Take my opinion with a grain of salt.
You have four "mainstream" titles to pick from for modern submarine games:
Cold Waters- I don't play it. I'm not a big fan of Steam which basically makes it impossible to buy CW in the US. I tried buying it from GOG but my bank freaked out, and that was good enough for me.
Its fun to watch on Y/T and Twitch because it looks so good. From everything I've seen, there's not as much "under the hood" when you compare it to Dangerous Waters in terms of strategy and over-all gameplay. That's not a gripe, CW never said it was a replacement for DW. Its more of an "homage" to an old arcade-y game. In other words, CW is what it is. If you enjoy that style of direct gameplay over heavy strategy and planning, there's a lot to enjoy.
Dangerous Waters (stock)- The game I DO play.
I'm breaking DW into two groups, stock and modded, because the mods change so many things. In stock DW, you need to plan, well, everything. All of your choices matter at some point.
DW has a steep learning curve unless you've played other Sonalyst games, then it feels like "old home week" but with a frigate, a P-3, and a chopper.
It should be noted that DW didn't have the greatest rep during its "golden years" back in 2005. It ran just fine as long as your PC came from an underground forward-thinking hardware research facility. Otherwise, hang on tight and start memorizing those Blue Screen codes.
Now-a-days, hardware is no longer an issue.
And, yeah.. I said 2005. DW isn't old enough to borrow the car yet, but its old enough to go to the mall with its friends.
DW's graphics engine was designed on the assumption that you're running a 4 X 3 CRT monitor which makes all of the screens look a bit like "an acquired taste" on a 16 X 9 flat screen today. Still, aside from some horizontal stretching, what you get looks very good.
Which is important after you forget one tiny detail and get your backsides handed to you.
DW has always been tough to learn and there are a slew of tasks you have to master before you can even think about tactics and strategy.
So, is DW a submarine simulator? Not really. What it IS, however, is the best representation of modern submarine tactics and strategy you can experience without joining the Navy.
Dangerous Waters (modded)- I'm only going to deal with the two big mod versions for DW in this section. Not because graphics and sound mods aren't important, but because "LWAMI" and "RA" are so complete.
With "LWAMI", you got a larger data base of navies to interact with and some nice updates to the playable sub models. "LWAMI" was also big in leveling the playing field for on-line MP gameplay. What that meant was that subs which use a waterfall display had that display "nerfed" a bit so its bandwidth was smaller. Not that big of a deal, but it seemed to work well if you wanted to drive a Warsaw Pact boat in MP with at least a chance of surviving. The best way to picture "LWAMI", IMO, is to say that if stock DW gave you a world where the cold war had just ended, "LWAMI" gave you a world that was set several years later where some new navies were starting to show up (plus that MP nerf). The only real bad news with "LWAMI" is that it hasn't been updated since my hair wasn't gray.
What is available now won't be getting updated.
OK, its time to tackle the 800 pound gorilla mod, Reinforce Alert!, or "RA".
Its safe to say that Ivan and the RA crew have done outstanding work with RA and they don't seem to be in a hurry to move on to other projects.
"RA", as far as I know, is still an on-going process and any bugs which are found tend to get fixed quickly.
So, what is "RA"? Take all the features of DW gameplay that made it great in 2005 and update them to the present day. While you're at it, add more playable platforms including older sub classes like the Skipjack and Alpha, including new station screens
. In some ways, "RA" is a mod. In others, its a whole new stand-alone game which you'll need to relearn and master- but it still feels like familiar territory.
"RA's" world is a little tough to describe if you're used to DW. The best way I can explain it is to imagine that the US and USSR ended the cold war on equal footing and the US then went into hibernation for ten years while Russia, well, didn't.
I can actually appreciate this new style of gameplay.
While the RA crew has said that the new capabilities were put in place to level the platforms in MP and give MP players more choices, it is possible to catch a random whiff of propaganda at times when it comes to capabilities and weps (*ahem* Akula *ahem*).
If you're an off-line player, the balance of power has changed and its now up to you to figure out how to survive.
My only critique for off-line gaming is that darned, unbeatable, Akula. I'm at the point where if I manage to detect an Akula, my only action is to turn 180 degrees and try to leave the battlefield before the Shkval and rocket boosted torpedo have a drag race to sink my sorry butt. Honest, guys, I'm at the point where I have to edit the beast out of my single missions so I can get them back to being hard but survivable.
The COMMAND series of games- aka: "CMANO". I'm trying to get into this game with its one-offs and actually buy it. I'm REALLY REALLY trying. I'm just not there, at least not for the foresee-able future. CMANO has two big strikes against it, IMO, that I don't see getting better.
The first problem is the big problem, from everything I can see I need to pay boutique prices and invest in boutique hardware to play a top-down view game that could also be played with dice and a deck of cards.
If you're fan of this series, I'm sorry but this is how I see it. I just can't rationalize the "this is what you pay for the GUI" vs "this is what you get" part.
Strike two, for a strategy game with an impeccable database- why does the darned thing look like its running on rails and why do those plots always seem to fall apart?
I was watching a YouTube guy (Dr. Zias?) play thru CMANO: Northern Inferno. The guy did a good job but the game played like painting a wall and watching it dry. The kicker was the climax of the story line where a wing of B-52 have to penetrate the Kola peninsula to launch SRAM missiles before dropping their nukes. One plane turns back and its escort fighters promptly shoot it down due to desertion.
WHY?????????????????????
Just FYI, modern military's do not knowingly practice fratricide. Its just really inconvenient and wasteful and stuff like that. And, CMANO should have known better. The pedigree of that crew makes me wonder what the heck they were thinking?
Anyway...........
