Old Gamers Never Die: Starting the North Atlantic 1984 Campaign in 'Cold Waters'

 

Screenshot of the New Campaign page on Cold Waters. © 2017 Killerfish Games

As you know, last summer I purchased a copy of Killerfish Games’ Cold Waters, a submarine combat simulator based on the premise “What would naval warfare have been like, from a submariner’s perspective, if the Cold War had gone hot?”

Cold Waters was released in 2017 as a spiritual successor to the original MicroProse Software game Red Storm Rising (1988), which was designed by Sid Meier and is based on the submarine-related parts of Tom Clancy’s eponymous 1986 novel. Indeed, Cold Waters has many features that RSR veterans will recognize, such as the game’s mix of missions (Training, Single Battles, and Campaigns), as well as the basic setting that puts the player in command of a nuclear fast attack submarine in a hypothetical Third World War.

In the eight months since I bought Cold Waters on Steam, I have slowly worked my way up the mission tree from Training to Single Battles to the full Campaign. It took me a while to get to a point – as a gamer – to feel confident enough to try an “entire war” Campaign because even though Cold Waters and Red Storm Rising are based on the same sub warfare principles and many of the same U.S. and Soviet ship classes are present in both (even the Seawolf class was depicted in the older game), it is more advanced – visually, Killerfish Games’ product blows Red Storm Rising out of the water – and adds more twists and turns, including a U.S. vs. Warsaw Pact campaign set in 1968 and more capable and dangerous enemy aircraft.

Main Title screen from Red Storm Rising. © 1988 MicroProse, Jack Ryan Enterprises, and Larry Bond

Main title screen of Cold Waters. 

Because Cold Waters is such a challenging game that I have not even completed all of the Single Battles, I did not do a complete playthrough of any of its three campaigns[1] until late February. That’s when I spent a week fighting an undersea war against Chinese and Soviet naval forces in the South China Sea campaign.

I somehow managed to win the war – at least the portion of it that I was in – but I lost five of the six U.S. Navy’s submarines under my command and failed to accomplish roughly a third of the missions I was ordered to take on by Commander Submarine Force, Pacific (COMSUBPAC). It took me almost a week to do the entire campaign – I can’t devote all my waking hours to indolence and gaming, after all – but in retrospect, I might have lost fewer boats had I taken my time and not rushed to finish it the way that I did when I fought the South China Sea 2000 campaign.

I didn’t think I’d start a new campaign till the summer, but yesterday I decided to start the one that most closely resembles Red Storm Rising: North Atlantic 1984. I think of it as RSR 2.0 because the strategic transit maps in both games are roughly similar and the adversaries and scenarios are nearly identical. The only difference between them – besides the obvious “better graphics, more aircraft, and more advanced computers” ones – is the fictional backstory.

Top: Strategic Transit Map for Red Storm Rising
Bottom: Strategic Transit Map for Cold Waters

Today I limited my time on Cold Waters to a single war patrol that entailed a handful of combat operations. Right now it is late November 1984, and the war Is in its first week; I command USS Salt Lake City (SSN-716), a Los Angeles-class boat which in real life was retired in 2006 after 21 years, 8 months and 3 days of service in the Pacific Fleet.  

So far, I have completed two missions, including the destruction of a Soviet amphibious task force bound for the Norwegian port of Narvik, and the interception of a small wolfpack of diesel-electric subs. As a result, I received my first medal of the campaign, a Bronze Star, and a citation to go with it.

I did not return to Salt Lake City’s base in Holy Loch, Scotland, unscathed. My sub was damaged by torpedoes fired by a Kashin-class destroyer and one dropped by a Ka-27 Helix antisubmarine warfare helicopter during the Battle of Narvik, and in the next engagement I had to let one of the Soviet diesel subs escape because of the damage to my boat and my limited supplies of Mk-48 torpedoes.  

I won’t play another mission until tomorrow; I have other things to do today, and I don’t want to “blow through” the campaign like I did when I did the South China Sea one not too long ago.

Stay tuned for further updates, though!

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[1] The three campaigns are: North Atlantic 1984, North Atlantic 1968, and South China Sea 2000.