aval-themed games are few and far between when it comes to console gaming. Admittedly, it wouldn’t seem like the world of strategic naval warfare would translate over to consoles all that well, especially nowadays with gamers clamoring for the latest titles filled with intense violence and stunning CG cutscenes. Enter Naval Ops: Warship Gunner, an interesting title that KOEI released in June of 2003. Blending naval strategy with arcade action, the title found a loyal fanbase almost immediately. But alas, their diamond in the rough still remained perhaps the only naval-themed title on any console. Well, rather than wait and see what competition they may have, KOEI is poised to release the follow-up to that title in March, entitled Naval Ops: Commander.  Today I got a chance to sit down with an early build of the game and am happy to say that by keeping what made the first game such a success and adding quite a few enhancements to keep the series fresh, Naval Ops: Commander is shaping up to be every seafaring gamer’s dream.

Perhaps taking note of player reactions to the outlandish plot of Naval Ops: Warship Gunner, KOEI gave Commander a more realistic story. Gone are time portals and other fantasy nonsense and in its place are believable conflicts and a fairly gripping storyline. It seems that the powerful nation of Virshia has suddenly begun deploying an armada of “Superships” into the world’s oceans. Thanks in part to their powerful fleet; the nations of the world begin to fall at Virshia’s feet. There are those opposed to the ruthless Virshia rule, and those that are have managed to piece together a resistance fleet of ships to tackle the forces of Virshia.

Control in the game is spot on and thanks to a short Tutorial available at the beginning of the game, getting your sea legs shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Pressing up on the directional pad increases your ships speed, while pressing down will slow you down or toggle your ship to go into reverse. Turning your ship is mapped to the L1 and R1 buttons. Present on-screen at all times is also a targeting reticule which serves two distinct purposes: attacking and navigation. By using the left analog stick, you can move your cursor around the screen to gain a better view of what’s around you. By placing your cursor over an enemy ship, you can select that particular enemy as a target for attack. The cursor also points out which direction you may need to travel in order to find mission objectives. The cursor system is both handy and invaluable, and careful management of it is paramount to success the further you progress in the game. Also, by pressing the right analog stick up or down, you can zoom your camera in or out of your ship’s location, essentially giving you the ability to get a “bird’s eye view” of your location. The premise behind this is neat, but the execution seems to fall a bit short of what could have been an invaluable tool. While the zooming out portion of the camera is helpful and on numerous occasions will give you the upper hand on scouting out an incoming enemy’s location before combat, zooming in proves to be almost worthless, especially when you’re faced with quick moving enemies such as torpedo boats or aircraft.

To make the targeting system a bit easier to manage, the game also features a Manual or Auto system of selecting enemies. While in Manual mode, all you have to do is position your cursor over an enemy ship until changes from red to green and then press the Attack button. While in Auto targeting mode, the cursor will automatically jump onto the nearest enemy to your vessel. Once again, this little feature ends up being more of a detriment than it should be. While it is nice to be able to have the game automatically select a target for you to attack, once the cursor “jumps” to an available enemy so too does the camera, often times leaving your ship off-screen. This causes problems mainly when you’re not paying attention to what direction your ship is moving in, and while your targeting cursor may be locked onto an enemy, your ship may be traveling in the opposite direction that it needs to be. The problem is only compounded when you’re faced with ships that move much faster than you do, and before you know it, you’ll lose almost any bearing of where you are or what direction you need to be traveling in. The game does make it easy to toggle between Manual and Auto mode, as a simple press of the L2 button will switch between them, but it was still disappointing considering that Auto targeting could have been quite helpful if it had been a bit more user-friendly.

Combat, thankfully, doesn’t seem to suffer from any significant problems, and getting your ship into the thick of a battle is both exciting and strategic. Pressing the X button will fire your primary guns, which in most boats are angled cannons that lob shots at enemy ships. Pressing the Circle button causes your ship to shoot out shells that scatter out and detonate within a certain area around you. In addition to these main offenses, you can also outfit your ship with almost 200 different weapons, ranging from machine guns, torpedoes, depth charges, and for the fantasy buffs out there, laser guns and plasma cannons. The game also follows some basic rules of naval warfare, mainly in the fact that your ship is at more of an advantage when taking on enemies from the side rather than head-on. When attacking from the side, all of your ship’s guns are able to fire off rounds, whereas when shooting straight forward only four of your total weapons are able to fire. While simple sounding, this little fact becomes an invaluable tool in your battles and will often times mean the difference between victory and defeat. 

