''Destroyer Command'' is a naval

simulation A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...

released by

Ubi Soft Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include ''Anno (video game series), Anno'', ' ...

in 2002 and developed by the now-defunct Ultimation Inc.

Gameplay

The game placed the player in command of a

Destroyer In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy, or carrier battle group and defend them against a wide range of general threats. They were conceived i ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, featuring campaigns from both the

Pacific War The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War or the Pacific Theatre, was the Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II fought between the Empire of Japan and the Allies of World War II, Allies in East Asia, East and Southeast As ...

and the

Battle of the Atlantic The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allies of World War II, ...

. Customized missions may be played and players can select the opponent's forces and their own. Players can also have the chance to choose the difficulty rating in different games by adjusting the different realism ratings. The game features two campaigns that include the entire Pacific and Atlantic warfare with 20 missions each. There are 20 predefined historical missions, for example, the Battle of Savo Island, additionally to some training missions, and automatically generated, customized missions. Classes of Destroyers that can be commanded by the player are , , , , , , , , , , , , , and the es. Weaponry that can be controlled by the player are the dual purpose 5"/38 caliber gun, the 4-inch/50 SP gun, the light guns Bofors 40 mm gun and

Oerlikon 20 mm cannon The Oerlikon 20 mm cannon is a series of autocannons based on an original German Becker Type M2 20 mm cannon design that appeared very early in World War I. It was widely produced by Oerlikon Contraves and others, with various models empl ...

, 200 to 600 lb

depth charge A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) weapon designed to destroy submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited ...

s, and 21-inch

torpedo A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, such ...

es.

History

The game was developed by the Ultimation Inc. and released by

Ubisoft Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include '' Anno'', '' Assassin's Creed'', ' ...

in 2002. Due to problems with the game a patch (ver 4.10) was released in March 2002 by the developer for download. After release, instability with the multiplayer feature was found to be commonplace, yet Ubisoft never resolved this issue by releasing another official patch. While in 2002 Ubisoft had ended the official support, they authorized and enabled the game's community at Subsim.com to fix the game themselves by giving them the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

. The fan community raised over $7000 for an

unofficial patch An unofficial patch, sometimes alternatively called a community patch, is a patch for a piece of software, created by a third party such as a user community without the involvement of the original developer. Similar to an ordinary patch, it alle ...

development project called ''Projekt Messerwetzer'' which ultimately fixed the issues.

Reception

Before the release of the patch, the game received "mixed" reviews according to the review aggregation website

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. It was nominated for the "Most Disappointing Game on PC" award at ''

GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady, and Jon Epstein. In addition ...

''s Best and Worst of 2002 Awards, which went to '' Civilization III: Play the World''.

References

External links

*
Projekt Messerwetzer
- an authorized community upgrade for ''Destroyer Command'' and ''Silent Hunter II'' * {{moby game, id=/8913/destroyer-command/ 2002 video games Multiplayer and single-player video games Naval video games Ship simulation games Ubisoft games Video games developed in the United States Video games scored by Kevin Manthei Windows games Windows-only games World War II video games Ultimation games

Gameplay

History

Reception

See also

References

External links