[typing]
If you bought a PC with Windows 95 back in the day,
chances are it came with a version of the Windows 95 companion CD.
This not only contained operating system archives,
but a whole slew of things that showed you just how awesome Windows 95 could be.
There were demos, music videos and even a few trailers.
One of these trailers was for a game called Deadly Tide,
and I still remember the first time I watched it,
thinking, "Holy crap, this has to be the best game in the history of the universe!"
It's got aliens and shooting
and audible explosions in outer space!
Wow, look at those graphics, too!
There's no way games will ever look any better than this.
So after this, I ended up getting Hellbender,
and pretty much never looked back because it was frickin' sweet.
Until some years later when I got Deadly Tide,
published in 1996 by Microsoft
and developed by Rainbow Studios.
Yes, the same Rainbow Studios that also released The Hive the year before.
Actually, the two games are practically identical on a base level.
But we're here for Deadly Tide,
so maybe we'll look at The Hive another day.
"The height of battle. The depth of fear."
The pinnacle of ambiguity.
The lameness of marketing blurbs.
"Aliens have landed and Earth is drowning."
"Your mission is hazardous, your chances are slim."
"Every fathom brings new danger–"
"and another beat of the clock."
"Tick... Tick... Tick..."
"You're finished."
Wow. I've already lost the game, and I haven't even gotten past the back of the box.
The screenshots on display here definitely match up with the trailer, too,
showing graphics that are way beyond what you'd expect for a 1996 game.
Of course, this is all a clever illusion,
as the entire game is essentially a pre-rendered full-motion video cutscene.
Inside the box, you get the usual starchy paperwork
crap that Microsoft products come with,
the game itself consisting of four CD-ROMs,
and a manual, which covers the incredibly complex control scheme.
That is, you aim and shoot and...
uh... that's it.
Pretty much everything in the game is streamed directly from the CDs,
so the game actually only takes up about 17 MB,
even though it uses four discs.
Start up Deadly Tide and you're greeted with the deadly menu... tide.
Uh, the only part of the game that ISN'T streaming video.
You can only change the options you'd expect,
like video quality, difficulty, volume,
how often you want it to insult your mother,
whether or not you prefer handcuffs to rope, etc.
You also get the option to use a joystick,
but really, that's making the game a bit tougher than need be,
and you'll see why soon.
Begin the game and enjoy the intriguingly retro-sounding Microsoft logo.
[synth keyboard music]
Somewhere out there, Phil Collins is nodding in agreement.
Then a strangely precise date appears,
just to make sure you don't confuse what is about to happen
with, say, the 9th or 11th of the month.
Suddenly, a large alien ship materializes,
with the intention of screwing up humanity's January 10th,
and presumably holding a grudge against Byron Haskin
for being rejected as a 1950s "War of the Worlds" prop.
We're then shown the Lack of Imaginative Naming Initiatives moon base,
and some poor dudes who may as well be wearing red shirts
start preparing for takeoff.
An nearly epic battle commences,
with the Rebel Alliance fighters
slowly dwindling against the awesome firepower of the Galactic Empire!
Or... something like that.
Just when all seems lost, Mr. Randy Quaid wannabe here
gets the bright idea to fly right up the butthole
of one of the alien motherships,
complete with cheesy one-liner.
PILOT: Welcome to Earth.
[explosion]
LGR: But of course, one ship gets away and heads straight for Earth,
proceeding to...
...hang around under the ocean for five years.
REPORTER: This is a World Com news brief.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the arrival of an alien aquatic species on our planet.
It is still a mystery why these creatures have come to Earth.
They live at the bottom of the ocean.
LGR: So apparently these aliens aren't really doing anything,
other than raising the sea level and
refusing to pay their cable bill or something.
Obviously, this annoys both beachfront real estate agents
and cable operators,
so they start looking to the
Earth Ocean Alliance for answers!
Turns out YOU are one of the pilots for the EOA's new prototype Hydra underwater attack craft.
And your base is conveniently under attack right now.
You're then dropped into one of the few Hydra ships, ready for action.
Once all of this non-interaction ends,
more non-interaction begins.
Kinda.
You see, Deadly Tide is a rail shooter.
Your path is largely predetermined,
and it's simply your job to shoot every strange alien thing that comes along on-screen.
