SSN- 21 Seawolf was released back when Electronic Arts was still small, and was available for the 486 Platform on the DOS operating system. The game focuses around the player commanding a Seawolf class submarine. You spend the entire game fighting the forces of Soviet Russia. This does age the game quite a bit, but is also nostalgic and provides an ample amount of historically accurate enemy submarine types to hunt.
The game has a relatively deep plot for a submarine simulation and includes video clips prior to each mission.
The graphics were fantastic for 1993 and are quite passable now. The gameplay itself is fairly regular submarine sim fare. However one feature that stood out to me was the ability to avoid enemy torpedoes by using speed, instead of relying on your initial volley to eliminate the enemy. The game does have multiplayer included, which comes in the form of direct modem to modem dialup play. Due to most machines of today not including modems the multiplayer is pretty much useless now. On release however the multiplayer was excellent at the time, and it may be possible to rig the game to operate over TCP/IP, if this is possible I would highly recommend it as it is a very tense and fun way to
play the game.
In direct modem multiplayer each player selects a submarine and tries to hunt one another using sonar, while trying to keep the sub silent and deep. In single player your sub can sustain 3~4 hits before the crew begins to panic and scream. This adds to the realism. The Compact Disc format the game was released on made for good quality music and numerous videos. The downside of this is a slightly large download, but it is well worth it for the great soundtrack and the pre mission briefings. One of the only true flaws of the program are mostly irrelevant now. One of the bigger problems presented on release was the need for a boot disc to start play. Now with DOS emulation this is no longer the case.
Overall I would say that SSN- 21 Seawolf is a great (if aged) naval submarine Simulation that was great in its time and is still great now. I would highly recommend it if you are a fan of this genre, and it is well worth the download. I give it a 8 out of 10.
