Red Storm Rising

Game review

Tom Clancy is a famous world-known writer of spy novels. Many of his novels has been turned into movies and also there are many games based on his work. One of his best-known novel is the novel with the same name as this game: Red Storm Rising. The name of the game is taken from the secret Soviet plan to attack Western Europe. The novel itself takes place in many places, but the game focuses only on part of the book and specifically on the submarine war. Give games as well as books to take place in a fictional alternative reality when the Third World War broke out and you fight on the side of the Americans - NATO Against Warsaw Treaty troops. NATO needs to supply a great deal of material and people from America to Europe and they use ships and submarines for this. The Russians are also looking for ways into the Atlantic and at the same time they want to cut these American travel routes. This is where you get to the main role when you use a nuclear submarine to begin missions to protect transports. Game is very realistically processed, albeit a bit complicated to control all radars, sonar, torpedoes and other things, so it is necessary to read the manual properly.

The player may choose from four different timelines. Starting in the early 1980s limits the player to Permit, Sturgeon or early Los Angeles-class submarines, but the Soviets have weak sonar, whereas starting in the late 1980s allows the player to use the improved Los Angeles class and even the newer Seawolf subs. Weapons improve accordingly, with Tomahawk missiles and improved Mark 48 torpedoes included in later timelines but the Soviets begin deploying nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and much better anti-submarine warfare ships.

The goal of the game is always consistent: inflicting as much damage as possible on the Soviets in the Norwegian Sea, thus allowing safe passage to supply convoys coming from America and preventing amphibious forces from conquering Norway and Iceland. In order to make contact with enemy forces, the player must navigate the sub in a map of the North Sea, depending on his sub's sensors as well as allied aircraft, satellites and SOSUS arrays to detect the Soviet forces.

Success or failure of the missions impacts the progress of the war depicted by shifts in the front line on a simple map of Europe. If the player fails in a mission then Soviet forces capture more territory, but if the player succeeds then NATO is able to resist the Soviet attacks. In the course of the campaign the player can gain rank and possibly earn medals as well. In the end of the war, a final score is calculated and the player is awarded a post-war rank if NATO wins the war; this rank can vary from commander to admiral depending on how successful they have been in their missions.