XPlay (G4TV) Video Review of Dangerous Waters

[Jamie]

Anyone who has cable (or satellite) television in the U.S. has probably surfed by G4TV in their remote control travels. It's somewhat mindless, occasionally funny, and always has young and attractive women as co-hosts... Sounds like a good formula for success given the average age of the common game player, actually (and I'm guilty of watching it from time to time).

Their viewers are certainly not our core audience and so their review of DW is slanted as such. However, the video review is sort of funny in a crass, adolescent sense and that sort of humor can be fun to partake in on occasion. :)

http://www.g4tv.com/xplay/reviews/42/Dangerous_Waters.html

Sometimes you just need to be able to laugh at yourself. We are certainly capable of that. :cool:

[Syxx_Killer]

Hmmm... Dangerous Metal Tubes. That could be the next installment! :lol:

[XabbaRus]

LOL very funny.

[madDdog67]

Hey, where's Morgan Webb when you need her??

I agree with the part about the tutorials...some narration would really be helpful, imho.

[Jamie]

Hey, where's Morgan Webb when you need her??

She was in the video review... you gotta click on the "Watch Video" to see her. ;)

[Dr.Sid]

Oh yeah ! Everybody who read the review, found it funny, but did not watch the video, JUMP BACK AND WATCH IT. Because THAT is what I call funny.

[madDdog67]

That was hilarious! I don't know how I missed the video the first time...ah well, I got my Morgan fix at least.

[SeaQueen]

Oooo man... they really slammed you guys.

I dunno... do you guys think that maybe you're marketing a game that isn't for everyone as a game that's for everyone and getting punished for the fact?

Back in the day... before every game was a first-person shooter, there was a lot more diversity between games. You could usually get a pretty good idea what a game was like by looking at it. Now a days, the emphasis in marketing games seems to be so heavily on cool screen shots and what not, that the substance of a game is largely obscurred. It's like every game is trying to steal market share from first person shooters by looking like a first person shooter, even when they're nothing like one.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Wonder what they'd do if they ever reviewed Harpoon.

[SeaQueen]

Wonder what they'd do if they ever reviewed Harpoon.

They won't, and if they did it'd be clear that they didn't get it.

When computers didn't generally have the horsepower to handle advanced graphics engines, companies would hype a simulation's realism. The whole selling point of the SIMULATION was that YOU COULD LEARN SOMETHING.

Take Microprose's Red Storm Rising, for example. To this day, I still think it's one of the coolest naval simulations out there. Graphics were minimal. The whole point of playing the game was that you were curious about what WWIII might be like.

I wonder if it would be possible to build a naval simulation around one specific theatre again, say some hypothetical future Taiwan Strait crisis, and just really bore down into that. Don't worry about scenario editors, don't worry about being able to do anything anywhere in the world. No fancy scripting. Just lay down the forces, and some kind of campaign script or even a dynamic one. I would like to see a post-Cold War Red Storm Rising.

[Molon Labe]

What was all that **** they're giving you guys about no printed manual?

That's what I call "libel."

[goldorak]

I wonder if it would be possible to build a naval simulation around one specific theatre again, say some hypothetical future Taiwan Strait crisis, and just really bore down into that. Don't worry about scenario editors, don't worry about being able to do anything anywhere in the world. No fancy scripting. Just lay down the forces, and some kind of campaign script or even a dynamic one. I would like to see a post-Cold War Red Storm Rising.
[mode daydreamer on]

Of course its possible.
Microprose did it for Falcon 4, why would it be different for naval simulations. ?
I agree with you seaqueen, concentrate on one single theater and apply a dynamic campaign engine.
Let the ai carry on with a global crisis, generating different kinds of missions (infiltration in enemy territorial waters with subs, reconaissance with p-3, naval strikes with frigates, etc...) and you choose the mission to carry out.
Of course you will need to have a logbook with all the scores and promotions :)

[mode daydreamer off]

If we are to have a succesor to DW, divert all resources to a dynamic campaign.
Ignore graphic deficiencies, scenario editor features, etc....
Just give us the holy grail of military simulations.
Back to reality, we know that DW will never have a dynamic campaign *sigh*.

[Smaragdadler]

What was all that **** they're giving you guys about no printed manual?


It's understandable in a way. They have to learn DW not just for fun like we, but for their job... and it makes their job harder and les fun to have no printed manual.

[SeaQueen]

Of course its possible.
Microprose did it for Falcon 4, why would it be different for naval simulations. ?


Even Microprose's original Falcon was significantly dumbed down from what it was eventually modded into. Part of the problem is that there's significantly more information in the public domain about fighter jets than there is about anti-submarine warfare systems.


I agree with you seaqueen, concentrate on one single theater and apply a dynamic
campaign engine.


One of their big complaints in the video was that DW consisted of an awful lot of driving around the ocean looking at nothing. Well... that's the nature of a naval battle. The ocean is a big place, and situations develop slowly. Battles are still fought over hundreds or even thousands of miles, but ships are slow relative to jets and the ocean is a WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING.

If you had a dynamic campaign, where situations could be allowed to evolve on their own in real or accelerated time, then you'd "jump into" the platform or exit it at will, and it wouldn't be so painful to patrol a barrier for hours or even a day or two and find nothing. You would only worry about the exciting parts unless you're like me and just enjoy setting a course and let things run while you read a book, and check in now and then.

It's important to recognize, though, that naval warfare has a fundamentally different quality from fighter combat. In a naval campaign, you wouldn't have a home base, necessarily. If you do, it'd be thousands of miles away. UNREP and combat logistics forces are important, but by the same time SLOC must be protected (and attacked).

