Silent Hunter 2

by Ubisoft

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00001WRT2
• Item Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: November 9, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,834 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Silent Hunter II brings the World War II epic underwater struggle to the PC. Players command a German U-boat with orders to stalk and destroy American and British naval convoys throughout the Atlantic theater. Use sonar and tactical skill to evade antisubmarine patrols, convoy escorts, and enemy aircraft. The adjustable difficulty and realism levels challenge even the most experienced gamers. A multimedia presentation contains interviews with U-boat commanders and an interactive sub tour. Technical consultants include Erich Topp, a commander in the German Kriegsmarine. He commanded the U-57 and U-552 (the Red Devil Boat), sinking 14 ships during the course of the war.

Product Description

WWII U-Boat Combat SimulatorProduct InformationAn Intense and Realistic Simulation!Silent Hunter II the latest simulation in thecritically acclaimed Silent Hunter series recreates the desperate battles inthe Atlantic between Hitler's infamous U-boat force and British and Americanconvoys - lifeblood of the Allied war effort.  Building on a game widely regardedas the best of its kind Silent Hunter II represents the next generation inWWII submarine simulations.  It's impressive list of features beautiful 3Dgraphics and unrivaled game-play assure that the Silent Hunter name will remainat the forefront of historical underwater simulations!Product Features Combat a wide array of enemy forces including destroyers armed merchant ships and aircraft. An all New U-Boat perspective that includes over 200 highly detailed 3D models. Ultra-realistic ocean environment. Scalable realism settings make the game accessible to both beginner and expert. Technical Consultant: Admiral Erich Topp - During WWII Topp commanded the U-57 and U-552 (the Red Devil Boat). After the war he served in the West German Navy and in NATO.Windows System Requirements Windows XP Vista Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) Pentium 266MHz (600MHz recommended) 64MB of RAM (128MB recommended) 650MB free hard disk space 24x CD-ROM DirectX 8 or higher 3D video card (DirectX 8 compatible with 16MB of RAM (32MB recommended) DirectX Sound Card Mouse Internet/LAN connection for optional link to Destroyer Command

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Should have been released 2 years ago...and it shows., November 13, 2001

By 

Matthew Duren (Tracy, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Silent Hunter 2 (CD-ROM)

I've enjoyed sub simming since first playing "Sub Hunt" on my Intellivision and have bought practically every sub sim since. Needless to say, I've highly anticipated Silent Hunter 2's release since I first heard of it 2 years ago. (Honestly, it's been so long I can't remember exactly when it was first announced.) Release dates were pushed forward so many times I can only assume that the game had severe production and finance problems. Well, it's finally here and it seems obvious that the extra time taken in releasing the product was not spent on improving the program. I wanted so much to really love this game. I feel for the small teams of software developers that don't have the big $$$ that companies like Microsoft do and I like to support them in their efforts with my purchases - but this program lacks some key elements and took way to long to arrive.

The graphics, or lack thereof, betray the game's age. I was hoping for a look comparable to "Sea Dogs", but no such luck. The highest resolution the game supports is 800x600, and on a 17" monitor that just doesn't cut it. As mentioned in earlier reviews, the title screens are poorly done, as well. The sim does have wave and sky effects along with decent 3d models, but they just don't match up to the graphics of today's games. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are much better than the original Silent Hunter and there simply aren't any other WW2 submarine simulations on the market to compare, but after 2 years of waiting, I expected more.

Aside from the graphics, the game has two other GLARING flaws: no multiplayer available yet and no free-roving campaign. I guess the folks at Ubi soft figured we wouldn't need multiplayer yet, since their upcoming destroyer sim (meant to be played with Silent Hunter 2) won't be out for a couple of months. They're promising a patch, but this is still an obviously incomplete product. The game also comes with predisigned missions that can be edited, but I loved the option in previous sims to spend the whole war roaming freely around the ocean, looking for prey. The lack of this limits the sim big time, in my eyes.

On the positive side, the sim, itself, is acutally pretty good. I thought the overall AI was impressive and enemy destroyers were none to easy to evade. The sound room (something I hadn't seen in a sub sim before.) added an eerie touch of realism. For dedicated sub simmers, you'll find all the bells and whistles of earlier sims, including advanced realism settings to let you control as much or as little as you want. The waves and weather do add an extra layer of variability that has been lacking in sub sims until now. The subpar graphics also have a positive side as far as performance on lower-end machines is concerned and the game has been very stable on my computer, so far.

The bottom line is, beggars can't be choosers and, as Silent Hunter 2 is the only WW2 sub sim to come out in a LONG time, we sub lovers can't be too picky. I guess the market simply isn't out there to encourage companies to do a top-notch job on a submarine simulation, so SH2 will have to do.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun but with some drawbacks, March 8, 2002

By 

"kazjan" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Hunter 2 (CD-ROM)

I've been waiting for a good sub sim realease for a long time. The sims I enjoyed the most have been long forgoten: Silent Service, Red Storm Rising, Aces of the Deep.

