While attending this years Origins Convention, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to spend time with Don Gilman of Advanced Gaming Systems to hear a bit about the Harpoon games. Given my unfamiliarity with the product line, Don was gracious enough to give me a 30-minute ground-up demonstration of Harpoon: Command Edition. While this is by no means a comprehensive look at the Harpoon line, I feel that we had a good go-round and that Don was able to convey the "hook" of the Harpoon games. Before I continue, I'd like to extend congratulations to Don for bringing home an Origins Vanguard award, presented to Harpoon 3 for unique and innovative gameplay. Awesome!

In essence, Harpoon is a faithful reproduction of a NATO command center. (And as Don says, " - or Australian ... they use our stuff!") It presents the gamer with a commander-level view of a confrontation scenario and allows the gamer to issue orders that affect the general behavior of the asset group - your team of ships, aircraft, etc. In all cases, the player has the option to dig down and control or micromanage particular units, but the focus of the game is to hide complexity and to streamline the command process. Why is this flexibility important? It is EXTREMELY important, because Harpoon scenarios range from intimate confrontations to huge fleet actions, and in those huge actions, you'll be dealing with incredible numbers of units involved in hundreds of individual engagements. Don specifically mentioned to me that you can play through a "Red October" scenario, which would involve moving multiple carrier groups into the Greenland/Iceland region. And for those of us that need translation, that basically means hundreds of ships and even more aircraft on each side. Try getting your typical real-time strategist to micromanage THAT.

So, how is this complexity hidden? How does it keep you commanding the operation without swimming in minutiae? Enter the concept of a capable staff and subordinates. When your virtual crew detects an engagement - and this can take a variety of shapes - Harpoon generates informational analysis and presents it to you, along with suggested actions and (when appropriate and available) probabilities of success. This means that as the commander, you don't wind up turning your ship when someone launches a torpedo your way. Instead, you'll receive a message that a torpedo has been launched, and you'll be presented with a probable location, heading and some suggested counter-actions. This process is repeated for all happenings of note and provides you with a constant series of command decisions to preserve and direct your team.

Wait ... did he just say "probable location and heading?" Yes, yes I did.

Don describes naval warfare as "long periods of inactivity and caution, punctuated by brief periods of excitement and terror." (Don't worry about those long periods, though, I'll address that a bit later in the control scheme; just realize that you won't be sitting around waiting for stuff to happen! Continuing on ... ) This is because naval warfare is tremendously "hide and seek," and often the person firing the first shots will be the winner of the engagement. Well then - how does one get to fire the first shots? The answer is through careful management of sensor data and minimization of your own sensory signatures. Many of the actions I saw Don perform in Harpoon resulted in him spotting or being spotted - which was great, because we were running a demonstration and wanted STUFF to happen. In reality, however, he'd have been far more careful about managing his fleet and gathering as much data about enemy forces as he possibly could before he advertised his presence and began the engagement. Harpoon helped him by keeping him apprised of what assets he had available and by suggesting where they'd do the most good, but it was really up to Don to create the overall search plan that was most likely to accomplish the scenario end goals by finding the enemy and, in this case, eliminating them.

I'm sure you picked up on that "scenario" bit there, didn't you?

Harpoon works with a concept called "Battlesets." These are groups of engagements taken from a similar period in time and location on Earth. They typically share technology levels and connect with one another by mimicking campaigns or situations from reality. Within each Battleset could be dozens of scenarios, designed to let the player become familiar with a particular theater and spend some quality time exploring the available engagements. Harpoon: Command Edition, which is shipping soon, will come with over 300 scenarios broken into a few dozen Battlesets.

So, this is the flavor of Harpoon - what's the interface like? How about the screens themselves?

Harpoon really IS designed to look like the radar screens that naval officers see, right down to the icons you watch glide across the field of combat. You actually get to check out the radar/sonar data as it would be mapped onto engagement screens, complete with polygons representing areas of uncertainty when your staff can't tell you EXACTLY where something is. Remember when I mentioned hundreds of ships? Thankfully, you'll get a few screens that you can manage simultaneously, and they layer on top of one another. Thus, you can have one screen zoomed way out and watching the big picture while another window focuses in on one battle group and while yet another window actually zooms in to see a helicopter chasing a sub and trying to score torpedo hits.

In the same way that windows can scale geography, the user can also scale time. It's not necessary to watch your fleet execute your carefully crafted search operation in real time - you can set up their behaviors and then crank up the timescale until they find something! This is what I meant earlier when I mentioned that you would never be stuck waiting for action. All commands are button driven, though Don used hotkeys for just about everything and was able to manage data with great efficiency.

This, essentially, is the scale of Harpoon. If you enjoy the concept of taking a naval fleet and devising a plan to achieve scenario objectives and then reacting to well-presented situation reports as your carefully crafted plan falls all to pieces, this is your game. You'll never get bored of playing the scenarios, either, because they can randomly generate enemies and enemy tactics within your favorites - not to mention the onslaught of user-created scenarios that can be downloaded and played. My recommendation, therefore, is to go read (or watch) some of the Tom Clancy naval warfare stuff, and if you think you could take the heat, give it a shot in Harpoon: Command Edition. If you REALLY want to get into the nuts and bolts, you can take on Harpoon 3 and crank up the complexity. Enjoy!