I spent yesterday evening contentedly mauling marus, raking Rufes, and dodging depth charges. The fact that I opted to patrol the Pacific in a familiar Crash Dive 2 Gato, rather than a brand new Silent Depth 2 one, speaks volumes about what I found when I fired-up MicroProse’s latest release for the first time.
For a time yesterday, it looked like MPS had had second thoughts about exposing SD2 to the public gaze. The rumours of eleventh-hour slippage turned out to be baseless, but, in the light of what this Early Access offering currently brings to a fecund genre, perhaps a delay would have been the wisest course of action.
Right from the outset, SD2 radiates rudimentariness. Bereft of tutorials and equipped with a surprisingly slim range of key commands (bizarrely, there seems to be no way to control the rudder with keys), there’s only one play option – ‘war patrol’ – and that launches something that feels a lot like a random engagement generator with compulsory chart-travel interludes, and no customisation options, or side missions.
Leaving the harbour at Midway, the not unattractive view from the deck restored a few brownie points. Sadly, these were soon hurled over the side by graphical glitches that eventually tarred the entire screen, making play impossible.
Seemingly linked to lighting at dusk and dawn, the visual issues didn’t stop me experiencing the game’s primitive torpedo mechanics first-hand. Eel targeting appears to consist of pointing your bow or stern at a target, waiting for a targeting icon to go green, and pressing fire. There’s no equivalent to CD2’s entertaining manual firing system where the sub captain uses rudder inputs and plotting table prediction lines to aim.
Deck gun shell slinging is equally under-developed.
The most promising moment in my brief playtest came when I decided to test my sub’s damage model by ramming a blazing tanker. Not only did the impact have fairly plausible consequences (buggered dive planes, and a completely flooded forward torpedo compartment) but I was informed I would need to return to port to put things right.
Even if the escort AI turns out to be competently coded, and the devs get stuck into the above roadmap with gusto, I can’t see myself choosing Silent Depth 2 over colourful, atmospheric Crash Dive 2 anytime soon. Perhaps if the newcomer had boasted a more original theme, I might have been more inclined to jump ship. We already have access to a great lite WW2 USN sub sim. What we don’t have is a RN or IJN equivalent, or a game that imagines what might have happened had the singular Surcouf made it to the PTO.
I watched someone playing this on Youtube yesterday and came away with a similar opinion. It looked like a mobile game ported to PC mechanics wise. Not really even sim-lite – just lite.