Enigma: Rising Tide is certainly a novel idea for a game. Part naval sim, part shooter with boats, the game is set in 1937 in an alternate timeline in which Germany won World War II. England has been conquered but her navy roams the seas lending its aid to the Japan-led League of Free Nations. America is an imperial power looking to make headway in Europe. Germany, still under the leadership of the Kaiser, finds itself master over all of Europe and Hitler is presumably occupied as a mediocre artist in Bavaria. With the oceans separating the three great powers of the day, naval power will determine the victor and you will dictate how the great conflict plays out.

Enigma essentially comes with six campaigns as you can play as a captain in either the surface or submarine fleet of each of the three major powers. You start off in command of a single ship, but as the campaign progresses you will grow in rank and have the option to issue orders to other ships or to jump in and take manual control – as long as your rank is higher than that of the commander of the ship that you selected. The game is part naval sim in that the fictional craft in the game all come with unique performance characteristics and weaponry, and you have to take into consideration factors such as water pressure and remaining oxygen in the submarines and setting the depth charge depth for destroyers. On the action side you can jump to any gun position at any time to take over manual operation in a first person view, whether you are using a machine gun to fight off attacking planes or the main guns to pound away at another ship. In an attempt to keep both sim and action fans happy while not turning off one or the other group, Enigma lets you automate the ship’s systems. If you want to be on deck knocking planes out of the sky, you can use the waypoint feature to automatically direct your ship’s movements. If you’d rather maneuver yourself into an optimal position to launch a salvo of torpedoes or depth charges, you can let the computer man the weapons.

In trying to capture elements from both genres, Enigma is a game that won’t appeal to many fans of either one of them. Sim fans will be disappointed to find that ship control primarily boils down to selecting speed and heading on the game’s operational map. Action fans won’t want to constantly jump off a gun to go to another screen and plot waypoints. In addition, being responsible for anything beyond ship navigation makes things difficult – it’s not easy shooting at attacking aircraft while other ships are actively maneuvering into a firing position where they can pound you with their guns. Unless you actively control your ship and leave the guns on automatic you won’t be able to react to the changing tactical situation. So you’ll find yourself on a ship bristling with guns and you’ll be stuck in the rather bland looking bridge the whole time.

Manning a sub has different issues. In this case there is not as much to do and a lot more time to do it in. The time-consuming process of getting your sub into the proper firing position and then waiting as your torpedoes take a while to reach their targets does not make for fun gameplay for a large percentage of gamers – doubly so when your torpedoes miss and you’ve got to start all over again.

Enigma does some things well, such as building a rich storyline and interesting campaigns. It also features some great weather, water, and wave effects that add a degree of realism to the experience, although such realism makes it very difficult to hit anything with the guns while under manual control in rough seas.

Enigma is to one day feature a multiplayer component, but it has been a long time in coming. This feature promises to allow players to multi-crew ships in battles whose outcomes will affect the game’s ever evolving storyline. It’s ambitious to say the least, but even if the developers pull it off I’m not sure if it will appeal to a lot of people. It will suffer from some of the same issues that can affect enjoyment of the single player game – the action is too sim-like for action gamers and the sim aspect too light for the naval sim crowd.

Taking everything into consideration, it’s hard to really know what to make of Enigma and perhaps that’s why the developer selected that name for the game. As with many enigmas, it will appeal to the curiosity of some but the majority will not want to be bothered by it. At times it can be really fun, but at others frustrating and tedious. Unfortunately, it’s the frustrating and tedious side of the game that you’ll see the most and the fun part is not enough to make up for it.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 65%.  Enigma is at best a curiosity and, well, an enigma that will most appeal to that very small segment of gamers who enjoy light naval sims set in alternate histories.

System Requirements:  Pentium III 500; 256 MB RAM;  32 MB Video RAM; 4x CD-ROM;  1.5 GB Hard Drive Space;  Mouse.