This game came out in 1996, when Tom Clancy still had quality control over the PC products carrying his name. I kept an old laptop alive free of upgrades in order to be able to play it today along with some other old games. That is how much I liked it.
The game was not welcomed by gaming critics in 1996, and was labelled as "Arcade". In 1996, an "Arcade" game was a children game in the world of stone cold "dead" serious SIMs.
When Sonalysts used the same dashboard type in their DARPA ACTUV project, I thought how SSN was ahead and how demo-players-critics ignorant of ASW should do some research on their subject matter before chain writing reviews and previews.
Yet, it is Arcade-simple like, as it is supposed to re-create the mental picture of a sub commander at the con and a crash course on ASW. Then the graphics are dated. However the game play in advanced settings is tactically serious, to the point of winning against the AI and finishing the game is not guaranteed.
To win, a need for thoroughness , observation, anticipation and care for details and time are necessary, compared to playing the SH's franchise.
It is a great tool to train for some basics of ASW. It is not DW which is more alike a sim, but it is a nice introduction to it as similar tactical thinking would be involved to win.
Hence, for those who still have the game and enjoyed it, there is a mod which allows to play it in Vista and Windows 7 and 8.
Here is the link:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/TOM-CLANCYS-...E:L:OC:US:3160
It is not free and it comes with a copy of Tom Clancy SSN. I installed it and it worked perfectly on a Win7 64bit.
I can now enjoy the comfort of playing it on a much larger monitor.
Check it out!