HomeFeaturesUltimate Admiral: Age of Sail
The Flare Path: Dogs and LobstersQualified Ultimate Admiral admiration
Qualified Ultimate Admiral admiration
I pride myself on being able to spot game flaws lickety-split, but it took me two whole days to put my finger onUltimate Admiral: Age of Sail’skey shortcoming. Game-Labs' new surf-and-turf RTS is horribly,unforgivably, short of dinosaurs. Compare and contrast:
A)Having landed on a small tropical island to gather fresh fruit and fill water barrels, the crew of HMS Vortigaunt run into a party of Spanish sailors engaged in the same activity. A fairly dull skirmish ensues.
B)Having landed on a small tropical island to gather fresh fruit and fill water barrels, the crew of HMS Vortigaunt run into a Tyrannosaurus Rex busy tearing the throat out of a wounded Ankylosaurus. A flipping ace skirmish ensues.
The half of this £34 Early Access offering most in need of thunder lizards is definitely the dry half. As I’ll explain in a minute, the ship scraps are rather good even without plesiosaurs plucking marines off poop decks. The uncharitable thoughts tend to appear after the longboats have grooved beaches - when the lines of soggy-stockinged infantry are trading musket volleys or tramping through jungle and o’er hills. They are essentially the same uncharitable thoughts that slightly tainted my view of Game-Labs' American Civil Wartwosome:why isn’t important tactical information more readily available?… I wish there was something more to this than lots of right-clicking and the odd “Charge!” order.
I (still) admire the smart foes, and adore the way I can crayon unit paths directly onto topography. Group-selecting a bunch of units, then, with a single fluid click-and-drag, scribing a sinuous battle line at their destination? Marvellous. The formation-free UA:AOS makes choreographing troops gloriously easy.
What I struggle with is situations like the one pictured above. Two of the friendly regiments are wavering, the rest are as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar. I should and need to be able to tell the shaky from the steadfast at a glance, but I can’t because of the game’s strange antipathy towards that RTS staple, the info bar.
I assume the ships are the reason sprites have been given the heave-ho.
At sea at least, UA:AOS is a match for all of its peers. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s probably top seadog. It’s a while since I played both TalonSoft/Akella’s Age of Sail series*, and Empire: Total War, but I don’t remember enjoying their turnless naval tussles as much as I’ve enjoyed the ship-to-ship actions I’ve fought this past couple of days.
- Still the subject ofimpressive modding efforts.
Control is as elegant* as it is on land and, for some reason, Game-Labs' allergy to info bars doesn’t apply to brine denters; hovering above the crow’s nest of every ship is an icon showing the condition of hull, side planking and sails. Whereas footsloggers always look to you for instruction, individual ships can be passed to the AI if things get too hectic.
- And as minimal. I’d have appreciated more formation options than “line of battle”.
There’s colour, novelty, and intimacy out at sea that’s absent on shore. As well as selecting ammo types, you can specify aim points on a particular target using what is almost a first-person view. Want to ventilate a stern gallery, rake a quarterdeck with grape shot, or attempt to hole a threat below the water line? Click on the desired spot and your gunners will do their best to oblige.
Occasionally a hurtling sphere will topple a mast, kindle a fire, or have an explosive encounter with a magazine. While blazes don’t produce the towering smoke columns they should, and rare terminal detonations don’t eject nearly enough debris, they do - along with special damage types like crew shock and broken pumps - endow wet combat with the kind of drama and twists that make tactical wargames tempting AAR subjects.
Grappling an enemy ship in readiness for boarding could so easily have been a simple matter of closing to within a specified range and dabbing a key. In fact it requires deftness and timing, relative angles and speeds also being considered. Because a seized ship is more valuable than a sunk one (prizes can be pressed into service immediately, and join your persistent fleet in campaigns) it’s rare for a sea skirmish to pass without at least one exciting gunwale-grazing boat chase.
Given my preference for the game’s salty side and deep-rooted suspicion of linear campaigns, you’ll understand why I’m hoping promised story mode spectaculars likeTrafalgarandCape St Vincenteventually find their way into thesingle battle folder, and that UA:AOS gains a well-equipped skirmish generator before its nine-month Early Access phase comes to an end at Christmas.
