Customer Reviews

Sub Command

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I am a hardcore sub-sim gamer, among other types of games. For hardcore sim gamers I rate this game 3 of 5. For casual gamers I rate this game 0 of 5, IF YOU ARE A "CASUAL GAMER" DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS GAME. I give this game an average of 3 only because of a very hard learning curve and a manual that is in .pdf from and too large to bother printing.

Graphics: Excellent for a sub sim.
Realism: Too real (a bit too much micro-management, sonar contacts sometimes a bit too ambiguous, too many available russian weapons).
Sound: Excellent, but needs a few more controls for volume of individual types of sounds, incoming sonar and contact engine noise for instance.
Voice acting: Excellent. Does not get tiresome quickly.
Mission breifing: Excellent.
Gameplay: Good. Difficult (this is a good thing for hardcore gamers), could use better "Auto-crew" AI, especially in the sonar department. No difficulty levels except a half dozen options for "auto-crew" and fast reload times (also reinforces the "too real" concept).

The very hard learning curve means THIS GAME IS NOT FOR CASUAL GAMERS, regardless of the developer's claims. It took me about 25 hours of play just to get familiar with all the necessary controls and procedures. During this time, I was sunk once by another ship, and heavily damaged a dozen times due to running into icebergs or the surface ice pack. Don't get me wrong, this is an excellent sim. It's just that they could've made it a little easier to play. The three short tutorial missions do not cover nearly enough procedures for normal "auto-crew" gameplay. You WILL have to read the manual included as .pdf file on disk, or you WILL give up and put this game away forever. It is a big help to be familiar with the details of real submarine procedures (as I was) before playing this game. This game will allow you to switch between stations and give orders while the time is paused! This is very handy, especially for beginners. There are more contacts than just military, and not all military contacts are your enemy or target. This is a refreshing change from the sub-sims I have played in the past, where you knew if you found a contact you could immediatly fire opon it.

My main gripes about this game are:
1. MAIN GRIPE: The "auto-crew" at the sonar station: Is too slow, and often designates (many) multiple trackers for the same contact. Some contacts are called out once and never again for a long time, and these do not appear on the "nav" view or the weapon control view, therefore you cannot fire at these contacts. It also will sometimes re-assign an incorrect designation (ship or sub class) for one already correctly assigned by me with 100% confidence. I have seen a ship re-designated as an enemy torpedo! This would be okay if the ship did launch a torpedo, and the torpedo tracking continued, but this was not the case. The ship continued to be designated as a torpedo without another contact being reported. Running the Akula (russian) sonar is too tough to do yourself, and turning off the sonar "auto-crew" can be a fatal mistake for any sub, you need the station manned at ALL times. After about fifteeen minutes of good contact, many contacts are not yet designated (type) by the sonar "auto-crew". When I interceeded it was easy to find the designation of these contacts. Why didn't the sonar "auto-crew" designate these (NOT EVEN SURFACE/AIR/SUBMERGED type)??? By the time the sonar "auto-crew" designates a contact, surely they will have pinpointed you (if enemy).

2. Some single Player Campaign missions are unbelievably hard. I cannot believe ANYONE who did not cheat could win the "Escort NATO SAG" mission (Seawolf) without knowing ahead of time where the enemy was!

3. Air contact are not designated as such by the radar "auto-crew". I did the medivac mission and the helocopter which I was expecting was never designated as an air contact, even with my radar on! What would happen if I was surfaced and an unknown aircraft was approaching?!!!

4. When the fire control "auto-crew" is on, I cannot fine-tune the torpedo and missle presets. When I turn the "auto-crew" off at this station, the torpedo just fires in the exact CURRENT bearing of the target (or possibly just straight ahead), and if the control wire breaks when fired, it will miss. This happens even when you turn on the fire control "auto-crew" when designating a target, and then turn it off before actually firing the weapon (this is my usual tactic). Once the weapon is fired, you cannot adjust the running depth, activation point distance, "ceiling", "floor" (max. depth allowed), and type of detection (active/passive). These are called "presets". Also I cannot find a firing direction preset to adjust for the torpedo or missile, even with the fire control "auto-crew" off.

