1997 was an excellent year for gaming. It brought Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Final Fantasy VII and the subject of this review; 688i Hunter/Killer. Originally billed as "Jane's 688i Hunter/Killer", this was the first of the marvelous naval simulations created by Sonalysts. Sonalysts is known both for their attention to detail as well as the fact that they primarily produce simulations for the United States Department of Defense. Thus, it is no surprise that this submarine simulator endeavors to be as realistic as possible within the realm of open knowledge of course. More importantly, this sim and its code have withstood the test of time. While its 3D graphics are ancient by today's standards, simulators were never really about graphics so much as they were about experience. 688i Hunter/Killer still offers an impressive and immersive experience as a hypothetical submarine skipper in the (then) modern age. As with other works by Sonalysts, this comes with one caveat; a third party decompressor is required to export the .WAV files to play the game since the .AGG compression used by the game's code is so old that Windows can no longer read it natively. Subsim.com, a website that specializes in the needs of the submarine simulator community, has the necessary decompressor to resolve this issue. The tool, called the Sub Command SoundEdit Utility, while originally designed for the eponymous simulator, also by Sonalysts, works with all Sonalysts products, including 688i Hunter/Killer. It is necessary to use this tool to decompress the sound files to get the sound effects working. Beyond this minor tweak, the game runs surprisingly well on modern systems, regardless of specs. I strongly recommend 688i Hunter/Killer for anyone who enjoys sub simulators. Do not be thrown off by its age. It is a winner.
Without a doubt, Dangerous Waters is one of the best modern naval sims to come along in the past twenty-five years. Its attention to detail and the realism it offers are very difficult to beat. The players are not only given the choice of submarines in the simulation, which was the case of its predecessor Sub Command, but now surface ships in the form of the Perry class frigate as well as two aircraft, the SH-60 Seahawk helicopter and the P-3 Orion. Sonalysts, the developer, specializes in combat simulations and has done work for the Navy, which makes the attention to detail expected. However.... Dangerous Waters now has one major flaw; its age and its code. Written originally for DirectX8, the modern machine may have difficulties in running the game. The GOG install contains a critical DLL file that, for many players, resolved the issue of DirectX8 backward compatibility and allowed the sim to run. Unfortunately, there is also a group of players that are unable to get this sim running despite the DLL and other solutions. From my own testing, there appears to be a conflict on some computers with have dual GPU cards and the machine not knowing which card to use, causing unexpected crashes. I also cannot rule out the possibility of modern hardware conflicts also denying players due to less support for older products on the manufacturer's end. If you are looking for a hardcore modern naval sim, Dangerous Waters has dozens of hours of tense adventure waiting for you, but be warned, even with the patches and fixes that players have developed over the years, some computers have an unidentified incompatibility that prevents the game from running. (Tested on two Windows 10 machines and two Windows 11 machines. Windows 10 machines both had NVIDIA Geforce 1060 cards. with Intel graphics. Both ran the game successfully. Windows 11 computer with Geforce 1070 card failed to run the game. Windows 11 computer with Intel only ran the game.) EDIT: 18SEP25 I have supplied a link in the game forum to an alternate DLL wrapper that does work on Win 11 if the game does not work with the DLL provided by the GOG installation.
On its own, Blood Bowl Chaos Edition warrants four stars.Unfortunately, the GOG release has a major, crippling bug that forces 40 second turns for all modes regardless of the user's settings or the core rules. It is extremely difficult to play the game under those conditions, even if one is a Blood Bowl veteran. Another fault with this release is the fact that the Developer attempted to remove LAN play from the product. While this issue is easily circumvented, as LAN is integrated enough in the code to where the Developers cannot simply remove it, this was not declared in the product description. GOG is normally extremely open about releases that have modified multiplayer options and I lay the fault with the Developer. The Developer's website does not support submitting bug issues directly for this product and, according to their website, the product is not supported. If true and not an oversight, that means the crippling 40-second turn bug will remain present without a fix. A final issue with the GOG release is that the version number differs from the Steam release, meaning that multiplayer games, whether LAN or Online, between the releases is impossible due to version mismatch errors. Blood Bowl Chaos Edition is a good game, but the GOG version is plagued with too many issues for anyone to pay for it here. As much as I hate to do so, I have no alternative but to recommend players to the Steam version, which has none of the issues stated in this review. When the Developers address and fix the aforementioned bugs, I will be more than willing to revise or retract this review.
