Atlantic Fleet

I liked Pacific Fleet when it first came out on iOS. Atlantic Fleet is even better, with much better developed physics and buoyancy. You can target specific hardpoints on ships to damage systems. Ships don’t have an HP bar or anything like that. They sink or swim depending on whether they would do it in real life, taking into account the damage sustained. Here, the Roya Navy (plus a few American ships) face off against the Kriegsmarine. You can play as either one, with each having certain advantages and disadvantages. For example, Germans don’t have carriers, but they do have 3 types of subs. Under the right circumstances, a sub can sink any ship in the game with a few well-placed torpedoes. I especially enjoy the dynamic campaign, which adds a strategic portion as well. Each side has opposing goals. The Brits need to protect merchant shipping across the Atlantic from German attacks, while Germans need to sink lots of merchant ships, while avoiding sustaining too many casualties. Submarine warfare is extremely important, as far as the Germans are concerned. Controls are fairly simple to pick up. Mastering the game requires being able to make educated guesses about where to position turrets or launch torpedoes, since the game only provides you with approximate positioning data. At night, you can’t see faraway ships unless you use star shells, which expire after a few turns, or if the enemy ship is on fire. Anyway, play the game.

I simply loved turn-based games because such allowed me to think things through, instead of quick switching reflex from that mistakenly labeled as RTS. It is really hard to find good, turn-based naval games and Atlantic Fleet quenched my thirst momentary for this genre. I really wish GOG would be able to add to their selection the various versions of 'Harpoon', the classic of classics of naval warfare. Well, my biggest complain for Atlantic Fleet was the fact that all the numeric text used for the various gunnery elevations, degrees for steering and such were in blockish SMALL font and with very, and I meant VERY low contracts to their backgrounds. The numbers representing fuzzy increments were so hard to identify, I couldn't make out if the number between 20 and 40 was 30 or 35, as before 20, increments were marked in 5s but it appeared after 30, the numbers jumped to 40 and so on. Of course I could not be sure as I couldn't make out the numbers represented and here I am, using 1920x1080 monitor resolution already! I have mistaken numbers quiet often and ended up firing my guns into empty plots of water! Very frustrating that but a simple GUI improvement could have fixed. How about just a small numeric counter by the side to actually show the elevation adjustment!!!? Or even just a bigger real estate for that gunnery elevation slider? While the gunnery combat was acceptable- other than the aforementioned hard to read numbers, aerial bombing and strafing were outright cruel in execution! OK, so the launching and flying the planes to the targeted ships were simplified and automated but once there, the DIVING to attack and the actual BOMBing attack were all just guess works! There were no crosshairs whatsoever, as in real gun sights or bomb sights to aid in the attack; I simply get a third person view of the tail end of the attacking plane and guess at when to dive and when to press the 'bomb' button! The designers could have at least added some cruel sighting system to make that part of the game a bit more involving. Granted that aerial attacks were much faster than ship-to-ship combats, maybe an added aerial attack phase could be added to at least allow the player to steer the attacking plane UP, DOWN, LEFT or RIGHT while it is flying forward toward the target- even if it is in shorter turn-based increments! I believe the aerial portion of Atlantic Fleet was the less rewarding of the game. Overall, Atlantic Fleet does have it faults but hey, it's one of the very few out there for now. I am hoping, counting on Killerfish would either release a patch to fix these or would add those suggested features into the next version. And my final hope would be for Killerfish to somehow add this engine to portrait modern naval warfare a la Red Storm Rising and Harpoon!!! So, instead of gunnery with 4" guns, replace such with missiles and radars and jamming, etc. Now that would be a real Killer!

Awesome modern-day title which will appeal to old-school gamers (as in title, particularly Silent Service and overall, Microprose titles fans will feel right at home). It is rather easy to learn, but NOT trivialized, and *does* benefit tremendously from reading manual (which, as seen by some other comments here, is above skill check for many modern-day "gamers"). Main points: *Much historical accuracy, yet compromises exactly where needed for fun gameplay *dynamic campaign ("Battle for Atlantic" mode), which is main and most important aspect here (not twice the same), challenging but fair. In this mode, dynamic weather and historically accurate, grand-scale war efforts affect many aspects of gameplay, from unit visibility, weapon and planes availability etc, to convoy routes * Sinking ships based on buoyancy and flooding of compartments - and it works really well! You will jump with joy when your lucky AP shell hits the deck just above armor belt, piercing magazine under main turret and sink big ship in first salvo due to capsizing, Hood style. Or curse, when the enemy keeps sailing (if barely) after ton of hits that resulted in balanced flooding (albeit, ships that are damaged beyond practical repair/unable to reach port may be force-scuttled as *after* battle result). * As a bonus result from the above, no two ships (or instances of sinking same ship) ever sink the same - the morbid fascination of watching them submerge for the last time, even after hundreds of battles, deserves own bullet point. * Various configuration options, allowing it to have really decent and non-trivial battles on max realism and difficulty mode (no much sense to play on anything less IMO in game like that, but if you feel overwhelmed, you can change settings, even mid-campaign) * Hot-seat multiplayer (sadly single battles only, dynamic multiplayer campaign would rox!) and single-battles, both custom and historical scenarios. * Last but not least, the atmosphere. It is just the right mix of realism and playability to make you feel submerged (pun intended) in the "real" efforts of WWII Atlantic struggles. I, old fart, enjoyed it immensely, yet it worked as well to naturally make my 9 years old son interested in historical aspects of the struggle, without being pompously "educational". Cons are mostly nit-picking for veterans - like, Carriers could *really* use having CAP (Combat Air Patrol, if even by just few fighters without bombs in air during start of daytime battles, but they still can be utilized to great effects, by more experienced players), or torpedoes could have *little* horizontal direction drift added, less than in Pacific Fleet, but enough to make head-on torpedo attacks less reliable (as it was the case, historically), especially from planes. But those are, honestly, gimmicks. All in all, wholeheartedly recommending! Was owning it already, but insta-buying as soon as I noticed it (finally) arrived on GOG.

The skeleton of the game is already worth the money. This game is incredibly fun to play. I don't mean to beat levels and progress, I mean to literally function and use the mechanics. If you've ever wanted a turn-based naval game that used realistic physics to plot shots and (especially) have realistic damage models, you've found it. I have a screenshot on my computer of two merchant ships I've sunk. They're sinking epically but differently in the same frame. Why? Different shots. One was sunk with a torpedo that (it appears) blew up the aft fuel reservoir while the first had a number of deck fires that spread to the internal parts. The damage models just FEEL right in the way I've never seen before in a naval game. At one point I was plotting (very slowly) to shoot a ship, which is ostensibly a turn-based thing. But ships take on water and damage in real time it seems and it blew up before I got my shot off. Epic, surprising, and fun. The game is so inexpensive if what I said intrigues you - buy it.