Cold Waters

An amazing reinterpretation of Microprose's classic Red Storm Rising. Great submarine simulation with focus on tactics. Very easy to learn, hard to master, and with 2 magnific dinamic campaigns. Excelent support from the devs, and a great modding scene. Rather than simulate every button in every station of the sub, Cold Waters understand that you have a crew working for you, while you take the important combat decissions. An excellent manual and tutorials shows you how to control the game in a comprehensive way, single player scenarios offer different combat situations and show you the ropes to be ready for the campaigns. Lots of different missions, from hunting boomers and task forces, to deploying special operations teams and launch Tomahawk missiles to destroy enemy bases on the ground. Civilian traffic recently added, biological contacts (whales), even icebergs to add to the experience. Great game, just try it.

Having enjoyed both Silent Service 1 and 2 as a kid and then later on, the Silent Hunter series, I was intrigued to see what Cold Waters had to offer. Sadly, the experience was a disappointment, as the game felt like a glorified (albeit highly polished) arcade game. If you're expecting Silent Hunter or Silent Service, then I'd look elsewhere; however, if you enjoyed Red Storm Rising when it was released back in 1988, then Cold Waters might just be for you.

If the concept of commanding a nuclear submarine seems really neat to you, and/or you love films like Crimson Tide and Hunt for Red October, this game is a must-have. Cold Waters comes with two campaigns played from the US side, one from the late 1960s and one set in the 1980s, with period-correct subs, ships and weapons for each. Its biggest strength is in making the job of commanding a nuclear sub and going up against an enemy navy accessible and engaging. Previous sub sims like Cold Waters and 688(i) were extremely realistic but did everything they could to drive all but the most hardcore players away. Cold Waters, on the other hand, does a great job of taking the key aspects of submarine warfare (sonar signatures, weapons control and avoidance, etc) and makes them all a little easier to understand. There's a solid manual that does a good job of breaking down all of these concepts so you can jump right in and start sinking enemy subs, ships and obliterating land targets. It's a bit light on immersion (you can't actually go 'inside' your sub, it's all played from the exterior camera view, and you only get to sail your sub from within each mission area, not in a free roam a la Silent Hunter games) but it's a pretty minor gripe, especially once you get engrossed in avoiding anti-submarine warfare helicopters, dueling enemy SSNs, etc. Also, the developer has a solid track record since launching Cold Waters of fixing bugs, and recently added a free content update that brought in neutral ships and oil rigs to concern yourself with. There is also a DLC coming which adds a more modern campaign era and the Seawolf-class submarine.

Dev team at Killerfish games considers us GOG users too much of a bother to keep updating the game in a timely manner. The latest update was released for the Steam version of the game 3 weeks ago from the day of writing this, and the patch has still not been released on GOG. This is the devteam's official response for GOG patch ETA: "We still have a final beta going on for this latest version over on Steam. Once that is released we'll push it out to GOG. Sorry for the inconvenience, but the upload process to GOG is manual and takes a lot of time, hence we're unable to keep it as frequently updated as the Steam version." So there you have it - they're skipping GOG patches with significant content updates (latest patch added more player submarines and USN ships, quick mission editor, etc.). They'll get around to us when they find the time.