Score
Gameplay:	4
Graphics:	8
Sound:	5
FunFactor:	4
PlasmaFactor:	8
Overall:	5.8

Dangerous Waters Review
January 30, 2006 by Christian Costa

by Christian Costa - January 30, 2006

When you were little how many of you played the board game Battleship? Ok I see one, two, four, ok so I'm not the only one who has played it. Well this Dangerous Waters takes the great idea from that game, mixed it on a computer with a keyboard, a microphone, and a set of commands that will make you shoot off torpedoes at your ally ships. In this simulation game you take control of multiple naval vehicles to complete recon and contact missions. You are the captain of whichever vehicle you choose and your word is law. Multiple commands put you in power but if you get too drunk off of power you can easily crash/blow up you whole crew. Learn your commands and become top captain among your friends or don't and sink to Davy Jone's locker.

I Love Using My Mouse...

The whole game is used by your mouse or your microphone. No directional buttons or anything. Well they do have shortcuts, but that requires you to memorize every witch command on the board. The microphone sounds like a good idea but it is not. You have to memorize all the commands and when you accidently blow up your ship without getting out the harbor you don't want to have to memorize "fix the port valve" command, you want to yell, "We are going to die unless you fix what just broke!" When something explodes you don't know what it is! You have to bring up a whole new window and figure out what broke in the list of commands and guess what to fix. I can almost guarantee you that it would be easier to command a submarine easier than actually playing one in this game.
 

Saving Grace

This was a change from the gameplay. I was very surprised and thankful that I could see the clouds while I passed by in my helicopter or reef in my submarine. The water looked somewhat realistic unless you had an over-head view. I am pretty sure I saw a school of fish or too in the shallow areas. The most disappointing part was the explosions. Once I popped this game in I tried to navigate my battle cruiser out of the harbor. I crashed after trying to figure out the controls. The explosion was pathetic. It looked like black and red sprites just popped out of no-where around the cruiser. No bodies flying anywhere. No emergency vehicles came to help me (I was still in the harbor when I crashed). No little humans jumped into the water trying to get away from the fire, nothing! The vehicles were very detailed down to the bottom of a cruiser or a torpedo hole in a submarine they made it realistic. Since the vehicles are the main basis of the game they excelled at this.
 

Beep Beep *insert generic sonar noise*

How exciting can moving a boat be? About as exciting as listening to one! You hear some water, some guy on the microphone giving out commands you haven't even ordered, and if you are lucky you will hear a crash or two after enough bad commands! The explosion sounds are about as cliché as the stormtrooper scream. I mean it fits but it doesn't. They could have made sounds when you break the sound barrier (if it is even possible to do) in the jet or maybe screaming when drowning in a sunken submarine. Or even when something breaks! If you break your cruiser you get a report, nothing else. No screams, no crackling, no booming, absolutely nothing. The sounds were very overused so if you like playing games like this, well you will recognize them. I hope you like hearing the constant beep of sonar, because my ears are bleeding thinking about it.
 

Repetitive?

Dangerous Waters isn't very fun. You play one mission with a battle cruiser, jet, helicopter, submarine, etc you just played all the other missions. Most of the time the mission is recon so you have to go to one point, which takes five minutes to get to and turn around. If you are lucky then you will run into some Communists and shoot two torpedoes and win or lose. Sounds fun doesn't it?

The multiplayer was an interesting experience as well. First of all you have to set up your own server and hope someone joins or you can join someone else's. It takes a little time for the screen to load and rarely anyone is playing. You can do more in the multiplayer than you can in the real game. You can toggle friendly fire (team killing is so much fun!), what type of weapons on the vehicles and the vehicles. You can also turn on the AI to help you control your vessel or if you want to be tough you turn them off so you have to do everything from radar, periscope, and commanding to fixing the hole in your hull. The multiplayer can be the only fun aspect of the game because you can fight against your friend in a submarine vs. battle cruiser vs. jet game match.

The most interesting single player missions were laying out depth charges. Now that was really hard but really fun to do. You get a radius and you blow up stuff in it since explosions make things better. Too bad you find the enemy sub and the next mission is you trying to sink it with a torpedo. Torpedoes are about as useful as a handgun in this game. At least with the handgun I could shoot everyone in the ship before I deliberately sink it.
 

Simulations = Interesting

So from what you can tell so far this game has a lot of depth, is confusing, and is downright below average. Well in my opinion it is but simulations are an interesting category of gaming. This game was developed by Sonalysts, which has provided simulation of the US Navy for the past 30 years. What this game has that other simulations don't is the real life fact that what you do in this game is based on what you would do in real life Navy. They have almost every used main vehicle, how to control it ever so perfectly, reactions, and resolutions. They went above and beyond than those flight simulators you play for five hours. This game has five times that for simulations enthusiasts.
 

 

Not My Bread and Butter

As much as I didn't like it, Dangerous Waters has potential. Yes the gameplay was atrocious but the good things about it are the graphics and it is perfect for a naval simulation player. Buy this game if you like naval simulations, but if you aren't the type, it'd be best to shy away from it.