I actually wouldn't mind to a certain extent if it was scripted, so long as it's well thought out. I'd rather it look like a genuine campaign analysis, though, than a cheesy submarine novel.

I've come to believe that the more people try to make subsims reproductions of cheesy submarine novels, the less interesting they get. That's part of why I don't like a lot of scripting and plotting. Cheesy submarine novels are CHEESY. Let's try to actually figure out what it's all about, ya know?

[Molon Labe]

What was all that **** they're giving you guys about no printed manual?

It's understandable in a way. They have to learn DW not just for fun like we, but for their job... and it makes their job harder and les fun to have no printed manual.

But there IS A MOTHER ****ING PRINTED MANUAL!

[sonar732]

What was all that **** they're giving you guys about no printed manual?

That's what I call "libel."

They did mention the printed manual...complaining that it cost $45.

[Jamie]

But there IS A MOTHER ****ING PRINTED MANUAL!

They just were sent a Retail box (I assume) and I'm sure they never even went to the Strategy First product page for DW (http://www.strategyfirst.com/en/games/dangerouswaters/) to see that the spiral-bound manual could be purchased for $19.99 (or $14.95 if you buy DW from the site as well).

They were reviewing what the average Best Buy, CompUSA, EB, or Gamestop consumer would get... which is, a product without the manual.

Now... The sidenote of all of that is that we pitched DW *with* the spiral-bound manual in an expanded box (for $49.99 instead of $39.99) to every single Retailer we talked to and EVERY SINGLE one of them laughed at us. They didn't want to pay the extra shipping costs, they didn't want to afford the box the extra shelf space it needed (since it would have been slightly deeper and wider), and they didn't want to sell any PC game for over $39.99 unless it was some Collector's Edition of a game that they KNEW was going to fly off the shelves at $49.99...

In this instance, we're not the problem... neither is our publisher, really... there's a heckuva lot more to getting a game on the shelves than what they know and the Retailers play a HUGE part in that process (Walmart especially).

Anyway... I still got a chuckle from the review. They said exactly what I thought they would say, and there's something to be said for a humorous dose of predictability (it's comforting, in a small way). ;)

[Sea Demon]

Those retailers are thinking poorly IMHO. If you want to generate better sales, you have to deliver a more superior product. DW is already a superior product IMO. But it's hard to see that unless you get it into people's hands and create interest in it. A printed manual has always been a plus because it gives you something to dig into right away. Who wants to open up that PDF manual and read it for more than 15 minutes? I mean how much shelf space are we talking here? How much more in shipping would it be?

And yes, the video was good. I actually didn't know that G4 looks at games of depth like DW. I always thought of them looking at console first-person shooters only and such. Glad to see they looked at it. :cool:

[NefariousKoel]

Every once in awhile X-Play reviews a game that's more than just another twitch.

You should check out the Silent Hunter III video review they did. I almost lost consciousness from laughing the first time I saw it. Watch the video - I think it's here:

http://www.g4tv.com/xplay/features/51687/Silent_Hunter_III_Review.html

Hmm.. maybe no video :(

[SeaQueen]

In this instance, we're not the problem... neither is our publisher, really... there's a heckuva lot more to getting a game on the shelves than what they know and the Retailers play a HUGE part in that process (Walmart especially).


What does Walmart think makes a game desirable?

[Molon Labe]

What was all that **** they're giving you guys about no printed manual?

That's what I call "libel."
They did mention the printed manual...complaining that it cost $45.
they said it would cost that much to print the .pdf themselves.

[Smaragdadler]

I like this sentence from the review: "This is an uber-hardcore naval sim for hardcore fans of hardcore naval sims.".
Now I feel special... :smug:

[Driftwood]

Like, uhhhhhhh, whatever dude.....:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: TOO FUNNY!

[Hawk66]

I don't know, if I should laugh or cry.

They were really shocked when they've learned that the manual has 500+ pages. Probably this is more than all other games, which they've reviewed so far, had together :lol:

[Deadeye313]

This is the biggest manual I have seen since Homeworld and that thing was huge when it came out.

[goldorak]

This is the biggest manual I have seen since Homeworld and that thing was huge when it came out.
To be honest you could eliminate a good 30 % off, since the sub stations are all the same, minus cosmetic changes.
Learn how to operato one, know how to operate all.

Now the Falcon 4 manual, that was a real brick.
Almost 600 pages of very concentrated tactics/ procedures/ tutorials/brief lesson on aerodynamics/ and of course the inner workings of the f-16.

I don't think there will ever be a manual for a commercial pc game that can top that of Falcon 4.
Not even Flight Simulator. :p

[Dr.Sid]

What about Falcon 5 ? :rotfl:

[goldorak]

What about Falcon 5 ? :rotfl:

Damn Dr. Sid stop hittin' the nail in the coffin. :rotfl:

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Now the Falcon 4 manual, that was a real brick.
Almost 600 pages of very concentrated tactics/ procedures/ tutorials/brief lesson on aerodynamics/ and of course the inner workings of the f-16.

I remember Falcon 4. When I first bought it, the darn thing won't work on my computer. If not for the very valuable manual, my investment would have been a total loss...

[goldorak]

I remember Falcon 4. When I first bought it, the darn thing won't work on my computer. If not for the very valuable manual, my investment would have been a total loss...

Yep, most unfortunate situation. :yep:
The software was light years ahead of the competition in terms of features and gameplay, and so were the thousands of bugs present in its code.
But the release of the game couldn't be postponed, it already had been in development for nearly 6 years so it had to get out no matter what.

[Wim Libaers]

Well, there is an updated version of F4:
http://www.lead-pursuit.com/news.htm

And in development, promises to be even more complex:
http://www.fighterops.com/