Vapourware Cold Waters, Spiritual Successor to Red Storm Rising by KillerFish Games

[Burning Bridges]

Spiritual Successor to the Microprose Classic “Red Storm Rising”

After tracking a Soviet landing force bound for Iceland it is time to plan your attack. Do you silently close in to torpedo the landing ships and escape during the resulting chaos? Or strike with long-range missiles but risk counterattack from the enemy escorts? Have you detected them all, could another submarine be out there listening for you? Has the hunter become the hunted? Will you survive the Cold Waters?

Inspired by the 1988 classic “Red Storm Rising”, take command a nuclear submarine in a desperate attempt to prevent “mutually assured destruction” when the Cold War gets hot and WWIII begins.

You will be tasked with intercepting convoys, amphibious landings, insertion missions and battling it out with enemy warships, submarines and aircraft. Thankfully, an arsenal of wire-guided torpedoes, anti-ship and cruise missiles and the occasional SEAL team are on board to keep the Iron Curtain at bay.

Major Features:
- Real-time naval combat
- Over 40 classes of ships and submarines all meticulously researched
- Dynamic Campaign where your performance matters
- Realistic sonar model
- Authentic Soviet combat tactics

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=770691721

Pretty excited about this.
This is still in Greenlight but KillerFish made great games before, Pacific Fleet and Atlantic Fleet, if you dont know them check this out too.

 

[LESS T_T]

Steam page:

 

[Burning Bridges]

They have some update on ports. http://steamcommunity.com/app/541210

What I've seen so far from these guys fills me with big optimism.

 

[Stokowski]

/informative

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/05/26/the-flare-path-cold-waters-preview/

 

[Burning Bridges]

 

[Burning Bridges]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/541210/Cold_Waters/

It's on Steam now for 36.99

First reactions seem mixed, not much more than a pimped up Atlantic Fleet, which explains the rapid development.
This could still be a lot of fun, but I would feel a bit betrayed if the alleged dynamic campaign was but bait.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

How did I fucking miss this.

 

[Trash]

Played the game for 5 or so hours. Forget casual. This game is brutal. The AI knows how to hunt and does it mercilessly. The game is streamlined in that the willy nilly is done by the computer. The big decisions however are left to the player. Does it always work? Well, a good example is the towed array. In game it gets automatically deployed at a speed of 5kts. There’s no drawback or risk and it gets automatically towed in when you speed up. For me, that’s a bit too much handholding. However, does it take away from sneaking up on a big Oscar sub? No.

The campaign is a series of events that play out while you send your sub out on a big map that shows (detected) enemy forces. Do well on the map and in missions and you will influence the events. Last campaign I managed to sink a sub carrying special forces to Iceland. Ruining that plan for the reds. However I missed a submarine tender later on and had to deal with increased enemy activity in the Norwegian sea. Then I died. Did I mention the game is hard? The campaigns (there are currently 2) have lots of replayability and I don’t see me getting tired of them very soon.

Niggles? Lots. Airplanes are a bit bugged in that the Soviet chance to have aircover is too big all over the map. There are no crew voices, so you’ll have to keep an eye out for status messages all the time. They really need to add a unit reference that's easy to read while in a mission. The control scheme and UI could use some extra work and everyone is bitching about the lack of a button for periscope depth and crash diving. Plus the before mentioned streamlining is a bit too severe at times. The devs tried to make the game easy to play and hard to master and succeeded. Mostly. They are however active and receptive, so I see a good future for the game ahead. That, and there seems to be a lot of space for modding. They already announced an expansion where you take to the helm as the reds.

I am having a blast with the game. Sneaking up on Russian misile subs under the arctic ice, taking the long tour through a destroyer screen to hit a big warship, crawling along the oceanbed to get in close enough to land a group of Navy Seals undetected. It’s all there and a lot of fun. Not to mention that it looks and sounds great. If you’re into submarine warfare go read up on Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising to get in the mood and go kill some commies. Or get killed by them.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I have not ordered being a stingy bastard and all. It's priced a bit optimistic at 37.99, is it worth the money?

Because Atlantic Fleet was decent but certainly not worth more than 10$.