5. There is no "auto-crew" for the passive radar contact designation, i.e. contacts can be designated (identified) with 100% confidence by passive radar, and you have to do this yourself manually (and thus too much micro-management).

6. The game is too buggy! Was apparently released before it was sufficiently debugged. Version 1.01 (patch) is still way too buggy, and EA says they are ending bug fixing this month (Dec.'01)!

7. No printable documentation of the default "hotkeys", even though their use is not necessary (except for the P for Pause).

Hardcore sub-sim gamers should be delighted with this game if they can endure the very long steep learning curve.

After seeing some of the reviews I was hestiate to buy Sub Command, however after getting it I now have a new addiction. People complain that it is not 688i Hunter-Killer, in fact all the modeling and the way the game works is almost exactly like it. Those familar with the older Janes game should have little problem using the Los Angeles class submarine in the game since the interface has only minor differences, the Seawolf Class and the two Akula class submarines are an excellent addition and offer their own advantages and disadvantages. I highly recommend the game if you are a fan of submarine simulation games and have played 688i, if you have not played 688i then you probably will find the game pretty difficult and even frustrating at times since acquiring a contact and tracking it to a good firing solution can be time consuming and borders on the level of being a strategy game. Also the sound, music and graphics are far superior to 688i even tho I have seen reviews saying that the graphics quality is the same or even worse (perhaps if you have a low quality computer the graphics will be low quality).

The only flaws I have seen is the limits of the speech engine, this allows you to control the submarine but you can't control the entire submarine just on voice commands. For example you can launch a tube with a voice command but you must select the contact, establish the presets and ready the tube manually and you have to do a couple of readings with the speech engine before it really can be effective (it took me two readings before it could understand most of my commands but after a three it seemed to understand just about every single command I issued). The only other flaw is the serious lack of good training missions, they offer some very basic training missions with the Seawolf class submarine but it only touches the bare surface in the functions of the submarine and teachs you nothing of tactics nor is there any training for the other two submarines.

... This Game is Great! Yeah, Duh, submarine warfare is similar to what it has always been but this game incorporates tons of new features. I played 688(I) a lot and I find this game more tense, suspensful, enjoyable and rewarding then it's predecessor.

You get three platforms to control, and they each have their strong points and advantages that if ignored will cost you a trip down to "Davie Jones' locker". New stand off weapons to drop torpedoes on your enemies head while staying away from his retaliatory response. Or the high speed Shkval (rocket powered torpedo) to level the playing field when your opponent gets the drop on you, are just a couple of the strengths that the new Akula boats offer.
Or the super Quiet Seawolf class of subs with the deadly Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes and awesome sensor suite to help you detect and destroy your opponent before he even knows you are there. Finally the 688(I) boat and its 12 VLS tubes for a Tomahawk strike on ground targets or TASM's for those pesky Surface Action Groups (SAG).

Graphics are dramatically improved over 688(I) but more importantly in a vessel with no windows the sounds are superb. Also improved AI puts this game miles ahead of any other Nuke Subsim out there. I'm hooked!!

As the successor to the popular Jane's 688(i) simulation, this sim improves on a formula that worked: nuclear submarine simulation, with a Mission Builder tool, 3D external viewing in the map room (so you can see your own sub moving through the water or any other object if you want), and optional autocrewmen to man the sonar, weapons, targeting, radar, and other stations for those who want to jump right into the action and just bark orders (like me). By turning off the autocrewman features, the sim can be made to be quite complex for those who take submarine warfare seriously, but even at the easiest setting it will take an adult about an hour to learn most of the systems. Once you get the hang of the weapons firing, the game can become a little addictive.

