Naval War: Arctic Circle

Naval War: Arctic circle is the new real time strategy game published by Paradox Interactive and developed by Turbo Tape Games. 

Naval War: Arctic Circle is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game where the player battles enemy naval and aerial forces for power of the arctic seas and eventually world domination through tight paced and detail oriented strategy. The game play takes place along the Norwegian and British coast as well as in the areas of Iceland, Greenland and the North Americas.

Now in saying its a RTS game do not get confused in thinking this is Starcraft with real world naval and air units. This game is a very unique title when comparing to any RTS games in the last 5+ years. Many of the missions in the single player campaigns involve very specific goals and objectives. In many cases the mission will limit you to how many units you can lose or hamstring you to certain engagement conditions. You will also be involved with protection missions to keep civilian units from harm.

Fans of military simulations will love it. A more casual strategy gamer may feel a bit lost.

Arctic Circle has a great amount of depth and detail to the units involved in the conflict. Naval vessels of every type from Frigates to Carriers are represented. You also have a wide array of aircraft including fighters, bombers, surveillance, refueling and a variety of helicopters as well. Of course it wouldn’t be complete without the constant threat of submarines always looking to take you out when not expected.

The strategy is slow paced in Arctic Circle. If you tried to play the game at the slowest setting you would be still trying to complete the campaign next year sometime. Thankfully the game allows you to speed up time in excess of 120 times normal game speed. So much of your time playing is a usual ordeal of planning out a ton of tactics to aircraft patrol areas and ship movement and then turn up the speed until the game automatically drops to default speed because something happen. It is a much more deliberate speed to the game then your typical RTS game.

Presentation wise the game gets the job done. Its not going to impress you in any aspect. The graphics are very basic. The models of the ships and units are fairly well done but the texture work overall is not very attractive. The sound of the game is a bit lacking as well. The music is very repetitive and could have used a bit more work. I would have liked to have heard more detailed radio chatter and more inspiring music during battles.

A video preview for you.

The controls and UI for the game are well done. It doesn’t take long to figure out how to do most actions in the game. Launching aircraft and setting the mission type and patrol area are all handled very well within the interface. It is pretty easy to understand how to do most things with your units after finishing the tutorials. There are a few things that are a bit harder to figure out and find then they should be. Overall however the game does a good job putting complex commands in a easy to understand layout.

Arctic Circle has a good variety of modes to play. The game has an extensive campaign along with skirmish, LAN and on-line modes. The factions in the game include the United States, the Russian federation, the Nordic countries and NATO. Arctic Circle tells a story about a power struggle for control of the world’s resources and supply lines in the Polar Regions. Its a decent setup but the dialog screens between missions are a bit rough graphically speaking and could have been dressed up a bit better.

Make no mistake...Arctic Circle has some great things going on under the hood. This is a VERY niche game. You need to really be interested in the subject material. You also have to be interested in a very tactical oriented strategy game that is lite on graphical details but heavy on military strategy and tactics. There is definitely an audience for this title as there really has not been anything similar released recently. Just make sure you are part of that niche before shipping out.

Gregory Curtis, Noobfeed.com