Killerfish games, the guys who made the excellent Atlantic Fleet and Pacific Fleet ahve just released their latest brainchild: Cold Waters
It is heavily inspired on the old Microprose title Red Storm Rising. A medium-core submarine simulation with a dynamic campaign set during the cold war. It is available on steam for 40 bucks.
I shall update this post as soon as I have some first impressions.
That’s a gorgeous looking game, and I’m really looking forward to your take on it.
Likewise. $40 is a bit steep for me this month, but if it’s good, I could definitely see myself doing some middleweight submarining.
Tim Stone was impressed.
I normally wait for new titles to go on sale but I pulled teh trigger because I want to see if this scratches the RSR itch.
Thanks for the heads up. Easy day 1 purchase :) Gonna have fun tonight!
$40 is steeper than I had in mind. Here’s hoping it lives up to expectations.
Yeah, I DO WANT on this one too (on my Steam wishlist), but $40 is a bit much for the initial leap.
I might get this after the wedding, no big purchases until then (yes, this is a big purchase).
Yeah, wishlisted for now, but I may get it after next payday (the 15th)
Ok, I played the tutorials and the first single mission which was very much like a tutorial as well. Let me first put down my points of critique before I start gushing about it ;-)
It’s clearly built by a team who are used to build games for mobile platforms. Much of the screen estate goes unused and while the keyboard is very much the controller for the game, it might very easily be converted to a touchscreen interface.
The game is fairly raw, in that it shows its indie niche genre roots and lacks amenities such as easy access to the unit reference screens and voice overs for crew messages.
right. That’s out of the way.
I have been waiting one heck of a long time for this. It’s very much cold war hardware pr0n for dads who grew up reading up on the soviet navy because that was what WW3 was going to be fought with. It’s the Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising. It’s Crimson Tide. Almost every relevant thing in the soviet navy is included. Sierra class subs (the badass ones that will kill you) even sport shark teeth paintjobs.
The game plays quick and easy, you can learn it in less than half an hour. I haven’t tried the campaign yet, but that’s going to prove if this is worth its price tag. The quality of Atlantic Fleet, Killerfish’ previous effort suggests it will be. Going to play some more.
Although, like others, budget is a concern, reading such impressions, and quickly reading that the game seems being badly received by some “hardcore” subbers (the ones who think CMANO is already just a package of noob concessions, you know ;) makes me very prone to succumbing to it.
I hope for my wallet @tomchick isn’t going to stream it!
I snuck in a few tutorials during lunch. Good so far but as schurem noted it is bizarrely keyboard heavy.
Oh and for those playing the first time the “backqoute” key is apparently the other thing on the tilde key ie: ` which shares a key with ~ (Above TAB). So yeah, hit Tilde when it says “backqoute”
These rivetcounter yots have been well-served by Sonalysts these past many years. To hell with them.
Fuck em indeed. I am now an hour into the 2nd mission, one 688 vs 3 old diesels and a bear. It’s tense as fuck, though still a turkey shoot. I easily murdered the first two after getting good solutions on em. Then the bear joined the party, started dropping torps with wild abandon and uncanny accuracy and the third diesel snuck off. I’m a nuke, he’s on batteries so I’m chasing his ass down. While evading the Bear’s droppings. Yup, this thing has it where it counts. I think Killerfish love Microprose as much as we do. Good times.
(note: The Tu-142 Bear-F is a Russian long range submarine hunter aircraft. A bit like the US P-3 Orion and todays’ P-8 Poseidon.)
I’ve only had a limited time with it so far mostly the tutorials and some 1 vs 1 SSN action and it’s straight up RSR which is exactly what I wanted. I peeked at some of the Steam reviews and yes they’re bummed because they thought or hoped this was going to be dangerous waters 2 despite all the early discussions by the devs that this was a spiritual remake of RSR and would have hardly any of the button pushing as a Sonalysts sim. There’s a reason why Sonalysts hasn’t made a follow up to DW and that’s because DW didn’t live up to sales expectations.
I wish the devs posted here because I love what I’ve seen so far. Heading and depth control is all done manually which caught me off guard at first but there’s a handy auto level key to fine tuning heading and depth. you also have access to controlling the ballast tanks which allows one to impress the wife coming up to periscope depth without broaching the sail. Manual change ntrilnis catching some flack with the rivit heads but I like it.
I going to have to hunt for the RSR manual because it’s been ages but I think it too had manual steering and depth control.
One thing CW models that DW never did was radar detection of submarine masts. In DW you could keep your scope up the entire mission at PD and enemy would never spot it. I believe it was a limitation of their engine.
One neat thing CW does that i do not remember is it was in RSR is that if you go above 1/3rd speed with your scope up it can get damaged, which I liked :)
You had to press a key for each, to summon a prompt and input your heading or depth manually. There were also controls for manual steering, but not manual depth controls, I think.
It is mentionned in the manual, but I can’t tell if it made its way in the game back then either (I seem to remember it happened in DW though).
There’s a. blog called The Stupid Shall Be Punished which was ran by an ex submariner. It was a usually good read with lots of insight to what things are like on the inside of the service. The best though were the comments from former and current submariners. Bent periscopes would get a skipper fired.
Oh yeah your dogs and cats probably won’t like the active sonar pings.
Bought it, and played a little. First impression: There are a lot keyboard command to remember. I was really bad at it, and was sunk within 10 min. of first mission. The graphic is nice, although I like the direct control of the boat, my sub kept surfacing while I want to maintain periscope depth due to I kept forgot there is actually a straight and level key (X by default). Definitely not for the rivet counters, it is basically a remake of Red Storm Rising. Love it. As a simplified sub sim, the action provided by direct control is fine as it is.