TITLE: Salvo, a completely unrelated to anything or nothing review AUTHOR: Jim9137 DATE: 8/15/2005 12:17:00 ap. ----- BODY:

by Jim9137 for a Goodfellow Hello kids! We shall dabble in the world of naval sims today! And by the lords, what kind of naval sims we will dabble into! It's the amazing world of discovery and exploration, all over again! I also think there were some slaves involved in that world, but ah, I can't be sure. But anyway, naval sim! Feel the breeze, feel the water, I can already here the seagulls and the shouts of anxious and quite burly men commanding a ship made of wood. The time when men were made of iron and ships were made of wood, indeed! Assuming of course, Salvo would've delivered what it promised. I have several gripes with this game, which I shall address in a promptish manner soon. First, let's talk about what Salvo is. It's a naval sim, you know, the kind where you press funny buttons and adjust bars and feel the breeeeeeeze! But alas, Salvo fails in that. And in both. I can't feel the breeze when I'm staring at godawful huge status screen of completely unrelated information about the breeze. The point is not to examine the breeze in a painfully detailed manner, but rather FEEL it. FEEL. You know what that is? Well, touch your groin and do circular motions, and you get my idea. And no, you can't feel me. Right, so there is no graphics present at all. Just, status bars. And arrows, I'd suppose indicating wind or the compass, but I have no idea where the hell the north is. Just arrows, I feel like guiding an arrow amidst arrows to a wonderland of arrows. Then we have another problem, it's related to the nature of the game. It has bloody cannons. BLOODY CANNONS. No, they are really bloody. What is this, some eigenzeiner's sweaty and wet nightmare about bloody cannons on a wooden ship? PEOPLE, DO YOUR RESEARCH. AND NO, GÜBBELWAFFEN DIDN'T LIVE IN THE 17TH CENTURE YOU PIECE O' SODS. So, anyway. The combat. We have bloody cannons, we can only assume that the opponent behind the infinite amounts of stats and numbers and green letters, has too. And what we do with the information? I'd invite them over to my ship and have a cup of tea, casually discussing about the weather while the crew and their crew gets mush mushy underneath the deck. But no, you just kill people. I mean, totally, completely kill. Not my style dude, not at all. Not to mention you can't shout "RIP AND TEAR" without raising few raised eyebrows, you know, like the real pirates did. While wearing green armor, of course. So in short, the combat is rather bland and uninteresting. The sounds merit a bark from a second room. That is all. In comparison to other naval sims, Salvo manages to completely ruin the single thing naval sims try to give. The actual simulation. The feel that you are there. It's a sum of multiple factors I suppose, but the designers would do well if they took a cup of tea, went to the nearest "Sea Star", asked if the captain would let them in for a short ride, and then get a feel of it. Now? It's like, someone tried to simulate space, and isn't Buzz Aldrin. Or, Neil Armstrong Right. Salvo, in short, is a naval sim. ... Salvo. Don't they call Helicopter's missilepods salvos or something?

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