"Consider your battleship sunk"

Opening Drama...
“On November 12, 1984 approximately four months before Mikhail Gorbachev took power in the Soviet Union, a Russian typhoon class submarine surfaced briefly in the Atlantic just north of Bermuda. It subsequently sank in deep water after suffering massive radiation leakage. Unconfirmed reports indicated some of the crew were rescued. According to repeated Statements by both Soviet and American governments…nothing you are about to see...ever happened.”

These are the opening lines of what looks to be an awesome underwater adventure based off The Hunt for Red October: a book by the famous Tom Clancy. It was a best-seller back in its day, and had an epic movie spin-off as well (the main role staring none other than the infamous Sean Connery). With all this, a game was bound to show up...and it did. Here's my review of The Hunt for Red October.

First Impressions
At first glance it seems to be a slightly below average sidescroller. You take your pixely little submarine and try your best to press through the many, many obstacles in your path. Please note that I emphasized "many". There are literally tons of them. No more than 3 minutes in you find this to be something more than just an average game...you find it to be so downright generic it bites. From the annoying controls to the bleeps and blips of the sound, The Hunt for Red October has got to be one of the blandest games I've ever seen on the NES. I'm not the type of gamer that tries to make fun of a game or its week points, but there are so many problems with this game that I just can't avoid it.

The Graphics
Graphic-wise you might be a bit confused. The opening animation is an over-the-top level of awesome for an NES game. Dramatic is an understatement. And then...you begin to play and confusion hits. For some reason you're driving a submarine in the water...with a background made up of bricks. Yup. I said bricks. This is an underwater sidescroller, and for some reason they decided to put up a wall of blue bricks as a background...yeah. There's some good news though, the background changes now and then. In fact I actually liked how the scenery moves from time to time as you progress, but there's little other praise I can add for the game's visuals.

Music and Sounds
Now for the subject of sound. Being a game as old as it is, you shouldn't expect the music and sound effects to be very advanced. That's good because they aren't. The Hunt for Red October does the same kind of repetitive sound effects you've seen in every other cheap movie-based game. I could ramble on for a long time in this part of the review, but to keep it short and sweet, let's just say they're very uninspired.

Difficulty
The challenge level of this game is ridiculously high. Casual gamers will get frustrated, and easily. Of all the reasons, this is mostly because when you die you need to start back at the last checkpoint, which there aren't many of. Note that this isn't the only reason for this game's difficulty. The overall controls just go and add to the sting. While avoiding the bullets of underwater snipers, you have no other choice but to put yourself in another line of enemy fire. Another fun thing I should mention: accidentally bumping into something as seemingly harmless as a pole will make your ship explode. I don't know whether this is supposed to be realism, or just to tick you off. At the way this game handles, I'm guessing the latter.

In the end...
Do not buy this game. Not even the hardest of hardcore Tom Clancy fans will get a pinch of fun out of this game. There isn't even a Sean Connery in it for God's sake! Don't get me wrong though, there have been worse, but The Hunt for Red October fails nonetheless. It has no reason to exist in any gamer's collection. The score: 3 out of 10.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 03/22/07