The graphics are good, particularly the periscope view during the up/down transition (water is simulated running down the glass and you can see your radar dish spinning when its mast is raised). The 3D view is nice, too, and is a good way for beginners to orient themselves. If you've never played a sub sim before, you should select the Seawolf as your vessel as it is the most intuitive (and technologically advanced) of the fleet.

I skipped the missions that came with the game and built my own instead. The mission editor is a bit clunky but is capable of doing some pretty neat things once you get the hang of it. The entire Earth is mapped with terrain and you insert the objects, including shrimp, trawlers, enemy ships, subs, and aircraft of the major nations, including civilian cruise ships and jumbo jets. You can build cities and airports and assign the altitude and frequency of air traffic flying from place to place. Setting up the goal heirarchy takes some practice and reading the manual, which brings up one bad thing about this sim: for something as complicated as this software, the manual isn't even printed - its on the cd so you have to print out the 200 page monster yourself.

The manual does a good job of getting you familiar with how the submarines operate and how the game world works, but I wish it had included a quick reference to the various vessels in the mission builder - something that really becomes irritating when you're trying to add enemy ships to a mission and don't know one destroyer class from another. The only reference is in the game itself and can't be printed (at least not as far as I can figure out). If you plan to make your own missions, you may want to pick up a modern warship reference guide.

In my opinion, if you have Jane's 688(i), you're better off staying with that until the patches come out to make the game a bit more stable. I'm playing version 1.00 and I've gotten locked up and bounced to my desktop a couple of times while playing some of my home-made missions, but that may be a problem with the way I built the mission. Still, now that "Silent Hunter II" is out, I'll probably play "Sub Command" less. I prefer submarines with deck guns - using a million-dollar torpedo to take out a $50,000 trawler is a bit of overkill, but in "Sub Command" that's the cheapest weapon you have.

For modern warfare fans, "Sub Command" is your best option. For everyone else, there's "Silent Hunter II" and its companion "Destroyer Command". For those who just want a quick arcade game, try one of the console games for PlayStation or Nintendo.

Successor to Jane's 688, I've awaited for this game for so long, but it's a big disappointment. I'll cut it short.
1. The auto crew was programmed very poorly. Especially the sonar crew. Once auto crew active you cannot manually identify or designate. TMA crew should attend a Math 151 class (I mean it)
2. There's the stupid "Show truth" option spoiling the game play, turning the game into C64 Red Storm Rising.
3. The sonar engine is great. Sonalyst does again a great job, as they did in 688.
4. There are fatal vector computation errors. I've removed the game after the torpedo I've launched passing 5 nm behind my ship at a different depth hit me. That's a serious bug.

Do not buy this game, instead replay 688 with downloaded missions. You'll have much more fun. Bottomline, poor programming, poor QA, great sonar engine.

EA has spoiled such a good foundation by Sonalyst.

