Water. The most precious resource on the planet. Good for drinking, making into ice, or frolicking in with scantily clad members of the opposite sex. Water looks lovely...except in video games. While we in the real world may love it, for those who are creating virtual worlds it is the bane of their existence, and can make or break the atmosphere in a game. Very few games can model water in a believable and aesthetically pleasing manner, and to date no game has ever gotten it perfect, and probably never will. So why waste an entire paragraph on h2o? Because we are going to take a look at Bloodwake, one of the launch titles for the Xbox, and one that has some seriously excellent water!

As well it should, considering the game bills itself as "high speed gunboat warfare,” anything less than stellar would leave the game dead in the water if you'll excuse the pun. Bloodwake certainly delivers in this department, as the water effects are truly some of the best seen to date. It's still not totally realistic, but it's getting there. Likewise, the weather effects in the game are terrific as well, ranging from calm and placid lakes to tempestuous conditions on the high seas with rain belting down and massive waves crashing all around. Most impressive is the fact that the game never takes a performance hit even in expansive arenas.

Eventually though, the watery wow-factor will wear off, as it does with most games that are big on the eye candy, so a solid and enjoyable gaming experience is needed for a title to go the distance. Sadly, this is something Bloodwake just doesn't have. The game itself consists of Story Mode and Battle Mode as well as the usual slew of multiplayer options. The story campaign follows a young naval office named Shao Kai, who is ambushed and attacked by his evil brother while on a routine patrol, and is left for dead with the flotsam. Kai is picked up by a group of pirates who press him into service on their own vessels to make use of his military training. As the story progresses, you'll go from a simple conscript on a sampan to an important and respected captain with your pick of the best boats with the most lethal weapons.

The missions progress in a linear fashion, and the manual even goes as far as to provide a map of the region which details in what area each mission will take place. The missions range from the usual blow everything up type to collecting items and racing other boats. When it boils down to it though, they are all fairly derivative and there's little to keep you hooked, although the story does have some interesting moments and some missions do stand out. The boats themselves look good as do the islands around you, and you definitely get the feel that graphically at least Bloodwake is an extremely polished title. Moving about on the high seas can be great fun as you bounce and crash through the waves, and during storms get tossed around like a child's toy. This extends to the actual combat side of things too, with some wonderful torpedo explosions which send jets of water-and your boat-flying into the air only to spear back down and bob back to the surface. Thankfully the game automatically rights your boat if you capsize, but it leaves you very vulnerable for a few seconds so it pays to try and land properly.

Bloodwake is not a terribly difficult game, although there are some missions that will definitely test your skills. The biggest challenge comes from the control layout, as every option has some kind of flaw. One requires you to constantly hold down the right trigger to accelerate, leading to a sore and aching trigger finger very quickly. The other uses the left thumbstick to accelerate by pushing up, which would be fine except that to execute a sharp turn one often has to almost pull diagonally backwards to achieve the desired result, and in Bloodwake this will quite often put you in reverse. This is without a doubt the most frustrating thing in the game, especially during a pitched battle when you are trying to make an evasive manoeuvre and end up stalling and then reversing, inevitably getting blown to pieces by your foes.

Things are a little better in the audio department, with some excellent voice acting which is used to good effect in the dialogue which narrate the game's Story Mode. The music however is very annoying. It is heavily influenced by Oriental styles, which is fine in itself but it is far too mellow and sporadic to get your blood pumping during battle, and seems so out of place as to be distracting in places. With that said, not all of the tunes are that bad, but for some reason only a few play in Battle Mode and multiplayer and become repetitious very quickly.

Once you're done with Story mode you can dive into Battle Mode, which allows you to play a variety of missions solo or with a friend, ranging from simple deathmatch style events through to survival, capture and objective based skirmishes. Yet even here there are some odd flaws. For instance, in survival where your goal is to kill as many opponents as possible, the on-screen counter simply stops at 99, yet when you eventually die, the game has actually been tallying much higher than that, which is extremely annoying.

Multiplayer is also a fairly banal experience, and it is one of those titles that requires you to unlock the majority of the multiplayer modes, so if you were turned off by the dull solo game, you'll be stuck with only one multiplayer mode to begin with and only a few options. This is also true of the Battle Modes, as all boats and most modes have to be unlocked through single-play achievements. While this is an incentive in most games, in Bloodwake it is much more likely to make you simply give up and shelve the game in frustration.