SUBSIM
ReviewTop Ten List of Good Things About Subsims With apologies to David Letterman
10. Of all the kinds of military games to play on computers, submarine sims are the least intense in terms of focus, immediate action, and tasking. You can sip your Dr Pepper without worrying about augering in or letting a Panzer get hull down on your ass.
9. You like the ocean? You get plenty of that with a subsim. Better yet, no seagulls to poop on your deck.
8. How often can you afford to upgrade your system--CPU, RAM memory, graphics card...? If you answer about once every five years then you're in luck--subsims only appear about that often.
7. Don't like face-to-face confrontations? Does that 14-inch muzzle on a battleship make you nervous? Submarine attacks are great for us hit & run tacticians (even though the run component leaves a lot to be desired in WWII subsims).
6. Gameplay in a subsim lasts considerably longer than in most flight sims. I usually crash on take-off in Jane's F/18. My Type VII U-boat in Command Aces of the Deep takes 15 minutes just to get to sea.
5. Subsims do not require fancy joysticks. Spend that $80 on more Dr Pepper.
4. Subsims come in two distinct varieties: WWII and nuke. Each requires its own set of skills to master. Get bored with one genre, set sail with the other.
3. Sonar and TMA. Exercise your spatial analytical skills like never before with a subsim. Patience is very much a virtue when trying to count prop turns, navigate thermals, identify and establish heading, bearing, range, and speed on a contact. Then you go and sink a cruise ship.
2. Room for improvement. The best submarine sims, although fun and stimulating, still have a ways to go before they can be considered truly real-life simulations. Ships need to be rendered in detailed 3D. WWII subsims should have fully-functional TDC and periscope range finding features for manual target plotting. And now that full-motion characters have found their way into games such as Half-Life, why can't a control room feature a dozen crewmen at their stations? They need only to move in place a little and turn their heads to simulate a submarine with people aboard, not an empty vessel.
And the number one good thing about subsims is:
1. Look how far they've come since the first Atari and C64 sub games! Man, the early subsims were like a checkers game compared to Jane's 688(I) or Silent Hunter. Play a good subsim in a darkened room, approach a convoy at night. Watch the moon rise, seen the whitecaps crest your scope. You can feel the eyes of the enemy lookouts searching the night for you and your fragile craft. You intercept on the surface (WWII, of course) until you're sure that destroyer is about to discover you. Dive and close--launch two eels! No, you cannot leave periscope depth yet--you must risk another look to see the destruction your torpedoes have wrought. But--alarm! Fast approaching are the English and their ASDIC. Crash dive!
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