A few years ago, I reviewed Waves of Steel, which is an interesting little naval combat game that gets kind of weird. Totally recommend it. But when that review went up, a community member told me that it’s a spiritual follow-up to Naval Ops: Warship Gunner and its sequel, Warship Gunner 2.

“Alright,” I thought. “Probably like Naval Ops: Warship Gunner but much weirder.” 

The whole name sounds like a dry naval simulator, of which there are many of. My belief was further affirmed by the fact that the games were published by Koei, one of the biggest purveyors of dry simulators this side of Microprose. But I earmarked the game anyway, picked up a copy sometime later, and it sat on my shelf until I’ve finally now gotten around to it.

As it turns out, it was pretty weird to begin with.

EVERYTHING COMES OUT IN THE WARSH

In Naval Ops: Warship Gunner, you play as the collective crew of a WWII warship that gets sucked into a portal and spit out onto a parallel Earth. On parallel Earth, a global empire is making things crappy, and the rebellious Freedom Fighters are waging naval warfare to make them stop.

Their biggest problem is that the Empire has giant “Superships” that keep sinking the Freedom Fighters. But now the Freedom Fighters have you – suddenly the only competent warship crew in the dimension, and also the only competent ship architects. Architects? Whatever. You’re given essentially carte blanche to throw together whatever monstrous floating water-displacer that you can think of.

Oh, you have to actually unlock or find the parts to glue onto your hull, but that’s where this game is really devious. You gain funds from every mission you complete, with extra bonuses paid out for how many folks you send to their watery graves as well as your rank. You then pour these funds into a few tech categories, which unlock you more stuff. Absolutely insidious. Total micro-progression, and it’s so deliciously rapturous.

THE DREAD SHIP MAXIMUM UTBOAT

The ship building is kind of deep. You pick a hull, and then you have to attach things in a way where they don’t overlap (or carefully overlap). There’s a weight limit, so you’re constantly trying to balance speed, armour, and, my favourite, firepower. It’s pretty great. It really challenged me to push the limits on how many cannons I could staple to my boat. The Maximum Utboat.

You start off with a destroyer, then can unlock a cruiser, aircraft carrier, battleship, and battlecarrier (combination aircraft carrier and battleship). Essentially, I made a bee-line to unlock the battleship and never looked back. That’s not entirely true, I did build an aircraft carrier to see what that was like. It’s neat, since you can unlock prototype and post-war planes. I just didn’t love the hands-off approach. I need cannons. Lots of them, and as large as possible. I want to turn warships into paste with a single blast.

You can unlock or research more exotic weapons, as well. Not only massive naval cannons, but also rail guns and lasers. It’s more end-game stuff, but not really spoilers. Warship Gunner practically advertises the sci-fi stuff in the opening demo movie. There are also things like double-hulled ships which are essentially two hulls glued together. The criteria for getting the double-battleship, however, was beyond my willingness to grind.

If you don’t like that sort of thing because you actually wanted something more like a simulator or you don’t have a soul, then there is a “WWII Mode” which limits available parts to things that actually existed in that time period.

YOU’RE ON A COLLISION COURSE WITH SULTRINESS

Regardless of how you want to play it, however, it’s still going to be pretty fantastical. You are a one-ship navy, and the storyline doesn’t mince words about it. It will be like, “Our fleet got wiped out, can you go solve this for us by yourself?” The enemy could field four aircraft carriers, and you’d turn them into ocean floor ornaments before lunch. 

The Empire’s superships, however, are where things get really exciting. You find yourself up against not only giant warships, but also massive submarines and even a jet. The best supership just has a massive drill on the front of it. It wasn’t effective, but it was inventive.

Despite its deliberate outrageousness, missions sometimes feel a bit drab. There are 40 overall, and they all involve grey naval ships, dark waters, and featureless landmasses. Missions are typically over fast enough that you’re spit back to the dock before things get boring, but a little bit of colour would have been appreciated. Some more weather effects, maybe. Why is there only one mission with icebergs?

The music is just weird. I’m not sure it knows what it wants to be. Sometimes it belts out some good tunes, like when you’re in the between-mission menus. However, during missions, it’s all over the place. Sometimes, it sounds like something that is meant to be filtered through the SNES sound chip. Then the next mission, it might sound like you’re being circled by sharks. Then other times, it’s maybe trying to be mysterious? Overall, I like the soundtrack, it’s just an odd one.

DAVY JONES’ LOCKER

Games like Naval Ops: Warship Gunner are why I love the PS2 library. It’s easy to cite off the best games on the system, but it’s also a million miles deep and there are a tonne of hidden tidbits in there. Not necessarily mind-blowing masterpieces, but these weird little games that are completely unlike anything else out there. And that’s my favourite type of game: one that I haven’t played before.

So, now I need to find the sequel, Warship Gunner 2 (they wisely dropped the “Naval Ops” moniker), because Naval Ops: Warship Gunner isn’t perfect, and I’d like to see how things improved. If they improved. Did they manage to solve the issue of mission variety and visual monotony? There’s a lot of potential here. Some real firepower and a solid hull to build on.

7/10

This review was conducted using a disc copy of the game on a PS2 Slim. It was paid for by the author.