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...us_Waters.html

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

[Syxx_Killer]

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

[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]

Originally Posted by madDdog67

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]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

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]

Originally Posted by SeaQueen

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

[SeaQueen]

Originally Posted by goldorak

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]

Originally Posted by Smaragdadler

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!