When we were looking at this game at the preview stage, we said that its strength was that it did exactly what it said on the tin – it was a Naval Warfare game (with sim) elements, set In the arctic circle, and that’s exactly what it is. We found it rather amusing then that we spent just as much time (and sometimes more time) fiddling with aircraft and dealing with aerial combat as we did with ships. In fact, now that we think about it, the only ‘ships’ that ever got to see any action were the subs. It’s oddities like this that really define Naval War: Arctic Circle.

It’s like developer Turbo Tape Games realised how… narrow a true naval sim would be. We were going to say boring, but that would be unfair to those of you who actually do like these kinds of titles. There are plenty of simulation elements to Naval War, but there are also many concessions to the non sim gamer… the result of which sadly means this is a game that’s a bit stuck between worlds. For example, each of the 23 campaign missions (split across two sides), as well as the additional five scenarios, are actually rather short, which means you don’t really have to think or micro-manage for very long.

It’s alright to look at every now and then, but this view really has no point to it

You could spend up to a maximum of five minutes trying to scout around, prepare, etc… but then more often than not everything starts happening all at once and the reality is you either succeed in your goal, or you fail, there and then. Because every scenario is very specific in what you need to do, the AI is then very specific in the manner of which it tries to oppose you, which gives rise to an extreme ‘trial and error’ system. If you fail the mission, it’s no big deal to start again because the scenario is never that long, and you’re obviously going to be better this time because you know what’s coming. A bit disappointing, over all, but again it’s one of those concessions that we talked about earlier.

Granted, the game has several speeds at which events take place, and matches would take a deal longer if you kept it on the 1:1 or the 1:2 setting for most of the time. But because of what we mentioned above, once you set things into motion you don’t really need to. It means that to get any real mileage out of this game you have to force yourself to be patient and play a longer game. This is very much a game of mixed messages, and we reckon game ‘style’ will differ depending on what stereotype you fall into. Non-sim PC gamers will probably find themselves rushing through the missions a bit too quickly to be enjoyable, and sim-gamers will probably end up playing longer missions to try and get more value.

Although watching them blow up is rather entertaining...

The actual sim elements are a bit all over the place as well – you can choose the load-outs of various aircraft before they take off, you can adjust speed, depth/height, patrol patterns, rules of engagement… everything has its use, and many plans can be re-fitted to meet different needs. You’ll want to use ASW Helicopters to find subs, jet-fighters for interception and so on, but if you really needed to you could change the ‘mission’ that the aircraft will be specialised for based on need. Again though, given the specific and pre-defined nature of the scenarios (you can’t choose what ships to bring, what aircraft, how many… anything like that. You work with what you are given), you’ll find yourself with plenty of what you need to see things through, and there’s never really any time to switch out configurations anyway (doing so takes them out of action for a short duration).

It’s funny that in the preview stage our biggest concern was the 3D engine – both in the fact that it’s not really the biggest question mark in this game, and in the fact that it’s just as superfluous as we thought it was going to be. You can switch between the two modes at will, but there’s really no point being in full 3D as you can’t really do much apart from look at whatever it is you have selected – and the graphical quality isn’t even that great. You’ll spend most of your time in the 2D ‘planning’ mode, and the small window they devote to looking at the units in 3D will be nothing more than a nice distraction.

This is where you'll be spending most of your time. The mission will probably be over before those two groups of ships ever get close to each other

Multiplayer is also a weird one – there never seems to be any matches going when you look, but if you create a match you can have a partner and opponent in seconds. This is because the game only supports 1v1 multiplayer, and there’s no matchmaking facilities or official servers or anything; you either create a match, or join a match. The choice of scenarios is also extremely slim – four of the individual missions available in the single-player are made available for use in multiplayer, and you can choose which side you are (or set it to random, for lolz I guess), but we can imagine that getting old fairly quickly as well. The only advantage it has though is that you’ll be facing an actual human opponent, so you won’t know how they plan to carry out their objectives. This is the only instance where you’d have long, protracted engagements that really fit into what the game is trying to be about.

We don’t want to say Naval War was disappointing, because it wasn’t really – the preview stage showed us a simple, yet well-made title that does exactly what it says on the tin – we still couldn’t help but find the game surprising over all though, and not in the good way. Fortunate then that it’s only £14.99, otherwise there might be a value issue to consider, but in terms of recommendation, we’re not really sure who would enjoy this game. Sim fans might find it too light, or too restrictive, and other gamers and more mainstream PC gamers could probably find better games to break into the niche. An ok start perhaps for Turbo Tape, but either they need to quickly move on to another, more filled-out game, or they really need to enhance Arctic Circle with DLC because this is very much a quick-shot title. Make of this review what you will, but perhaps best avoid unless you’re curious.

Top Game Moment: Despite what we’ve said before, seeing everything come together is rather satisfying, especially when you make full use of what ‘sim’ options there are.