Warship Gunner 2
Build your own naval supervessals... and blow everyone else's up.
Published: February 3, 2006
Thank goodness for KOEI and developer Micro Cabin. Without them delivering Warship Gunner 2 to our offices, there's no way in hell any of us would have given a game where you alternate between building ships and taking them to sea to blow subs, other ships and the occasional land-based target to teeny tiny bits any kind of chance. But they did, and so we played. And hooboy are you in for a lot of reading.
Actually summing up the storyline (as we've digested it so far) isn't too tough, but the rest of the game, that's going to take a few words. Essentially you play a naval commander at the very end of his training, set to take over his own ship for the Wilkian Navy. Wilkia, the game explains, is an East Asian country that managed to stay independent rather than being sucked into, presumably, the U.S.S.R., and eventually gained support from parts of Europe and Japan.
After slogging through a good hour or so of tutorials (yes, the game is rather dense, but we wanted to make sure we understood everything for this preview; it might take less for others, and the controls are fairly intuitive), we finally made it out onto the open water for our final test, only to be attacked by our own ships. It seems a coup led by a former Naval leader overthrew the government and seized power, though luckily the king was on board one of the ships overseeing the training.
Left with no choice, we headed for open waters and out into the Pacific en route to Japan for safe harbor. As soon as we arrived, however, we were captured and left to wait while the political powers that be started their negotiations. With a new government in place, and an apparent alignment with Japan, it didn't look good. Suddenly, the "new" Wilkian forces attacked our docked ships and the hard-nosed instructor we trained with busted us out with the help of a Japanese friend.
Once again we set out on the run, this time towards the U.S. settling in Hawaii where the game got into the second part of the tutorials on building ships, upgrading and R&D for new parts. As we learned this, it seemed the new government of Wilkia began threatening the world's major superpowers with a nebulous promise of a show of force if they didn't fall under the Japan/Wilkian alliance. Left with no choice, the defected Wilkian fleet redubbed themselves Freedom Fighters and hooked up with the U.S. forces as an impending attack on Hawaii looked apparent.
Warship Gunner 2 is an excessively complex game, though it is presented in an easy enough manner. Missions are doled out fairly regularly amid bursts of still-framed storylines that detail the political intrigue going on around the main player. No matter what kind of ship (destroyer, cruiser, battleship, battlecarrier or the new frigate), the controls are the same. L1 and R1 steer the ship left and right, the right analog stick can zoom via binoculars, or pull the camera in or out, the left analog stick aims your various guns, R2 can lock onto targets in range for better accuracy and holding L2 will kick off turrets that can shoot down missiles or torpedoes inbound.
The right side of the screen offers all the different weapons (deck guns, depth charges, torpedoes, machine guns, etc.) chosen before you head into battle. Triangle and X cycle up and down through them, Circle fires the weapon, and Square puts you into a mode where turning the sights will steer the ship as well, though this rules out using torpedoes, and is generally just a bad idea. Firing off the big main guns give the screen a little shake, and there's definitely a sense of power and sweet, sweet destruction as you watch the rounds arc toward their target.
In fact, the combat itself is fairly standard stuff (at least as far as we've played, we didn't get get to tool around in sub-vs.-sub battles) just means you can get into making attacks that much easier. The combat is fairly slow stuff, but it is very, very fun to learn how to lead your targets -- particularly with torpedoes, and it comes much more naturally than you'd think juggling all these things might.
Actually summing up the storyline (as we've digested it so far) isn't too tough, but the rest of the game, that's going to take a few words. Essentially you play a naval commander at the very end of his training, set to take over his own ship for the Wilkian Navy. Wilkia, the game explains, is an East Asian country that managed to stay independent rather than being sucked into, presumably, the U.S.S.R., and eventually gained support from parts of Europe and Japan.
After slogging through a good hour or so of tutorials (yes, the game is rather dense, but we wanted to make sure we understood everything for this preview; it might take less for others, and the controls are fairly intuitive), we finally made it out onto the open water for our final test, only to be attacked by our own ships. It seems a coup led by a former Naval leader overthrew the government and seized power, though luckily the king was on board one of the ships overseeing the training.
Left with no choice, we headed for open waters and out into the Pacific en route to Japan for safe harbor. As soon as we arrived, however, we were captured and left to wait while the political powers that be started their negotiations. With a new government in place, and an apparent alignment with Japan, it didn't look good. Suddenly, the "new" Wilkian forces attacked our docked ships and the hard-nosed instructor we trained with busted us out with the help of a Japanese friend.
Once again we set out on the run, this time towards the U.S. settling in Hawaii where the game got into the second part of the tutorials on building ships, upgrading and R&D for new parts. As we learned this, it seemed the new government of Wilkia began threatening the world's major superpowers with a nebulous promise of a show of force if they didn't fall under the Japan/Wilkian alliance. Left with no choice, the defected Wilkian fleet redubbed themselves Freedom Fighters and hooked up with the U.S. forces as an impending attack on Hawaii looked apparent.
Warship Gunner 2 is an excessively complex game, though it is presented in an easy enough manner. Missions are doled out fairly regularly amid bursts of still-framed storylines that detail the political intrigue going on around the main player. No matter what kind of ship (destroyer, cruiser, battleship, battlecarrier or the new frigate), the controls are the same. L1 and R1 steer the ship left and right, the right analog stick can zoom via binoculars, or pull the camera in or out, the left analog stick aims your various guns, R2 can lock onto targets in range for better accuracy and holding L2 will kick off turrets that can shoot down missiles or torpedoes inbound.
The right side of the screen offers all the different weapons (deck guns, depth charges, torpedoes, machine guns, etc.) chosen before you head into battle. Triangle and X cycle up and down through them, Circle fires the weapon, and Square puts you into a mode where turning the sights will steer the ship as well, though this rules out using torpedoes, and is generally just a bad idea. Firing off the big main guns give the screen a little shake, and there's definitely a sense of power and sweet, sweet destruction as you watch the rounds arc toward their target.
In fact, the combat itself is fairly standard stuff (at least as far as we've played, we didn't get get to tool around in sub-vs.-sub battles) just means you can get into making attacks that much easier. The combat is fairly slow stuff, but it is very, very fun to learn how to lead your targets -- particularly with torpedoes, and it comes much more naturally than you'd think juggling all these things might.
