War Diary - Torpedo

Since their creation, submarines have always been the silent running terror of the seas.

Although nowadays we are more likely to hear about nuclear submarines, both in terms of their ability of being submerged for months at a time and their deadly atomic warheads, but they really gained their fearsome reputation during the Second World War – sinking battleships and valuable trade frigates.

Not looking to dwell on history too much, in War Diary: Torpedo you get to command a submarine in the waters surrounding Japan and the orient. Your mission is quite simple, try to survive whilst following orders. You have to pick up stranded Generals, answer distress calls from damaged ships, search and destroy warships and frigates and sink them with your torpedoes. Some smaller ships take only one hit to sink, others will put up much more of a fight.

Armed with only a limited number of torpedoes you must try and engage the enemy in more of a hit and run fashion than getting drawn into long battles. Being a rather old submarine you don’t have any real advantage other than being able to use the element of surprise. If you are lucky, you’ll sink the target and be able to get away, however if you’re unlucky, you’ll give your position away and you’ll have to be cunning to try and get away from one or more Japanese enemy ships.

In terms of controls, you have acceleration and deceleration (up and down or 2 and 8), left and right (4 and 6) and fire (select or 5). When in the open waters you can dive to periscope depth (by pressing 7 once), or fully submerging (by pressing 7 again), to surface (press 1 once or twice accordingly). You’ll automatically surface when you go into shallow waters – so be careful you are out of sight or range of the enemy when you do so.

If you were worried about your limited ammunition, you don’t have to worry too much – there’s an unlimited supply in the form of allied ships, which replenish your stocks whenever you get close. The problem with this is that you must make every shot count and also will spend a lot of time traversing between the ammo supply and the kill-zones. So for those of you out there who like to simply blast away at enemies, you might get a tad frustrated and dizzy from all the to-ing and fro-ing.

You have two difficulty levels, Arcade and Realistic, the main difference is the AI and the number of torpedoes your submarine can carry (six in arcade, and only four in realistic). Also within these levels you have the option to follow the Career Mission or do a Free Hunt. In career missions you are given objectives which you must complete before you can go on to the next stage. In free hunting, you can roam freely to sink all you find for medals, points and better ships.

Ultimately then this game offers quite an enjoyable experience but does get a little tiresome with all the long traipsing between objectives or trying to find enemies. However, when action heats up it really does get very exciting and entertaining. I’m relieved to say that the game does automatically speed up the journeys so long as no other ship’s on the screen.

Rating 86%

Positives

Very engaging and entertaining – particularly the fights

Realistic and very tricky AI provides a good challenge

Controls are sharp and easy to use – even in the middle of a fight

Negatives

The long (even when sped up) journeys

The constant jaunts between firing at the enemy and collecting more ammo – may be realistic but a bit irritating

The sounds are pretty terrible