Originally Posted by Max2147
I was a fan of SCS games, but I didn't buy DW.
A few reasons were:
1. Sub Command was disappointing. The learning curve was very steep, the game was buggy, the graphics were dated, and in general it just wasn't fun. I gave up on it before the mods arrived.
2. Premise of the game. I like realism and such, but the simple fact is that modern naval combat is a lot of people sitting in dark rooms and staring at sensor screens. You never even see your enemy, and in a sub you never even see the outside world. So a realistic simulation of modern naval combat won't be terribly exciting, in my mind. In SH4 you could at least cruise around on the surface, see enemy ships through your scope, and shoot at planes from the deck. Fleet Command takes you outside the ship altogether. Both those games, for all their flaws, are simply FUN. Sub Command wasn't fun, and I feared that DW would be the same.
3. Graphics. It's not the most important thing in a game, but I do think they matter. For example, SH4 isn't up there with the latest FPS and such as far as graphics, but they're certainly not bad. DW's graphics were BAD. They weren't really an improvement over Sub Command, which in turn wasn't an improvement over Fleet Command, which had dated graphics when it was released.
4. A Sub Command redux. I didn't really see much in DW to separate it from SC. If the frigate, the Kilo, and the plane had come out as a SC expansion pack, I might have been more interested. But the reviews I read said that the frigate and the plane were the worst parts of the game.
Overall, I loved Fleet Command. It had its flaws, but with the NWP pack it was reasonably realistic but still accessible to a non-expert like me. There's a balance to be had between realism and fun, and FC got that balance exactly right. Unfortunately, SC got it wrong. Having loved FC, the boredom of SC was a big disappointment. Since DW looked like it would be more of the same as far as SC was concerned, I didn't bother.
I read an interview with somebody at Sonalysis not long after DW was released where they mentioned that the company was getting a bunch of government contracts. I think the easy money there caused them to lose interest in games. The Naval Combat Pack was simply an easy cash-in that required almost no work on their part.
What I'd really like to see is a Fleet Command 2.
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