688 Attack Sub is a submarine simulator game designed by John W. Ratcliff & Paul Grace, published in 1988 for MS-DOS systems and 1990 for Amiga computers by Electronic Arts. The player takes command of a US Los Angeles-class or Soviet Alfa class nuclear powered attack submarine and plays 10 missions organized into a Cold War scenario.
Originally posted by F16PilotJumper: Dangerous Waters is on Steam, and you can get a nice bundle deal with 688(i) (formerly Jane's), Sub Command, Fleet Command (formerly Jane's) and Dangerous Waters for like $40. 4 great games, can't beat it. I'm a former submariner (sonar operator) on a 688 attack sub and Sonalist (?) made games are hard to beat. Very realistic. In fact, a bit too realistic. 688(i) was great but fixed campaign; got old quick. Sub Command has 3 subs, but only the 688 is done to any detail (Akula and Seawolf are the others) but it also has fixed campaign.
Haven't played Dangerous Waters, but I think that's a PDF manual only so I'll skip, thank you. If you want modern, those are your best choices. Oh, and I knew someone would mention AotD. It was a great game in it's time but I feel that SH3 passes it in every regard. Dangerous Waters is good. I want to get back to the WWII era, but my enmity of starforce kept me away from SH3.
I think plans are not to include it in SH4, so I'll consider buying that when it comes out. Although, the best modern one (or at least, the one i cut my teeth on) was Sierra's Fast Attack. I didn't have a fucking clue what I was doing, and it was buggy as all hell, but being 'sick' to stay home and play it was a minor highlight of my young life.
(well, that, and Panzer General, and Wolfpack. (I;; for Broderbund)) -Alpha. Heh, just this weekend i reinstalled SHIII and installed the GWX expansion.
(I had never played the sim with the GWX expansion). I'm on my second patrol in '39 and I'm on my way back to base after sinking 50+K in tonnage (100% realism).
Ive got my old copy of 688(i) hanging round here somewhere, probably another subsim also. Weird thing is that I never was able to play through entire campaigns in the sims.
I think that part of the reason is that I just kept feeling that I was winging it and never playing the sim 'properly.' Properly as in tactics, patrol patterns, etc. Any lone cargo ship I feel that I must hunt down and sink, hell with reaching my patrol area. I think I need to do some more research to see about getting the mots out of the GWX expansion while at least trying to do things by the book.the way real U-boat drivers would do them. Originally posted by yd: Wow, I expected 3 replies to this, tops! So is this SH4 actually released? Going to hit the shops at lunch and look for it.
Oh, I am looking for realistic but fun. The ones I have played in the past were a tad too realistic or I had it set to hard as trying to find other subs was nigh on impossible. I don't think it's out yet, but it should be Real Soon Now (tm). Be warned, Silent Hunter III used Starforce copy protection and it's possible that Silent Hunter 4 IV will also. I'm not entirely sure though, as I think it's still a Ubisoft game and I think they swore off Starforce. They should also have a direct download solution if you're really impatient, but those almost always lag behind in patches and modability, something that is crucial to a game of this type (complicated, and likely buggy, but with great community support). I'm a former submariner (sonar operator) on a 688 attack sub and Sonalist (?) made games are hard to beat.
Very realistic. In fact, a bit too realistic. 688(i) was great but fixed campaign; got old quick. Sub Command has 3 subs, but only the 688 is done to any detail (Akula and Seawolf are the others) but it also has fixed campaign. Haven't played Dangerous Waters, but I think that's a PDF manual only so I'll skip, thank you. If you want modern, those are your best choices. Oh, and I knew someone would mention AotD.
![Submarine Submarine](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125524343/749002503.jpg)
It was a great game in it's time but I feel that SH3 passes it in every regard. Does the Navy still use the Sonalysts games for early training purposes? I know they had a special version of 688(i) for a while, but I don't know if that practice carried over to SC and DW.
I know what you mean about too realistic though. Sometimes sonar just won't do what you want it to in these games, and from what I've read that usually occurs where sonar wouldn't work very well in real life either. It's more of a simulation then a game, and gives me great respect for submariners. The big draw for the hardcore 688/SC/DW players (read: not me) has always been multiplayer - hours long cat and mouse games with the 3D view disabled and TMA plots on manual.
You can order a 3-ring-bound manual for Dangerous Waters for another $40 or something. Personally, I just used most of my experience from the previous games, with some time spend reading the PDF to get up to speed on the new platforms. Yea, most of the Sonalysts games - er, simulations - cross that threshold of what Joe Gamer would call fun most likely. That is to say, staring at a waterfall display for three hours straight and prosecuting a possible target!= fun for most.
Heck, I did it for real and.I. don't particularly think it's fun. That's partly why I like the SH series: It hits that nice balance between realism and fun. The dynamic campaign and role-playing components (upgrade your boat and crew) also add an element where you start to care about your boat/crew. 688(i), while an enjoyable sim, at the end of the day was all about beating the mission and moving towards the next one. SH is soooooo much more. Sounds fun, actually.
As long as there's some sort of 'talk to your sonarman and get an assist' feature. There is in a number of cases, but they generally tend to suck. They tend to misidentify ships, which tends to be fatal if they're hostile. 'hay, this is a 688i!err, NO YOU DUMBASS, IT'S AN AKULA!' (Okay, so maybe I exaggerate here, but it's just better to look at the narrowband yourself and look through the class library) In any case, I'm still shit at TMA, which is like, 90% of the goddamn game, so I tend so suck, but have tons of fun at the modern sims (in fact, some more patroling in Dangerous Waters may happen tonight) -Alpha. Originally posted by yd: What is 'starforce' copy protection and why is it important?
Objective answer: Subjective answer: Starforce is a piece of crap coppy protection system that installs a device driver on the machine. It's a piece of crap because: 1/ It tends to degrade the performance (and in some case, destroy) DVD drives.
2/ It's slow. 3/ It doesn't work (no copy protection scheme does). 4/ The producer company have had very unethical behavior (posting links to illegal downloads of game that does not use copy protection as 'proof' it's needed). 5/ It interferes with virtual CD/DVD softwares. 6/ It's insecure (local privilege escalation at least). 7/ You might not be +allowed' to uninstall it and even if you are allowed, jumps through all the required hoops to get the uninstaller and run it, it won't remove everything from your machine.