by  Prepzvspunkerz
from Las Vegas, , United States | Jun 22, 2003 |
General/Summary: To begin with this game is certainly not for everybody,even if it were a good sim(which it is`nt)it would really only be of interest to those gamers into naval history or WWII.There are a bunch of gamers who only play naval sims at SUBSIM.COM which is a useful scource of info and downloads etc. I`m a big fan of WWII games and have played most WWII flight sims,land based games,and also silent hunter 2, but I`m afraid this one falls short of even silent hunters low standards, sadly it`s also the only naval sim of it`s type (Janes fleet command is a totally different type of game) so it`s all you`ve got if you like that sort of thing.
Gameplay: Gameplay involves control of a destroyer, plus other destroyers on a variety of scripted missions, even the campaigns (2 campaigns, Pacific and Atlantic) are a series of scripted missions. OK we knew the missions would be scripted and linear from the earlier silent hunter 2 and I could forgive them for that but there are far worse aspects of the gameplay lurking here.
Firstly I`ll mention some of the good aspects of the game, in fact this is a game which COULD have been great and some of the points still shine through. The "bieng there" factor is really quite good, you can look out from the observation deck of your destroyer in the first person view 360 degrees (as with the bridge view in SH2) and the ship movement is good and simulates being at sea fairly well,using your binoculars you can direct attacks at the enemy and the action is pretty realistic, water plumes and spray coming up from the sea, planes flying overhead dropping torpedoes(the planes are a lot better than those in SH2 and actually look good), flak, smoke billowing from damaged vessels, all sounds great and looks pretty decent.
You can also switch to external view of your vessel (yes there is one which a few people cant seem to find,move the mouse pointer to the top of the screen in observation deck view till it turns into a yellow triangle,then click) or you can choose to man any of the other posts on the ship, gunnery, AA guns, sonar, radar,torpedo station, etc.
The big problem is the AI, and I mean BIG problem. Before starting a campaign I set up a few custom missions with a variety of enemy vessels to get some practice. Setting the realism at 80% I headed off with 3 other destroyers, in the space of about 20 mins I`d sunk about 100,000 tons of enemy shipping including a battle cruiser, cruiser, and two destroyers and I did`nt take a single hit nor did my 3 other ships. Setting the realism at 100% does not help to improve the AI, all it does is give less target info and make sailing more "realistic" so it does`nt actually make the game harder. I thought I`d try again, this time I sunk the pride of the Kriegsmarine the cruiser Prinz Eugen and it never fired a shot, finally I tackled a huge force including the Bismark for christs sake, I sailed within 5000 yards of them...they did`nt open fire, this is broad daylight by the way, OK I`ll start the action, I let off a salvo and hit the bismark, FINALLY the beast roars into action and destroys me and my escort in about 5 mins. This is the exception, but wheres the enjoyment of just pummeling the enemy with no reaction? I understand that in the real world a destroyer would not even get close to a heavy cruiser or battleship like the Bismark and you would be shelled from about 10 miles away so thats not exactly interesting combat either but there has to be a better way of depicting naval combat than this, enemy ships dont just sail within yards of each other waiting to see who will fire first.
Graphics: Graphics are good and no more, slightly better than SH2,the Bismark is the best looking ship, turrets move, smoke from the salvos,"damage" smoke does not look quite right surprisingly nobody at SUBSIM.COM has provided any graphical enhancements as they did with SH2. Ports are badly modelled, New york harbour looks like it did in the year 1602, a row of warehouses and no city,no attempt at all to model any cities no matter how crude is unnaceptable even in a naval sim the "being there" factor stops on the ship I`m afraid.
Sound: Battle sounds are good, noisy guns, explosions, crew sounds and voice acting are poor, also the voice doing "general quarters" sounds like he just woke up, I recommend you download the general quarters sounds from SUBSIM.com which actually have the klaxon noise just like old WWII movies.
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