E3 2008: PT Boats: Knights of the Sea Impressions - Quick Updates

We take an updated look at this long-in-development naval simulation at E3 2008.

It's the last day of E3 2008, but we still had a chance to catch up with PT Boats: Knights of the Sea, the long-in-development hybrid naval simulation/strategy game from Akella. PT Boats, which has been in development for about six years, chronicles the World War II conflict from the perspective of either the Allied forces, the Germans, or the Soviet Union. The game will have a campaign for each side with about a dozen missions apiece that will involve bringing gunships into naval battles in the service of your country. Interestingly, you can play the game as either a real-time strategy game as you control a flotilla of up to six other ships and give group orders or as a simulation that lets you control a single boat.

As you can probably guess from the game's lengthy development cycle, PT Boats' development team seems committed to creating an authentic naval battle experience, regardless of how much time it takes. We watched a demonstration of the simulation gameplay, which not only lets you control your boat from a close-in third-person view that shows various seamen at their duties of manning antiair flak cannons, navigating, and swabbing the poop deck, but also lets you take a first-person view. In the first-person view, you can see and explore the entire ship, from the first mate to the navigation and engine controls to the guns. Though we were able to see the game only briefly, we did watch a short German defense mission that required our PT boat to flush out enemies in our waters. Unfortunately, enemy fighter planes proved too much for us and crippled the ship and slaughtered the crew with strafing fire, leaving our ship and crew dead in the water.

It's unfortunate that we didn't get more of an opportunity to see the game in motion, but PT Boats seems like it's trying to create a realistic naval simulation experience that hardcore simulation fans will likely enjoy. The game is scheduled for release at the end of the year.

25 Comments

  • FlashCharge

    Posted Oct 25, 2009 8:01 am PT

    The PT boat is one of my favorites and in the game Battlestations Midway I had my first play at commanding one and enjoyed it the most. This hopefully will prove to be an enjoyable game and one I will keep my eye on.

  • romulus45

    Posted Oct 14, 2009 7:09 am PT

    This could be a very good simulation, the long development time I think can do it no harm. I just hope that its not too deep as a sim. we as pc users need more originality on our systems. O.k its still yet another ww2 sim but its from another perspective

  • Maphisto86

    Posted Apr 4, 2009 12:20 pm PT

    Unlike the majority of gamers out there, I enjoy games with a WWII theme since I am a history of warfare buff. While many first person shooters set in WWII have become tiresome (except perhaps Red Orchestra), other games based on simulating combat like IL-2 Sturmovik are welcome in my book! I am looking forward to sailing the Baltic and kicking ass with a sea dog crew. Flak guns, machine guns and torpedoes away!

  • Jackyll87

    Posted Aug 4, 2008 4:35 am PT

    Sounds cool. Looooooong time in development though.

  • dajens72

    Posted Jul 30, 2008 6:27 pm PT

    Good sims are few and far between.....hope this one pans out for these guys....

  • lathan94

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 8:42 am PT

    Looks very interesting and six years in development means they must really care about this.

  • scorch-62

    Posted Jul 22, 2008 3:54 pm PT

    I like the RTS/Sim interchangeability.

  • tyzwain

    Posted Jul 21, 2008 1:21 pm PT

    Hmmm nice idea, just hope they dont drop in a JFK reference. There are plenty of other heroes of war that havent been mentioned.

  • leofiregod

    Posted Jul 20, 2008 5:45 pm PT

    Never been a fan of real war stuff, but this looks cool because it is with vehicles instead of some guy running around.

  • akwar

    Posted Jul 20, 2008 12:47 pm PT

    Too all you non-simulation types of people.Hey its your loss.I much prefer a game that takes brains over mindless madness in most of the games produced these days.Im really looking forward to this.We havent had a decent surface ship sim since Destroyer command.

  • ognen

    Posted Jul 20, 2008 4:36 am PT

    I'm not to much in simulation games.

  • zombieman666

    Posted Jul 19, 2008 12:59 pm PT

    sounds ok

  • vaskaville

    Posted Jul 19, 2008 8:27 am PT

    When is it going to be released?

  • gmax Site moderator

    Posted Jul 19, 2008 12:21 am PT

    Man. 6 years. Hope it pays off.

  • Macgyver40

    Posted Jul 18, 2008 10:30 am PT

    Ive always wanted to captian a pt boat

  • shinian

    Posted Jul 18, 2008 9:54 am PT

    If it's going to have quality of Silent Hunter I'm going to give it a try.

  • km1498

    Posted Jul 18, 2008 8:40 am PT

    It doesn't look that bad, but this is just not my type of game.

  • pidow

    Posted Jul 18, 2008 7:23 am PT

    I'll may play it.

  • Lescale

    Posted Jul 18, 2008 1:06 am PT

    Not my style, but I'll give it a try ... The presentation seems very good.

  • Hungry_bunny

    Posted Jul 17, 2008 9:41 pm PT

    Naval simulation just isn't my cup of tea.

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