| GAME PLAY | |
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| GETTING STARTED | |
| GRAPHICS | |
| SOUND CHECK | |
| VALUE | |
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Silent Hunter puts you at the helm of a U.S. Navy submarine pursuing an undersea campaign against the Japanese Imperial Navy in World War II. Your battleground stretches from Midway to Formosa, and your job is to sink anything flying the flag of the Rising Sun.
The game offers you command of one of nine submarines--from the small, nimble S class to the mas-sive and powerful Tench class. Game play focuses on tactics, not strategy, and even in the Campaign mode your pre-patrol orders are never more complicated than "Sail to East China Sea and sink all enemy shipping."
You can begin your campaign at any time between December 1941 and the end of the war, letting you decide for yourself whether to challenge the awesome Imperial Navy at the height of its supremacy or mop up the remaining pickets of the Japanese isles at the end of the war. Navigation is thankfully simple, accomplished with a few mouse clicks on a single map screen. Cruising is generally a painless process of clicking on waypoints and then waiting for sonar contacts. The game also includes a dozen historical scenarios, composed mostly of straightforward search-and-destroy missions.
If you're used to thinking of naval simulations as a series of technical readouts, Silent Hunter's gorgeously detailed graphics will come as a pleasant surprise. The rotating view from the conn is replete with finely chiseled waves and wavecaps, discernible currents, ship wakes, and dense skies and clouds. Enemy ships retain sharp detail even when viewed at the highest magnifications of your periscope or binoculars, right down to the Japanese flags whipping in the wind.
SSI seems to have put real care into making Silent Hunter easy-to-use and historically accurate. The target-acquisition and attack procedures are covered in a few well-conceived screens; you'll do most of your work from the periscope view. Another winner is a hot-button feature that zips you to any screen with a single keystroke, eliminating nerve-wracking menu-scrambling in the heat of battle.
Even landlubbers should have no difficulty diving right in, thanks to useful realism and difficulty controls. At the advanced settings, Silent Hunter will satisfy players looking for an all-out simulation. (For a fun but enervating demonstration, try manually computing a firing solution for your torpedo. Calculus degree recommended.) Novices can ease into command by increasing the voltage from scenario to scenario.
Before you cast off, it's worth taking the time to go through the game's wonderful Interviews section. Accompanied by newsreel footage, real-life sub commanders--including William "Bud" Gruner, captain of the USS Skate and a technical advisor for the game--take you on a fascinating historical tour of submarine warfare, from life aboard the boat to recollections of desperate battles.
The finishing touch on this versatile simulation is a fast, simple scenario editor that grants you control over every facet of an engagement. Type, number, experience, and battle quality of the enemy; weather, time of day, date in the war, and water conditions. The exhaustive options are further augmented by the realism and difficulty settings.
Silent Hunter is about as much fun as you can have under water. It captures the visceral intensity of submarine warfare--the silent running, the midnight sneak attacks, the desperate crash dives to outrun descending depth charges....All the claustrophobic anxiety of pursuit and the exhilarating elation of the kill. Happy hunting. Old Website Recovery