With the rise of the cold war however things became more about the cat and mouse and less about the shooting (as evidenced by the fact that we're all still here today and don't glow in the dark.) Things went all high-tech with nuclear powered submarines that could reach depths previously unattainable and run so quietly that the joke on the most modern submarines is that you shouldn't be looking for them specifically, more the silent hole in the water.

While hardcore modern submarine sims probably hold less appeal than the more visceral and probably exciting World War II sub sims, such as the truly excellent Silent Hunter III, do to the masses; for a select few the modern world of towed sonar arrays, searching through digitised control panels to pick up "tracks" and identify other objects in the water... well, it's all rather quite exciting, really.

It is a testament to the PC as a platform that a game like S.C.S. Dangerous Waters, and its equally authentic predecessors, can be successfully marketed. Good luck to you getting console fan boys to learn the intricacies of sonar, from picking up contacts to learning how different layers of water can affect sound. But on the PC we have a willing market, and Dangerous Waters certainly fills expectations.

Yes, this is exciting.

For a game with "alright" graphics, and in which realistically speaking you're going to spend 99% of your time looking at static consoles with lines on a screen and muffled sound to listen to, Dangerous Waters is one of the most immersive [You're fired -Ed] games I've ever played.

Having never actually been on board a nuclear powered submarine (I'd probably wind up starting a nuclear-powered war) I wouldn't know the first thing about what orders are given or how they are inferred without Dangerous Waters. Nor would I know anything about sonar, picking up tracks, the difference depth can make; how helicopters use sonar buoys and dipping hydrophones to detect submarines or the simple pleasure of cruising along at a silent five knots and picking up the propeller noise of a distant boomer (that's a large missile-launching submarine to most.)