The packaging and name are different, but once you get into it, "Sub Command" is a prettier sequel to EA's "Jane's 688(i)". Both games are elaborate nuclear submarine warfare simulations. The interface and look of the game remain unchanged, though SC obviously looks nicer. Whereas 688(i) only simulated the latter classes of the Los Angeles class attack submarine (with its bow-mounted diving planes and vertical launch tubes), SC adds on the newer Seawolf attack sub (quieter, more torpedo tubes, pump-jet propulsor) and - with war being an equal-opportunity offense - the Russian Akula class sub. (I've also discovered an on-line community, ala "Falcon Super-Pak" which has crafted elaborate mods, one allowing you to command virtually any sub, though I have yet to fully explore that option.) SC avoids some of 688(i)'s realism lapses (unrealistically short weapon-reload times and turn rates) by making them part of the game's novice settings. As in the older game, there's a 3D external "spot" view allowing you to gaze admiringly at your sub, targets, torpedoes, what have you. SC incorporates spot view without allowing it to harm the game's demanding realism - you can only spot targets that you've actually detected using your boat's sensor suite, and even then, a target's appearance depends on the information you've provided (i.e. - when you've determined that target "Sierra-01" is a neutral freighter half-a-mile away from your bow, you'll see an innocuous freighter in spot view, even though the target is actually a submerged and hostile Kilo Class submarine that's a whole lot closer). Although spot view is irrelevant to the science of submarine warfare, it's priceless to enhancing the spirit of submarines by reminding you that you're playing a game involving steel-plated, nuclear-powered leviathans prowling the blue-black depths. (Spot view here is more versatile than the one in "Tom Clancy's SSN", a game which was essentially one-big spot view). In SC, spot alternates with map-view (a handy smaller window is always kept open, so that you can have your view of choice on, without closing the other completely). Otherwise, the game brings back the complex weapons and sensor suite of the last game - you use various sonar sensors to find targets, and rely on TMA to locate them (using Target Motion Analysis you can determine a target's distance using the bearings you get from it at two different locations, and then cross-referencing the two). You also use noise demodulation (called "DEMON") to tell you how many blades there are on any of your target's propeller, which you'll need to determine the unlucky target's turn count and therefore speed. Targeting information is then pre-set into your weapons, (Unfortunately, Americans are limited to torpedoes when fighting enemy subs, while the clunkier Akula sub has more exotic toys - like the Shkval rocket-propelled topedo), and then, anything goes. AI crewmen are included for those who hate micro-management - though TMA is something you'll have to do yourself. The look of the different subs is also satisfying - from the 1970's-looking switches on the Russian subs, to the "Star Trek" style touch-sensor controls on the Seawolf, you seldom feel like you're driving a computer.

Most of your early gaming, however, won't make you feel like you're really doing anything right. The science of submarine warfare is pretty counterintuitive, so you won't be able to jump in and simply learn your way around like you had in any of the innumerable flight sims you've doubtlessly played. The game comes with an on-CD manual that prints pretty poorly (and runs something like 200 pages -the table of contents is longer than the manuals of some simpler games) and doesn't really put the disparate elements of your playable subs into context (okay - you've got an enemy torpedo in acquisition, how can it find me, and what can I do to avoid that?). There's some tutorial missions - only three, though. I guess we're expected to use trial and error playing the missions, which is sadly typical of hardcore sims - they're demanding and chock full of intriguing details, but can't teach you their secrets w/o sending you off on countless kill-or-be-killed missions which (in the case of naval simulations) take forever. Personally, I never got deep enough into 688(i) to determine whether SC rises high enough above it to make it a worthwhile buy for those who already have 688(i). However, with its lovely graphics and compelling gameplay, SC is going to be patrolling the deep places of my hard drive for the foreseeable future. This game ran smoothly on my P4 (2ghz)/WinXP system - with the exception of sound. Though I installed a patch, sound effects become non-existent soon after a mission is begun.

If u have played 688(i) Hunter/Killer, this is the same... NOT... in that game u could get 4 torpedos in the water within a couple of seconds, and easy ways to identify targets... this is MUCH more of a simulation. First, you track the target on sonar, then you can try to figure out the type of ship, its direction, speed and the turns of the propeller. Sounds hard? YES it is. Sounds boring? YES it is for the first few hours, but when u get the hang of it... then you WILL enjoy!

I was expecting something a lot more user friendly. The game manuel is in pdf format and its some 200 pages long and very technical. I've had it now for about three weeks and I still do not know how to launch anything but a "snapshot" torpedo. Graphics are good, but other than that unless you have that technical expertise of an actual submarine captain do not even bother.

If you like military simulators, you will love Sub Command. The graphics my be a little out dated depending on your system but, other then that, it's worth getting.

Wholy smokes, i think it would be easier to be a real submarine commander. There was so many things to hit just to move, the grapics and views are horrible, game play terrible. Dont waste your time battle ship is much more fun.