Harpoon II, the new follow-on (but not sequel!) to the very successful Harpoon, has been eagerly awaited for quite a while. Actually, I suspect that is an under-statement. Every possible theory about why it has taken so long has been tossed around on the Net and in print, as well as speculation about whether it will be severely bug-ridden, or even whether it will appear at all.
Hopefully this review will set a few minds at ease. Harpoon II does indeed exist, as does 360, and it seems to be well on it's way to taking the place of the original as the premier modern naval simulator. The legendary 2 million plus lines of code translate out to about 13 or 15 megabytes before the scenarios are added, or the data-base completed. This will be a substantial product, and will probably appeal most to the '486/33 or better crowd.
Harpoon II uses SVGA graphics, and performed flawlessly on my ATI Ultra (Mach 8 chipset). This is significant, because earlier 360 games occasionally did not deal well with the ATI cards. One annoyance down.
The beginning is much like the original, but a bit easier to use with a real windows interface. No, not Windows, a trademark of Microsoft, but windows - moveable, resizeable, all the usual stuff. This is a great improvement, and allows the game screens to be customized as you play, the way you want. This is important in light of all the info presented to you over the course of the game.
The main screen has a menu bar with game-type choices always available, like the file menu (save, quit, etc.) and lots of preference settings. This allows the graphics symbols to be chosen, colors selected, time acceleration... All the things which affect the game as a whole. You can also pull up any window from the menu here. Or from the hot keys. Or from the icons on the main window...Very well done.
The main window which appears is a map of the entire theater in play. It iconifies itself immediately, and is replaced by the tracking window, which can track a particular unit around during the game. This window is the main game display. It has a row of icons across the top, which allow zooming, navigation control, weapons control, sensor control, formation control, aircraft control...Everything you want to control, even down to the categories of tasks your staff will perform.
Centering on a unit will pop up an info window about it, and for planes will put up a little air-traffic-control style tag giving useful information, if you like. The unit's course lights up (others are visible, but greyed out) and a simple click and drag will suffice to change it. The pop-up window allows the unit's speed and other attributes to be set, and provides access to the unit database.
To attack, simply center on the attacking unit, then click the attack icon and double-click on the target. The familiar selection screen will appear. This is a good indicator of how much more simple the interface has gotten.
Interestingly, 360 offers several different appearances to the main screen. The graphics and colors are vector graphics, just like the real thing, and the Aegis and another standard Navy display style are available, as well as a DYO. I found the illusion of looking at a real screen hindered only by my 14" monitor.
The style of the game has changed in many places. For example, people complained long and hard about the lack of intelligence of planes. A flight would go out, hit a base, then fly back over an enemy unit to be shot out of the sky like ducks. How to solve this must have been a fairly long-lived question. How could the intelligence be made better while still allowing the game to run at a reasonable pace? How could it be guaranteed to be useful?
The answer speaks to the quality of the game. Harpoon II allows the designation of areas which are off-limit to units except under direct orders. Simply draw some lines around the danger area - ground defenses, or a carrier group, say - and specifiy which types of units are to be kept out, and at what priority. Then, units will go around and avoid these areas in the future, unless you tell them not to.
This is a clever way of solving the problem while at the same time simulating the restrictions placed on units in combat. It allows pathways to be drawn for oil tankers in the gulf to be escorted along, and still does not hog memory, or suffer from the "they did WHAT?!" effect even good AI can cause. The entire game has this feel of deliberate and careful assembly.
A similar improvement is that of the mission. Missions are created for units, and consist of the type of units involved and the goals - ground recon, air attack, strike, transport and the like. The computer assigns them a code name, like "Transient Flame" and they can be reused and edited for the rest of the game. This simplifies setup and deployment of units, especially air units, while increasing the accuracy of the planning of a mission.
As far as planning goes, your staff can take a role in many different tasks. They can handle target identification, comm links, weapons allocation, missions and other aspects of the game, giving new players a break from the otherwise overwhelming introduction they would receive, if they had to just dive in and do it. And the staff seems to perform well. I had good luck with just designating a target - my ready planes came up with a mission and flew off to the attack. I could go in and modify the mission as I pleased, if I wanted.
The game has some cut animation, which does tend to interrupt things, but is still done well. Missles launch, aircraft get hit, ships get hit, all with good audio effects. Likewise, the voices of your staff have a distinct military tone - you are "Sierra 1", if I remember correctly, and information is passed on succinctly, alerting you to look at the info window. The game has much more of a military operation feel to it.
I cannot in good conscience comment much on the quirks, or the scenarios, as this is an early alpha. But the game has yet to crash on me. This alone recommends it over the original - if I had gone a week without a crash in the old game, I'd have only been running 2 or 3 ship scenarios :- ). And the improve-ments in the visual appearance, the sound and the methods all have added to the atmosphere the game produces. It feels more like a sim somehow, maybe a bit more serious.
The reason I can't comment on the scenarios is not that they are weird, or deficient, but rather that they are not in the alpha yet. It just has 2 playtester's scenarios. I don't want to give the wrong impression by saying I can't comment. 360 produced some great scenarios for Harpoon, and I have every faith that they will produce more for Harpoon II.
Taken together, all the parts of Harpoon II show a great improvement over the original. It is incrementally better in every aspect I was able to look at. For those who are concerned that it will just be new graphics and scenarios in the old game, rest easy - you've got some great gaming just around the corner.
This preview is Copyright (C) 1993 by David Pipes for Game Bytes Magazine. All rights reserved.