By "Woody" Dunwoody
Dangerous Waters is an modern naval warfare simulator with emphasis on submarine warfare. It is developed by a Sonalysts Combat Simulations from Battlefront.com, a small company that specializes in military games and CD Reference Software. As stated from their website, www.battlefront.com, their mission “is to provide the challenging military minded computer gaming experience that has all but disappeared from the face of corporate gaming today.” With Dangerous Waters they have accomplished this beautiful.
Dangerous Waters is a tactical simulator that focuses on ASW (Anti-Submarine Warfare) and ASUW (Anti-SUrface Warfare). This is not a large scale naval warfare game allowing you to control multiple surface vessels such as battleships and aircraft carriers. Here you control a submarine, an ASW helicopter or aircraft, or a frigate. Doesn’t sound like much does it. But it doesn’t have to be. This is a tactical simulator and planning, execution, and patience are the prerequisites for playing this game. As a member of the ASW community with the armed forces I was particularly drawn to this game. Always the hardest critics with simulators are those who “play” this simulators for real. It’s like going watching an Air Force movie with a pilot or CSI with a cop, we tear these things apart! Luckily for Sonalysts Combat Simulations, they did their homework.
ASW involves the hunting and killing of submarines, pretty straight forward. In the arsenal of weapons are several different platforms; submarines, frigates, helicopters, and aircrafts just to name a few. Through the use and coordination of these assets and the equipment onboard the mission of ASW is carried out. ASUW invovles the surface vessels and is carried out differently. It can be anything from attacking another warship to tracking and seizing a cargo vessel.
First off, let us get one thing straight, no game will ever fully simulate the real world experience and get 100% of the details right, and not on the first try. Look at flight simulators on the market and see how far they have come since their first creation. Dangerous Waters is the same. This is not like the real world. However, what they have done for their first game is impressive. They did their homework. You don’t need anymore proof then in the manual, approximately 550 pages of information! While daunting at first most of the pages are dedicated to specific weapon platforms, which there are several, the Oliver Hazard Perry Frigate (FFG), MH-60R Maritime Helicopter, P-3 Orion ASW Maritime Patrol Aircraft, Russion Kilo Submarine, Russion Akula Sub, American Seawolf Sub, and the American 688(I) Los Angelos Class Sub.
While the first few chapters are essential reading most of the paragraphs are not needed until you hop on to the specific ship or aircraft. After that, reading the specifics as each system used is enough. What is nice though is that a lot of the controls and stations are very similar, especially the navigator’s station. From this bird’s eye view you can right-click on your icon and control a lot of your ship. With the subs once you learn one sub you will have little difficult in controlling another. For example, the Seawolf and LA have almost identical systems, though the systems in the Seawolf are better obviously. But each has a towed array, bow sonar, periscopes, torpedoes, etc. What Sonalysts Combat Simulations has done is give each a unique feel. The controls on the LA have more dials while the moderm Seawolf has more electronic, touch screen controls. It does take a few moments to recognize where everything is but after that you are in control.
The game is meant to be as realistic as possible and SCS goes to great lengths to focus on the tactics and not the vehicle simulations of this game. You don’t have to worry about proper flap placements and other such things to control the vehicles. If you are looking at something that will simulate piloting a real sub or aircraft this isn’t it. But if you want to carry out a mission and the thrill of a Bravo-Zulu then this is it!! All the stations can be selected to AUTO and behave beautifully, none of this nonsense found in other games where the AI is dummied down to make you do more work.. You can control so much of the game just from the navigation screen. All the vessels are displayed as tactical symbols on the screen. From there you decide where your vessel should go and how it should behave. But you will have to man some of the stations, while the acoustic station will mark a contact for you they won’t classify it. This is were the tactics come in. How do you get close enough to the vessel to identify it without getting caught? You know the enemy submarine is out there but so is one of our own. Do you have the right sub? Are you sure? Last thing you want to do is fire a torpedo at the good guys!
This is the heart of the game, the planning, the execution, and the patience. Oh, the patience. At one point, while do a reconnaissance mission I actually grabbed a magazine to read while I waited for my sub going at 5 Kts to position itself in the right spot, and this was with time compression on. Oh yes, I could have gone faster, and risked detection and failed the mission. But this feels so real at times it is scary. This is the type of game you set aside an hour or so and get into it. Thankfully, the developers inserted the ability to save at anytime. I suggest you use it often. It may seem intense waiting and all but it is great after all the work and effort to hear that mission complete message.
The realism is excellent. Particular detail was paid to getting the systems right and how they work. Many games will refer to sonobuoys (the underwater microphones used to hunt subs) as simple passive and active. Dangerous Waters goes to the next level by calling them by their real names, DICASS, DIFAR, and VLAD buoys. You must select the right buoy for the right job. Even then you have to consider how deep the buoys will go. They even have BT buoys here, special buoys that are used to measure the sound speed profile of the water to help you decide what depth is the best.
What I really liked with this game was how they focused on the strategies and tactics of the mission while having the computer handle the rest of the details. The graphics were also very good, something I didn’t expect from a game focusing so much on tactics. There is even an option for voice commands. Finally, the multiplayer option is very well thought out, allowing different players to control different ships or crew a single ship and have each player man a different station.
There are a few things I would have liked to have seen included in the game. While the manual does a good job explaining the systems there is no tutorial on how to carry out missions. There is a steep learning curve in this game that can frustrate some people very quickly.
Dangerous Waters is an intensive, well designed game that does an amazing job of simulating the real world experience of ASW. There is a lot of details I didn’t mention here, from the real world feeling to the briefings, to the look and feel of the radar, ESM, and acoustic stations. So much emphasis went into this game it is amazing. This was not a game put together by a company trying to tag along with the next big thing but with tender loving care. The only thing closer to this game would be to actually enrol into the navy.
• Minimum Specifications
- Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP
- 550Mhz processor
- 128 MB RAM
- Eight-speed CD-ROM drive
- Direct 3D compliant Video Card with 32MB RAM, (with DirectX 9.0b compatible drivers)
- Sound Card with DirectX 9.0b compatible drivers
- Desktop Resolution of 800x600 @ 16-bit color depth
- 590MB hard-drive space for installation
- Internet or LAN connection required for multiplayer
• Recommended System
(upgrades from minimum specs)
- 1GHz+ processor
- 256 MB RAM
- Direct 3D compliant Video Card with 64MB RAM, (with DirectX 9.0b compatible drivers)
- 1GB hard-drive space for installation
http://www.battlefront.com/products/dw/
|
|
Currently Unavailable
|
|
| |
|
|
Developed By
Published By
Platform
|
| Graphics: |
4.5 / 5 |
| Sound: |
4.5 / 5 |
| Gameplay: |
4.8 / 5 |
| Longevity: |
4.9 / 5 |
| Overall: |
4.7 / 5 |
|
|
None
|
|
|
|
