enemies coming from both sides of the screen, and as you progress through the game, bigger, stronger enemies will come at you with their own specific weapons. But that’s not all - crabs, marine plants and crayfish will shoot projectiles from buildings and rocks, just to make it harder for you. Destroy as many as possible and be rewarded with power-ups, which will upgrade your main weapons up to 4 times. However, if you keep taking hits, you’ll lose health, power-ups and secondary weapons too. It’s fast and furious, especially on the hardcore difficulty. To give you the heads-up, after 5 hours of playing the game on my first playthrough, I only managed to reach 70% of the game. Sure, I am mucking around here and there to find more about the game, but boy it’s good!

Stunning artwork and the game runs smoothly. The tutorial is a few pages to read with easy and straight to the point layout. Nice soundtrack that fits the game perfectly, and responsive controls. On top of that, Earth Atlantis offers great replay-ability!