Gameplay is broken down into missions, each of which contains a main objective. Objectives vary quite a bit, ranging from simply destroying a certain number of enemy ships, to more creative outings like crippling an enemy’s air fleet by destroying their runways or escorting allied ships from one location to another. In addition to main objectives you can also complete a wide array of side objectives. While the game doesn’t really tell you what they are exactly, you’ll have the opportunity to tackle them once you complete a mission’s primary goal. After completing a main objective, you have the option of either exiting the level or continuing on in search of more action. While a mission’s main objective may have been fulfilled, your targeting cursor will continue to point out a direction to travel in if there are secondary objectives that can be completed within a level. Not exactly knowing what the secondary objectives were was pretty refreshing, especially considering the fact that games today seem to shuffle you from one goal to the next, with nary a break in between. For those times when you’re simply outgunned or if you made a bad decision in what choice of ship you made, you do have the option of retreating from a level, which results in you failing that particular mission. After fulfilling a main objective, you also have the ability to withdraw from a level, which is handy when your ship is heavily damaged or if you’ve simply had enough combat.

To make things a bit more manageable, you’ll also have the ability to assign up to three escort ships that will travel around with you, and the ability to either purchase or salvage 100 different escort vessels total. These escort ships can be assigned into four different formations: ring, spindle, rear, and vertical. The ring formation increases your overall defenses but also cuts down on your ability to control your ship. The spindle formation arranges your fleet in an offensive position, but in the process also reduces your overall defenses. Moving into the rear formation helps your escort ships provide better reconnaissance support for your own ship, while the vertical formation gives you a higher degree of mobility. Moving into each formation is easy and by pressing the Triangle button you can toggle between the four quickly. An audio cue in the game also lets you know that your ships are moving into position, which is a nice touch.

The escort ships prove to be as invaluable as allies, especially in ship-to-ship combat, and most of the time they’ll end up providing most of the firepower that you are capable of dishing out. I did run into some AI hiccups now and then, especially in tight or small and enclosed areas. Many times, one of my escort ships would become trapped in a small alcove or docking spot, and no matter how much I coaxed it with butts and rams from my own ship, I couldn’t manage to dislodge them. Finally giving up hope that they would ever get free, I ended up just leaving my trapped ship where it was, only to discover that it would eventually rejoin my fleet a few minutes later from out of nowhere. Also, since you are after all piloting around a hulking ship, the escorts will often get in your way, most notably during combat. While I was expecting to see my ships crunch together in a grand display of destruction, I was surprised to see my vessels “bounce” off of each other like they were made of rubber. This little fact doesn’t detract from the overall gameplay, but after seeing such attention devoted to the sheer amount of upgrades and the striking realism, I was a bit put off by the “bouncy ships” effect that I witnessed.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Naval Ops: Warship Gunner was the ability to customize your ship with new parts and weapons. Well, Commander doesn’t disappoint in this area and in fact, adds a great deal of new options to help ensure that the boat you put in the water is the one you want. By completing missions you earn money, which can then be used to research new parts and accessories for your ship. Each new research sessions results in new items that you can select to be included on your ship. And, if this wasn’t enough for you, you also have the ability to incorporate about 1,000 different parts into your ships frame, including hulls, engines, aft and forward bridges, targeting systems, sonar, emergency system, and aircraft. With the option to completely scrap your current vessel, with enough cash and enough parts, you can end up constructing battleships, carriers, and powerful destroyers.

I have to give Naval Ops: Commander credit for once again bringing naval warfare to the masses as well as expanding on the framework of Naval Ops: Warship Gunner. It takes a certain amount of confidence to release a game that is entirely focused on naval/strategic warfare in this day and age of video gaming, and KOEI has certainly turned out a fine title by those standards. But, I’ll be interested to see just how successful this game ends up being, considering the fact that it is in all essence catering to a very select niche market. But, for those gamers out there who are in that market, this title should prove to be an enjoyable play. Hopefully KOEI will address some of the problems that I had with the title. If they do, this game could easily surpass Warship Gunner as the quintessential naval action title around.

Naval Ops: Commander is currently slated to ship in March of 2004, exclusively for the PS2.