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voor de liefhebbers van submarines in games :)

Enigma Rising Tide (2003)
DreamCatcher Interactive 
Tesseraction Games 
Naval Sim 
Release: Aug 26, 2003 » 
ESRB: Teen 

Sims in general are uncommon on the PC these days, and finding a naval sim, let alone a good one, is about as likely as winning the lottery. That's why Enigma: Rising Tide is such a pleasant surprise. Actually, the game isn't exactly a sim, but rather an "alternate-history WWII massively multiplayer first-person vehicular naval combat game," in the words of developer Tesseraction Games. That's quite an awkward mouthful, and the bit about "massively multiplayer" isn't quite correct, but the description does give you an idea of what Enigma is all about. Combining an accessible simulation with some shooter and RPG elements and loads of exciting action, Enigma is a game for people who'd rather watch Das Boot than wade through a dry-as-dust volume of official naval history. It's a game that intelligently simulates the drama of World War II tactical naval combat instead of simulating naval minutiae. 

One down, many more to go.

At first glance, Enigma looks like a World War II game. In fact, the very name of the game calls to mind the famous Enigma code machines used by Germany during WWII. Enigma is also filled with ships based on or inspired by actual American, German, British, and Japanese designs. In reality, Enigma is an alternate history game with a very strong WWII flavor. Gameplay begins in 1937, with three major factions waging war across the globe. Enigma imagines a world where Germany won World War I, took control of most of continental Europe, and brought England to its knees through unrestricted submarine warfare. The United States, with its powerful economy, is trying to expand its influence around the world, with bases from Singapore to Morocco to Ireland. The League of Free Nations is a union formed by Japan and the British Royal Navy in exile. From bases in Japan, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, and other key locales, the League fights both the Germans and the Americans in the Atlantic and Pacific. 

Along with a few dozen individual training and combat missions that you can tackle in any order, you get to take part in both surface- and submarine-based campaigns for each of Enigma's three factions. You start out commanding a single vessel and gradually rise through the ranks, taking on more dangerous missions while eventually getting to issue basic commands to fellow vessels while still directly controlling your own ship. Enigma does a fine job of immersing you in your role as captain and bringing the gameworld to life. Before each mission you read your latest orders and your captain's log entries; the latter give you some insight into shipboard life, how the crew is feeling about world events and your latest assignments, and so forth. In a neat touch, you also see simulated newspaper front pages, where the headlines flesh out the gameworld, letting you know, for example, that Truman is America's president in the '30s, instead of Roosevelt. Occasionally you'll also see a very brief little cutscene of your ship cutting across the ocean. It's a shame, though, that Enigma doesn't include full-length cinematic cutscenes, perhaps done up as black-and-white newsreels, to further flesh out the story and immerse you more deeply in it. 

You can let the AI man the guns or do it yourself...

Read the NFO !

Thanks to blackstar76 & Knots :)