 

[Trash]

Dunno. Depends on what you expect for that money. I personally didn't really like Atlantic Fleet. This however is defenitely my thing. It has the challenge, replayability, content, fun factor and randomness to keep quite interesting for quite awhile. So for me it's worth it.

Steam reviews have gone from mixed to very positive btw. Guess most of the people expecting World of Warships (or whatever the mmo thing is called) have left.

 

[Trash]

The map does play an integral part in the campaign and it certainly does feel like more than fluff. It's however no Mig Alley or Falcon style campaign. Unfortunately. I miss those.

Concerning the game being hard or casual. Just attacked a Kirov Class battleship plus 2 escorts. Had a nice depth beneath me and a thermal layer. Got in close and stayed undetected despite helicopters, one airplane and the escort. Rose to about 100 feet and fired 2 tomohawks. Then sped up, dived, released a noisemaker and decoy, banked hard and went into silent running at a little over the max depth. Both tomohawks got shot down by the Kirov and about half a minute later 3 enemy torpedoes where in the water. I died after they acquired me through sonar bouys. Challenging it is. Though it didn't feel unfair here. The AI does not seem to get a bonus in how they find you. They are tireless however, once they get a smell.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Ah and by the way I have a little anecdote top shar about Rising Storm.

The year was 1990, and I had just bought a shiny Amiga 500. I had saved for almost a year so that I could finally replace the ailing C64 which felt like going from a 386 directly to a Pentium IV. Now for some reason, I was sick for a week, it was winter and needed something to do (no internet back then, not even telephone). I had a copy of Red Storm Rising but only for the C64. In the end it turned out this was the 1 and only time that I spent a week playing on the C64 - when I already had a 5+ year better computer. Quite amazing and I remember a friend could not believe I had dusted up the old home computer.

 

[Trash]

Cool. Well, if you enjoyed RSR then you're in for a treat. Cold Waters feels very much alike. Campaign is pretty much the same. Basic gameplay is an evolution on RSR's. Even single missions and menus share the same lines. They weren't kidding when they called it a spiritual successor.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

The '68 campaign is hard as balls, mostly because your homing torps are barely faster than an enemy sub and have an aversion to going in a straight line.

 

[Burning Bridges]

My first impression is less ecstatic, although this is a good game. It ain't a subsim more like a hardcore arcade game.

The engine that was already used in Atlantic Fleet is pretty good, and reaches almost Silent Hunter IV visual quality. While the audio is nice as far as underwater sounds go, there is no speech messages at all. You basically feel like you're steering a whale that has the ability to fire sophisticated weapons. Since there is no audio of most aspects the athmosphere of real subsims like SHIV is absent.

Gameplay is simple yet decent, with the most important systems like sound signatures modelled but very rudimentary. Considering the large amount of time that I will spent staring at contacts, that's not gonna be enough for me I am afraid.

There is a lot wrong with the interface, with many important features like tooltips and pulldown menus absent. On the plus side it has a very good keyboard control, you can play the game almost completely just with the keyboard.

Another problem is that I personally liked the engine more in fleet vs fleet engagements like Atlantic Fleet, but not in the lone wolf sub scenario. There is simply not enough going on and you are mostly looking at the externals of your own submarine (no internals whatsoever) while the birds eye of weapons/targets etc feel like cheating in a subsim. It's not a big deal because they made that quite acceptable by only revealing true information after they are destroyed or identified, otherwise you see just an empty ocean where the target is.

All in all this is a good game, but immediately becomes depressing that no one makes good subsims anymore and this is probably the best we are gonna get. Therefore I have no other choice now but play it and see how long I enjoy it.

 

[Luka-boy]

So I just read the Subsim review and I'm glad to see the devs will be implementing some UI and gameplay improvements soon enough. There are even some preview screenshots of the new sim controls so you don't have to move around using WASD and hotkeys.

Spoiler

 

[Burning Bridges]

Tbh I am not sure anymore what this even is. Feels basically like Atlantic Fleet in WWIII and with only 1 life.

 

[Luka-boy]

Apparently whales attracting some torpedoes is a feature.


There are plenty of screenshots of that happening in the Steam hub. Blue whales are especially great because they look resigned to their fate

Spoiler

Some other funny screenshots too.

Spoiler

And why does this thread still have the Vapourware tag?