When George W Bush (jnr) was sworn into office in January 2001 it marked a new dawn for America's environmental policy. He had a crack team behind him: Dick Cheney (vice president) was a former CEO of an oil company called Haliburton Industries; Spencer Abraham (secretary of energy) opposed research into renewable energy and wants to drill for oil in Alaska; Condoleezza Rice (national security advisor) was on the board of directors of Chevron and has had an oil tanker named after her, a big one too; and my favourite Don (Donny) Rumsfeld who thinks arms control is for girls and hence wants to build lasers in space. They went straight to work and cut half a billion dollars from the environmental protection agency, cut funding for renewable energy research by fifty percent, allowed oil drilling in Montana's national forest, and pulled out of the Kyoto protocol agreement on global warming signed by 178 countries. But despite this I couldn't help but smile inwardly at it all. I mean I'm as environmentally friendly as the next man but the goddamn tree hugging hippies are just sooo irritating and hard to please. When Dubya squashed them under his alligator skin boots he knew that the worst thing that would happen is he'd get tofu hurled at him, most of which would be dealt with by his trusty shotgun and Don's satellites would deal with the ICBT's (inter-continental ballistic tofu). Having now played a preview of 'Aquanox 2: Revelation', whose premise is that the oceans have in fact risen and the world has gone completely insane, I realise that this is all a good thing. Once those damn ice caps are dealt with the future is going to be far more interesting and fun, albeit a bit wetter, than it is today. So do your bit for global warming: print this article out on unrecycled paper and then burn it, together we can make a difference.

If you still need convincing let me tell you a little more about the game in question. In a nutshell it looks great, plays great, is great. Still need more? Well it is being developed by a German developer called Massive using their own Krass engine. Aquanox 2: Revelation is obviously a sequel to Aquanox which came out in early 2001 to much acclaim, particularly for its graphics. Aquanox was itself a sequel to Archimedian Dynasty from the same developer which set up the story and setting of the world of Aqua. Wars and natural disasters have rendered the earth's surface uninhabitable and everyone now lives under the sea, but this is no Little Mermaid existence. Aqua is a dark and foreboding place, imagine Blade Runner and The Abyss together and you have the right idea. In this world you play as William Drake, the last heir to the ailing Drake enterprises. In this "miserable world without sky" you decide that you've had enough of delivering cargo and you head off into the inky depths to seek adventure.

The story kicks off with an SOS call that is clearly suspicious, but being the naive type you head out and sure enough come under attack. Once you scare off the attacker you return back to your ship, the Harvester, only to find that a bunch of renegades have taken it over and for the rest of the game you start bending over backwards to be nice to them. Fortunately a couple of them are quite good looking so the effort doesn't seem totally in vain, besides there is the promise of some mysterious treasure to be found. The interface for interacting with the different characters simply involves clicking on the relevant location and then their name. For example on the Harvester you might select the 'bridge' which will pop up in a new window and then talk to captain Amitab. These backdrops in the game are very nicely modeled with some animation overlayed to bring them to life. The conversations themselves are static with the characters face highlighted as the script is read out.