PlayStation Basement #48 - Critical Depth

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on July 27th, 2019.

Hello, and welcome to PlayStation Basement! I am in the middle of moving from one house to another, but there’s always time for a game review. PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go!

Continuing with another game about water (after Depth and Aquanaut’s Holiday) for the summer, this week I have Critical Depth to review. Unlike the previous games in this summer mini-series that featured psychedelic weirdness and tropical paradises, this is a vehicular combat game from the creators of Twisted Metal and Twisted Metal 2, SingleTrac. The developers did not work on Twisted Metal 3 and made this instead. Critical Depth was published by GT Interactive in North America and Europe in October and December of 1997 respectively. I remember seeing this game but never rented it or bought it until a few years ago. I get this game a bit mixed up with Shipwreckers! and Dead in the Water. I’ll be taking a look at those further upstream, but, for now, we plunge into the depths.

The cover art is pretty decent in either region. In both regions, Jack Keon’s Lockjaw attacks Joe Skullion’s Death Sled. The North American art has the battle in full color within some dark depths, while the European release has everything under a layer of blue. The North American release has a logo like old, aged metal, and the European release features a wavy, water display. The North American release also has a big red sticker (printed on the manual itself though) letting the viewer know that this game is “FROM THE DEVELOPERS WHO KNOW VEHICULAR COMBAT!”

Graphically, I’m not particularly impressed with Critical Depth. It’s overall average for the PlayStation and this type of game. The ships look decent but small. The arenas are a bit murky and don’t contain many details. Color is extremely limited. The polygons shift quite a bit during gameplay, but the frame rate is consistent and snappy. The menus and UIs are a bit dull too. It’s still fun seeing a ship ahead be destroyed as another opponent flies overhead though.

The sound is also not much really. I found the sound effects pretty standard. They’re nothing too amazing or bad. The music goes for a cinematic-epic sound, something like Indiana Jones, but it loops too often during some of the tracks. It’s hard to have sweeping, dramatic pieces of music when they occur every twenty seconds.

At the most basic, Critical Depth is Twisted Metal 2. You can pick between several different characters including the Lovecraftian Order of Nishroch, the deranged TV host Captain Cutlass, and the environmentalist organization Earth Hope. The characters’ stories develop throughout the single-player mode which is all about collecting pods, mythical items that boost a sub’s power and open up a portal if all five are collected. Each level requires the player to collect all five pods and go or the portal. Pods can be collected by ramming an enemy, destroying them, or hitting them with a shaker weapon. There are tons of different weapons to use other than the shaker to fulfill these means just like in Twisted Metal. In addition to shooting, the controls enable you to push one of the face buttons to do one action or double-press it to do a more powerful version of that action. For example, the square button accelerates, but double-tapping it turns on a turbo feature. This is true for breaking (double-tap to reverse), tight turns (double-tap to slide), and shielding (double-tap to use reflective shield) as well.

The extra complexities don’t stop there, and this gave me some trouble. Since the vehicles are all submersibles, the game also includes more three-dimensional aspects than cars do. Enemies could be above or below you, and I had to do some extreme maneuvering to get out of a lock-on. I had some trouble with the lock-on system myself, as it’s not like Ocarina of Time or other games where you snap on to the enemy. It’s a soft lock-on, and it was hard for me to manage when a few enemies were clumped together in a cramped arena. I had difficulty managing my ammo, shielding, and following a target all at once, but I think that with more practice, I could get used to this.

Critical Depth has a decent amount of content. The characters are all pretty interesting, so it’d be cool to play through all of the storylines. There are bosses to fight, and unlockable characters to unlock by completing certain objectives. The game also includes a co-op story mode and two multiplayer modes: one where you collect pods and one where you do not. The developers were not wrong to title this game in the way they did.

Critical Depth receives a Good.

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