Have you ever been so bored that you wanted to cry? I mean hopefully not while watching any of my videos, because screw that – but I mean while playing something. Games are for entertainment. Unfortunately, somebody forgot to tell the developers of Aquaman this and what we got instead was an ugly, barren cure for insomnia.

So people in the meme business are calling summer 2021 “white boy summer”, but anybody who knew me in high school and hopefully doesn’t have pictures knows that I’ve never been a trendsetter, so I’ve gone in a different direction and have made this “bad game summer” as that is almost all I’ve been reviewing lately. It’s entertainment for you and torture for me but like Bryan Adams sang, and I bet you’re groaning right now because you know what I’m about to say – “everything I do, I do it for you”. Thank you, I’m here until I get cancelled by social media.

So for the 5 of you that are still watching, Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis was released in 2003 on the Gamecube and OG Xbox. It was based off a revamp of Aquaman where he had a trident / wanking claw combo for a hand and was sporting long beautiful locks. He also started wearing gladiator-style armor instead of his iconic orange shirt because he’s hardcore. I don’t know too much about Aquaman except that I always considered him the “Zeppo” of the Justice League for a long time. (play cordelia and xander)

So why they gave him a game to begin with was beyond me but maybe they thought there was a chance to capitalize on this version of him. There’s been worse ideas in the comics industry. Like, much worse.

You may not recognize Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis because the words Battle for Atlantis aren’t even on the cover. It just says Aquaman. Then you fire up the game or look at the manual and there’s the full title. That’s not so much a critique but it is a little weird.

Basically the game starts with classic Aquaman villain Black Manta attacking Atlantis because ocean water ain’t the only thing salty out there. Afterward the lava trolls are attacked and Atlantis is framed for it. There’s a larger scheme at play and it’s up to Aquaman to get to the bottom of it and put his wet, soggy, presumably-pruny foot in the butt of whoever’s responsible. Then you find out it’s arch enemy Ocean Master that’s responsible – which by the way  – “ocean master”?  Who named him that??   The only other character I recognized in this was Mera, who looks like she got her style from Jim Carrey’s version of The Riddler.

If you’re into Fallout or liked Mass Effect or Skyrim, this is up your alley. And really, it’s a lot closer to Mass Effect in what I think is a more personal approach to story and relationships and I think that’ll ultimately be a big draw for RPG fans.

The story is told in between levels by these comic-style panels. There’s no voice acting, which I was disappointed in because I love terrible voice acting, and instead it’s basically just some music in the background and that’s it.

There’s really only 2 types of gameplay in this. You have your brawler-style levels and your submarine levels. In the brawler levels, you swim around and follow the compass, fight guys, then follow the compass to the next group of guys until the level ends. That’s it. There’s a combo system in it that has Aquaman do different attacks depending on the order you press buttons, and these vary from basic 3 button combos to like 8 or 9 button presses that honestly I couldn’t remember. It felt like I was entering the Konami code for some of these.

The camera gets finicky sometimes but really the biggest problem is just that you’re going to be hitting the same buttons for every enemy. If you fight a half dozen enemies, they’ll politely wait until you beat one up and then step up for the same thing. It’s not fun but I guess they get points for being organized? I don’t know, there’s 20 missions of this crap and it got old by the 2nd level.

Aquaman also has his wanking claw-I mean,”trident hand” that doubles as a grappling hook. Hitting the button to fire this off will send out this flaccid, slow little little grappling hook. You can’t really aim it, so I never used it.

Aquaman’s special attack is calling in a creature of the sea to one-shot the enemy of your choice. That’s right, Aquaman can summon a shark or dolphin to come hit an enemy, and drag them off screen. I don’t know where they go. I’m assuming the sharks eat them, but what about the dolphins? Do they force themselves on them like they do people in real life?

Next are the submarine levels. Maybe it’s because I really liked playing the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter games from LucasArts, but this was more fun than the brawler stuff. Also more difficult, so it kept me awake. By default the game starts you in 3rd person mode, and it’s almost impossible to aim a shot at enemy subs. But, you can switch to the cockpit view, and then it gets easier and you’re able to actually stand a chance. And you’ll do weird stuff like free a dragon by shooting missiles at its shackles, or there’s this big sub thing that looks kind of like a Star Destroyer. So yeah, I didn’t actually hate this part of the game. I mean it felt pretty same-y by the end of the game, but it was better than using the same 3 punch combo for the 200th time.

Graphically it looks like wet puppy food and the graphics do look like they’re underwater, just not in the way that I would like. I mean there’s nobody in Atlantis but some fish, and whoever you’re fighting. It reminded me of Superman 64, but without all the rings to fly though.

There’s not much in the way of sound either other than a few punch effects. It’s a really quiet game. The music is way too epic for this game and through a lot of it, I felt like I was watching an old sci-fi movie from the 1950s, especially with Black Manta’s outfit. After awhile I expected the subs to be flown around on strings that you can see from off-camera.

So at the end of the day Aquaman was really boring and had very little personality. I mean it’s a game about Aquaman. They had to chop off one of his hands try and make him more interesting, so I guess I couldn’t expect greatness from this. The graphics were really empty and muddy and I don’t think the combat could get more repetitive and boring. It’s 20 missions spread out over a few hours, and it felt like I was watching paint dry after awhile.