Old Gamers Never Die: 'Cold Waters' Game Review

© 2017 Killerfish Games

Do you like military-themed simulations or games based on hypothetical wars?

Do you like submarine games?

Are you a fan of Tom Clancy’s 1986 novel Red Storm Rising or its computer game spin-off from 1988?

Then have I got a computer game recommendation for you!

In the early 1990s, back when the original version of MicroProse was the go-to source for user-friendly military simulations and strategy games, I played a game called Red Storm Rising. 

Based on the eponymous 1986 novel by the late Tom Clancy, Red Storm Rising was a nuclear sub simulation set in a fictional Third World War between the still-in-existence Soviet Union and the U.S. led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In it, you played the role of a U.S. Navy officer in command of a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine assigned to seek and destroy surface and submarine units of the Red Banner Northern Fleet to thwart the Soviets’ offensives on land and sea, as well as to protect the vital sea lanes between Western Europe and the U.S.

Though the game only focused on part of Clancy’s novel, Red Storm Rising was one of MicroProse’s best-selling games. Part of its success, of course, was that it followed the coattails of its literary source, which was one of the best-selling novels of the 1980s and is still in print nearly 40 years later.

 Red Storm Rising was one of MicroProse co-founder Sid Meier’s last games before he designed his most famous game, Sid Meier’s Civilization, and many elements of the game would form the basis for 1990’s Silent Service II, the updated and much-improved follow-on to 1985’s Silent Service, Meier’s set-in-WWII submarine game.

Red Storm Rising’s graphics were pretty good for a late 1980s game, but the appeal of the game was mostly because it allowed you to choose – or be assigned to randomly, as in the real Navy – which class of submarine you commanded in World War III. There were five classes – Permit, Sturgeon, Los Angeles, Improved Los Angeles, and Seawolf – as well as four possible timelines: 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996.

 The timeline you chose determined which classes were available; in 1984, for instance, the original Los Angeles class was the most advanced sub available, whilst in 1996 the new Seawolf class boats came online and other classes were modernized with theoretical weapons – like the never-installed periscope mount for a Stinger surface-to-air (SAM) launcher – or proposed but canceled Sealance Mk.50 rocket-boosted antisubmarine torpedo.

I played Red Storm Rising on several MS-DOS and early Windows-based PCs; I can’t remember for how many years, but I think I had a good five-year run with the game until I bought a computer that despite being able to run other DOS-based software, proved to be incompatible with Red Storm Rising. I was good at it, too, having spent countless hours stalking Soviet carrier groups or playing blind man’s bluff against Red Navy subs in the Norwegian Sea.

I always hoped that someone – either MicroProse itself before it went out of business in the early 2000s[1] or another game publisher – would either re-issue Red Storm Rising in its original (but made compatible with new operating systems) version through Steam or GOG, or create a reasonable facsimile of it with modern (2015 and up) graphics and sound effects.

Well, I am still – fruitlessly – waiting for a pure reissue of Red Storm Rising, but I do have the next best thing: Killerfish Games’ Cold Waters, a nuclear submarine game that the Adelaide, Australia company touts as the “spiritual successor to MicroProse’s classic Red Storm Rising.”

Actual gameplay screenshot! (Not a promo image.) Game design elements © 2017 Killerfish Games

Although Cold Waters is a more advanced game in many respects – the graphics are far more complex and realistic-looking, and gameplay is vastly different (the mouse and keyboard controls take far longer to learn, although you can customize them to suit your needs) – it is definitely a loving homage to the 1980s classic. The team at Killerfish Games obviously loved Red Storm Rising; even though its scenarios do not make any references to Clancy’s fictional Third World War, Cold Waters allows you to command boats from different classes, just like Red Storm Rising. Which class you can get assigned to – or choose yourself – depends on which scenario you decide to play.

In Cold Waters, there are three alternative history versions of World War III, none of them based on Clancy’s novel:

• 1968: Taking advantage of the Johnson Administration’s preoccupation with the Vietnam War, the Soviet leadership decides to invade West Germany shortly after the Warsaw Pact’s intervention in Czechoslovakia in August of that year
• 1984: Cold War tensions rise between the NATO alliance and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact just as President Ronald Reagan runs for a second term. A crisis overseas escalates, and the Kremlin decides to settle things once and for all by invading West Germany
• 2000: Tensions rise between the West (including Britain) and the People’s Republic of China over the failed handover of Hong Kong to Beijing and China’s desire to expand its maritime boundaries to incorporate several disputed archipelagos in the South China Sea and the “renegade province” of Taiwan into China proper. Beijing orders the People’s Liberation Army Navy, reinforced by Soviet fleet units “volunteered” by a cash-starved Moscow, to launch several amphibious landings on the Spratly Islands and on Taiwan itself

In an interesting twist for Chinese and non-Western players, Cold Waters presents these scenarios in US/NATO or Red Navy/PLAN variants that allow you to play as either the U.S. or USSR/PRC navies.

