Distant Guns: The Russo Japanese War at Sea

[Big War Bird]

Synopsis

Distant Guns is a detailed naval warfare sim covering the 1904-05 war between Russia and Japan. Distant Guns consists of a campaign covering the full war, 11 historical and 'what if' scenarios and a random battle generator. The campaign can have two starting points, one just before the Japanese sneak attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, and one just after that attack. The objective of the Russian Navy is to attack Japanese merchant shipping in the theater, the Japanese to protect that shipping. Nothing else matters.

Game experience

I have been playing the Distant Guns campaign for 25 or so hours now, and there is much to recommend Distant Guns to the warfare sim gamer, but there is not much for anyone else. The opponent AI is pretty good. Sailing a Russian cruiser force from Vladivostok, 3 armored cruisers and a dozen torpedo boats, to raid the japanese shipping lanes, a Japanese cruiser force of two superior armored cruisers and 6 destroyers shadowed me. They held back and watched me sink several merchantmen. I was wondering why they were dong this. Then the destroyers attacked me. I sunk them all. About that time I was thinking, "this is stupid AI. Its attacking peicemeal and getting blown out of the water." Then the cuisers attacked. I was thinking this was going to be easy. But I was out of ammo for my big guns and out of torpedoes for my TB's, I had fallen into its trap. Without those two weapons I might as well have been using spitballs against these well armed and armored cruisers. I managed to escape by sacrificing a seversl of my TB's and beating a hasty retreat.

Night Battle with spotlights that can be destroyed.

There are also night battles which can be harrowing. Sailing 3 battle ships, 4 light cruisers and 27 destroyers out of Port Arthur. I ran into 4 light cruisers in the dead of night. I immediately started pounding on em. Just when I thought this was going to be a cakewalk, the main japanese battleship force appeared. I just about crapped my pants. Again I only survived by losing 12 destroyers, but I sank all four light cruisers. For the next two days I had to run for my life back to Port Arthur to get repairs. In all the AI uses it ships appropriately, presses its advantages, and retreats when necessary. One cannot ask for much more in an AI. However there is one 'problem' with the AI that I will explain in a bit.

The Good the Bad and the Ugly

All of this is great fun and can be very immersive. You will come to care deeply about the fate of your ships and will want to be extremely judicious in their use as you will not get any reinforcements that did not happen in the real war. You will come to loathe ships that menace you. (I hate you Battleship Mikasa! I'm gonna get you one day!) However, It can also be dull and repetitive. For example, in both circumstances I described above. I was chased back to port. And here is the rub. Battles are generated when any two fleets catch sight of each other. If you are outgunned then you need to turn tail and run. This can take a while to play out. The time compression in battles only goes to 20x, though on my machine that speed takes 10 seconds to the minute. Chases can go on for a few game time hours, meaning 15 -20 minutes of doing almost nothing for the player. There is an autoresolve feature, but using this is risky, since the computer AI may decide to fight when you wanted to withdrawl, or vice versa. This wouldn't be bad if that when a chased ends you were free and clear for a while. But no, after an hour or two of game time the enemy will catch you again and the process will repeat itself. You could have three of these long chaes in one game day.

Russian Armored Cruiser Gromoboi is one you best ships. Don't waste her!

The only AI problem i've found was when I was being chased by a faster force. Quite logically I scattered my fleet, sending slower ships off at 45 degree angles from my course. I would have expected the AI to do one of two things, continue to fruitlessly chase the main body of my fleet or to settle for one of the slower ships. But the AI seemed to split the difference, trying to sail between my forces, thus losing track of all my ships. It even failed to pursue an injured battleship in this situation.

The game is filled with a wealth of detail for the war. Every ship from battleship to torpedo boat to minelayer that served in the war is included, with detailed arms and armor information and unique models for each vessel. Ships can take damage to various ship systems and weapons. Every shot is tracked and accounted for. Crew will move ammo from one gun to another if needed.

This Cruiser is a goner.

The graphics are on the mediocre side, however. Ships can look like toys in the water, as things like ship wakes, bow waves and translucent water are either poorly done or nonexistant. The camera is awkward too, making it difficult to get close ups of ships that lack the details of games produced by larger game studios. You will find similar graphics and details on games that are almost old enough to go to school. But if you've read this much of the review them I suspect that great graphics are not on your list of high priorities.

The game controls are adequate, but not spectaular. You can control individual ships, divisions and fleets, giving them orders to turn in a variety of ways, to target specific ships and set speeds. But thats it. For example you can't order torpedo boats to make a torpedo run, you can only put them in a position use them. Imagine my horror when I ordered a division of torpedo boats to fire on a japanese merchantman, only to see them shoot off precious torpedos, instead using their perfectly adequate 47mm guns! That's was a painful lesson I learned later when I went into real combat with torpedoless torpedo boats.

Summary

At $65 for the full game I hesitate to recommend this game to most of the strategy gamers of TWC. However, if you have a serious hankering for a solid naval simulation then Distant Guns maybe just the game for you. If in doubt download the demo and give it a try yourself . If you like the demo battle, there is much more inside that you will love. The manual is included with demo in pdf. You would be well advised to read that too, as it provides a great deal of detail about what to expect. The product is well supported too (its Storm eagles only product), I have had not one single crash in all of my playing.

[Douchebag]

$65 for this piece of ****!?

[Jihada]

I was thinking of getting the latest game from Storm Eagles Studios 'Jutland'. I've read a lot of good reports on it and really fancy a bit of hun bashing as a change from EB ,SS, Bc etc. Anyone tried it yet ?

[boerekovic]

Wow! I love games like this, i miss a Battleship simulator! We have il2 for Planes, we have Silent hunter for Subs, why dont we have some kind of a renewed "Steal Beasts"?

I love the damage model.
still, i require atleast a minimum amount of graphics and this looks just old.
Also, theres no way of getting it for me and if there was, i would put the 65$ on soemthing else.

[Dracula]

If somebody takes it, take Distant Guns 1.5. It is of 2009 and uses the Jutland engine, while the original version was of 2006. Anyway I think both are pretty good.