You literally just aim, shoot and maybe toss a bomb out once in a while.
There is no swapping weapons on the fly or reloading, you just shoot.
preferably in bursts,
and try to make sure your laser doesn't overheat
and your shields stay up and have time to regenerate.
You can't dodge enemy fire,
so basically it's all just a reflex test
and the quicker you shoot dudes, the longer it'll take for you to die.
This method of gameplay is how they managed to make the game look so good,
as the backgrounds are just videos of pre-rendered 3D environments
and all of the action takes place with animated sprites
flying around on top of it.
Same thing that was done with The Hive,
and other FMV rail shooter games like Rebel Assault.
But there is one thing that really sets Deadly Tide apart from the most,
and that is the Rotate Mode.
For most of the game, you're moving forward at all times,
shooting at stuff as it flies past you.
But every so often, you'll stop moving and enter Rotate Mode,
where you can actually look around in 360 degrees
and shoot at enemies coming from all angles.
It's a pretty awesome effect for a rail shooter like this,
accomplished by using seamless panoramic video backdrops
that can be panned around by using your cursor.
Freaking blew my mind as a kid,
but nowadays, these sections annoy me more than they entertain.
Nine times out of ten, if I die in a game, it's during one of these sections.
and that's because every time you try to aim,
the whole screen moves along with you.
And since you have fast-moving angry enemies coming at all sides,
it's incredibly easy to get killed by one off-screen.
The sound effects aren't always a cue, either.
Sometimes you'll hear one that sounds like it's directly in front of you,
but it's directly behind you.
This just doesn't happen in the regular Flight Mode,
since enemies never shoot from an area you can't see.
And the transition between Flight and Rotate Mode is seamless,
so you're sometimes caught off guard
and getting blasted up the butt without warning.
When you can get a beat on the enemies,
it's pretty fun to go around shooting the crap out of everything,
and it's more forgiving than their previous game, The Hive.
And just when then monotony of holding down the mouse button sets in,
the gameplay is changed up a bit.
either with different scenery,
or commanding an alien ship,
or even getting out of the ship and walking around the ocean floor.
The gameplay itself doesn't actually change with any of these modes.
Everything works almost exactly the same.
But it's effective in mixing up the atmosphere from time to time.
Plus, the game itself is only about an hour and a half long,
so you don't get too much of a chance to get thoroughly annoyed at everything.
Although, honestly, the ending will probably annoy the balls off you.
At least it did me.
Seriously, I am now in the market for new balls because of this ending.
I normally wouldn't spoil things like this,
but I am serious when I say this is probably the most anticlimactic ending I have ever seen.
As the cliched story comes to a close,
you blow up the alien mothership, you're surrounded by some drones,
one of the bigger ships gets away,
and then some guy on the news
says you might be dead.
But they hope you're not.
Fade to black.
That's it.
You're sent back to the main menu,
No "congrats," no "game over," no "to be continued,"
no score, not even any freakin' credits!
Maybe Rainbow Studios planned another game in the near future,
but nothing ever came of it.
In fact, after this they went on to make the Motocross Madness games,
followed by ATV Offroad Fury,
MX vs. ATV Unleashed, and so on,
leaving Deadly Tide and their rail shooter genre behind altogether.
And this is why you don't do stupid cliffhanger endings on games
if you don't know for sure that another game is on the way,
because it makes the entire preceding experience seem like it was for nothing.
It pisses off your fans,
especially when there's not even a simple "game over" screen to end things.
I mean, wow. It's like being cut off mid-sentence.
Ah, well, the experience leading up to the awful ending is pretty cool, though.
I mean, it's mindless arcade shooting,
but at least it's pretty arcade shooting,
even though the full-motion video compression is really showing its age nowadays.
It could definitely use an HD remake of some kind.
It's more playable than The Hive,
the story is predictably simple, but it works,
and things go boom!
A lot.
If you like that kinda thing, it's got it.
I'm not sure I would say one should go out of their way to play it,
but you could definitely do worse with FMV rail shooters of the time.
It even works just fine on every version of Windows
I've tried up through Windows 7 64-bit.
So if you do come across it for a few bucks, I'd definitely grab it and try it out.
As long as you don't mind endings
that have no respect for you or your feelings whatsoever.