© 2017 Killerfish Games

Cold Waters is an immersive, so-tense-your-knuckles-will-turn-white-when-you-play gaming experience that blows most other games of the genre out of the water. Like its 1980s forbear, you control your boat from inside the submarine: there’s no simplistic point-and-shoot-from-outside-the-boat video game nonsense. You must learn how to use different in-the-boat helm, diving, and weapons commands from your control room, as well as when to – and when not to rise to periscope depth (45 ft.)  to use the electronic surveillance measures (ESM) or radar masts, as well as your Mk.1 eyeball with the periscope.

But where Red Storm Rising only had a few rudimentary animations to depict snippets of the action above or below the surface, Cold Waters has an awesome array of camera views to let you see what is going on after you fire your Mk.48 ADCAP torpedoes at an Alfa-class attack sub or a UGM-84 Harpoon volley at a group of enemy landing ships. You can watch enemy ships maneuvering on the surface or subs cruising under it – provided they’re in the line of sight of your sensors and show up on your plotting board aboard your boat. You can also follow your weapons in flight or speeding underwater toward your targets as well. The graphics truly are gorgeous and realistic, showing details such as patches of rust on the hulls of warships or the gashes made by your torpedoes after impact.

But beware. Don’t let yourself be distracted by the detailed views of sea, sky, and vessels. Life or death in Cold Waters depends on maintaining situational awareness at all times. The AI-controlled enemy uses real-life tactics used by the Soviet, PLAN, and U.S. Navy sub forces, and in the game’s pre-written scenarios (you can create your own Quick Battles to help hone your skills, too), the gods of war can be unforgiving if you make the tiniest tactical error in the thick of battle.

 And not only do you have to worry about enemy ships and subs, but Cold Waters also adds deadly antisubmarine patrol planes and helicopters equipped with detection gear along the lines of sonobuoys, dipping sonars, MAD booms, and armed to the teeth with depth charges and anti-sub torpedoes.   

As I wrote in my WordPress counterpart to A Certain Point of View:

The most impressive achievement that Cold Waters’ creators have made is to give battles at sea realistic weapons effects on screen. Not every weapon you fire will hit its target;  torpedo guidance wires may break unexpectedly even if your sub is cruising at slow speeds and not maneuvering like a porpoise on acid; enemy ships’ close-in anti-missile guns will sometimes get lucky and shoot down your Harpoon or Tomahawk anti-ship missiles; your Mk. 48 ADCAP torpedoes might be fooled by noisemakers so often that they’ll run out of fuel or explode prematurely.

However, when your weapons do work as intended, they can be devastating, and the visuals often look like they’re straight out of a documentary or well-made war film. Ships lose superstructures or blow up spectacularly. Small warships like frigates or destroyers usually do not survive a Mk. 48 torpedo hit; larger capital ships, such as the Soviet battle cruiser Kirov, can absorb several hits, but they’ll suffer damage from fires and lose speed and maneuverability as a result.

Additionally, when ships sink, you hear the groan of stressed metal and the booms of internal explosions as they make that final plunge into the deep. It’s not a pretty sound, to be sure, and it’s not a sound that you want to hear aboard your boat if the enemy hits you with torpedoes or anti-submarine rockets.

I also like the fact that your crew might be “off-screen,” but your specialists at sonar, engineering, weapons and damage control speak to you, either to acknowledge your helm and diving commands (“Conn, Helm: Course set to zero-one-zero, aye.”) or to let you know something is wrong (“Conn, Sonar: Torpedo in the water! Torpedo in the water! Bearing one-six-two!”) in the heat of battle.[2]

Overall, I give Cold Waters a wholeheartedly positive recommendation. It’s one of the few games I’ve played that lives up to its own promotional blurb. It may not be Red Storm Rising or even Red Storm Rising 2.0, but you can see the older game’s DNA in the design and workings of Cold Waters.

The badly-damaged Soviet carrier Kiev attempts to escape a torpedo attack from USS Seawolf (SSN-21). © 2017 Killerfish Games.  

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[1] MicroProse’s brand – including its logo – was bought last year by an investment team determined to bring it back to life as a developer/publisher of strategy/simulation games. I’ve seen promos for some of its upcoming games, including a World War II strategy game titled Second Front, so I’m cautiously optimistic about the success of the new MicroProse.

[2] Into the Deep in Steel Coffins: ‘Red Storm Rising’ & ‘Cold Waters,’ A Certain Point of View, Too, July 10, 2020