While SH2 is no match for any of the above titles, it is a decent substitute. The game play is fun, u-boat stations are done very well providing atmoshere of operating the boat, and the missions are quite interesting.

The game comes with a few drawbacks, however. The AI is to say the least quite peculiar. In the first mission, I successfully destroyed 2 of the 3 Polish destroyers (I scorred a direct hit on the 3rd one after the reload but the torpedo, my last one, was a dud). The 3rd destroyer attempted to locate me and started firing depth charges like it should. I was able to disengage and surface at a safe distance while maintaning a good fix on the contact. Here comes the sily part: the ship remained motionless for 2 days of game time while the German surface groups (having the Polish destroyers as primary target also) returned to the base without engaging the "sitting duck." Guess nobody wanted to read my contact reports. Latter in the game, I saw an enemy destroyers stopping next to a sinking ship while rest of the convoy moved on unescorted. This action definetely improved my score as the mission progressed.

The graphics are quite dated so don't expect any bells and whistles here. Scripted campaign is a major drawback providing no surprized when replaying any of the missions. Also, the end-mission screen is quite anti-climactic. A player is provided with dry mission statistics (excel style) and sent back to the office for mission replay or new mission brieffing. Personally, I prefer a nice animation of returning home or death at the bottom of the see followed by a de-brief maintaining some role-playing elements.

There are some technical bugs. I did not experienced any of the problems indicated by the XP users -- maybe I got lucky. I was able to run the game on both XP Pro and 2000 Pro. 2000 Pro has a minor intermitent screen flashing problem. I think it's a display driver compatibility issue but it does not interfere significantly with the gameplay. During the installation I encountered critical error informing me that a link to some .dll file could not be established. To my surprize, the installation proceeded and completed succesfully.

Over all, it is a decent product. I love the dud-torpedo feature (especially if this is my last torpedo). Similarly, the missions are well designed and provide a fair insight into submarine warfare WWII style -- to bad all of them are scripted. Finally, this game is a lot of fun to play and provides oportunity for long, sleepless nights of planning a stealthy approaches, firing torpedoes, diving away and counting second until the impact (hoping it won't be a dud this time) while pursuing destroyers lay depth-charges around your fragile iron coffin.

42 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good continuation of an excellent series, November 8, 2001

By 

T. Whigham (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Silent Hunter 2 (CD-ROM)

The original "Silent Hunter" was released in 1997 and put the player in command of several different types of US submarines battling the Japanese in WW2. It also took its history lessons seriously and included a narrated video of a tour around an American fleet submarine and a short pamphlet about US submarine tactics and history during WW2. It quickly became the benchmark of WW2 submarine sims - the symbol by which all other sub sims were measured. Three expansion disks followed with additional terrain, missions, and a scenario editor. Although the software was written for DOS, the faithful sub captains learned how to set up "desktop shortcuts" to play the game with Windows 95, 98, and ME and the game continued to live on the harddrives of players around the world.

"Silent Hunter II" continues this tradition and puts the player in command of several different types of German submarines in WW2, and is designed to run under Windows 95, 98, and ME (so no more editing the properties of shortcut icons). The game is very stable on these Operating Systems and is quickly surpassing the benchmark set by the original game, particularly in graphics, sound, and gameplay (the training missions can be quite enjoyable). Unlike the industry trend to put the game manual on the cd, SH2 includes a full printed manual (always a good idea). The controls are very intuitive, particularly if you've played a submarine game before and know the difference between a periscope and a sonar head. If you prefer to learn by doing instead of reading, there are training missions to help you along. For extra fun during the navigation training, you can try to dock the boat yourself (ahead 1/3, back 2/3, all stop, aye!).

The only detractions to the sim are (a) lack of multiplayer capability and (b) lack of a scenario editor, both of which are scheduled to be corrected with the release of the second half of this sim pairing - "Destroyer Command" - which will place the player in command of a US destroyer that will (ta-daa!) hunt the German u-boats of "Silent Hunter II".

As a stand-alone sim, "Silent Hunter II" is a good start but comes up short without the multiplayer and scenario builder tools. Once these two features are added, SH2 will be the crowning achievement in submarine simulations (and a whole lot of fun to play, too!).

I would highly recommend this game to my friends and family, and anyone else that enjoys action, strategy, and history in one very entertaining package. Buy it for your kids and they may actually start paying attention to school history lessons. And to really drive home the lessons, take them to visit the u-boat on display at the Chicago Museum of Science and Technology (or the SS Clamagore in Charleston, SC or the SS Cavalla in Galveston, TX, or any of the other handful of vintage WW2 submarines - visit them while you can because they're rusting away).