Customer Reviews

Silent Hunter 2

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

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.

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.

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).

This game has been due out for two years, but has met with many delays during development. Also, I believe the software company producing it has been bought out (possibly twice) during the past two years. The current date may say Sept, but don't hold your breath. With due respect to Amazon, do not order this game until it has been released. Hopefully, the developers have used the extra time well and we'll have a really great game when it finally comes out. The 3D graphics are supposed to be excellent. Patience is a virtue.

If you like subsims or the WWII naval genre, you'll probably find several points about this game that you'll like, and a few that you don't. For the most part, I found this game was worth the purchase for the entertainment value. The scenarios were historically accurate, thorough in command and control complexities, and challenging in terms of developing an attack strategy and successfully pulling off disengagement and escape. The menu pages were simple and stylishly rendered in German art-decco propaganda. The sound effects were pretty good, as well.

The graphics were reasonably good, but you can definately tell that this is a game that has been in a time capsule for two years or more. If this game is the only thing you've been looking forward to for a while, you may be a little disappointed. I was hoping for more interesting land and ocean bottom features, which make the game more fully realistic. To its credit, I thought the deck officer propulsion and steering controls, as well as the conning perspectives, were the best I've seen in just about any WWII+ naval sim. Adding a better near-shore piloting and docking element to the already cool anti-aircraft and surface action opportunities would have been real icing for this cake. We'll have to wait and see what "Destroyer Command" comes up with. A reliable saving option for exiting a mission was lacking as was the time compression feature a little tedious at times. Having spent plenty of time staring at the water while in transit to points over the horizon in real life, I found doing it in near realtime on the computer really isn't any more fun.

If you have an older machine then you shouldn't have many problems running SH2. The simple graphics makes the game pretty stable, though I did experience the "XP" glitch (blanker screen shutdown after switching to the DC view) but understand there is a patch available to remedy it. Still, given few other choices in this very interesting game genre, SH2 is good fun and is worth owning.

If this is as good as the first game, it will be terrific. I have been a big fan of submarines since a young age when I read "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". Many a Saturday, I will launch the game on my PC, go do some work around the house and come back when my crew signals there is an enemy contact.

However, if you do not like hearing the sound of the propellers of enemy destroying coming overhead as you are trying to dive deep enough to get under the coming depth charges, struggle to keep you depth when you forward compartments are flooding and you are low on battery power, hear the creeking of the hull when you are deeper than you should be to get under the enemy attack, sneak through shallows barely deep enough to submerge in while an enemy patrol is overhead as you head for a large naval base rich with targets, or put 7 or 8 torpedoes into the Yamato sending her down and then having to run and evade like hell while her 10 or so escorts are after you in anger for what you have done, I guess you will be bored.

If you fell in love with the original Silent Hunter you will be very disappointed with this version.

Controls are clumsy.
Want the periscope up? Click on the up lever and HOLD THE MOUSE BUTTON DOWN until the scope is where you want it!!

It takes 20+ seconds to sweep the periscope 360 degrees. Time compression does automatically slow to 1x in dangerous situations but usually keeps ticking at the faster speed just long enough to get you into trouble.

If you choose to use the mouse for viewing you will constantly be picking up the mouse and stroking the pad to get a fast traverse.

Also, if you enable mouse panning, you will also get mouse elevation control by default and you end up looking at the sky or the ocean unless you move slowly and carefully. Also the mouse elevation control has no provisions for reversing the default input (whether moving the mouse forward looks up or looks down)

I found the graphics to be a disappointment. The manual stresses repeatedly what the minimum requirements are for full enjoyment of the experience. My system far exceeds their requirements. I don't believe the game would even had made use of all the capabilities of my old computer.

Might as well say: "This game plays best on a Cray computer with 3400 gB of RAM and a 152 inch monitor" Well, yea. I would suppose so, but it wouldn't look any better.

There are other quirks but I tired of playing this game so quickly that I leave it to you to find them on your own.

If you have seen your other favorites get trashed when re-issued you will know what to expect with this one.

This game reminds me of how GOD Games screwed up tracklaying in their release of RR Tycoon II.

Hey guys, there's a torpedo camera Mode!! I remember that. Wasn't it declassified in 1944? Intense realism?

Wow! You can watch a ship hit the bottom when it sinks. Again. So what?

Attention SSI, Ultimation and UBI Soft. I will no longer be the fool who's first to buy your new releases and I definitely will not waste my time pre-ordering your titles and anticipating their arrival only to be unhappy with the result. I especially will not get suckered into buying a title just because it had a II, III or MCMXXLII stuck on the end of the name.

Destroyer command will have to fall in my lap before I bother playing it.

Lucky for me a friend who loves SH-I had purchased a copy of SH-II. He said not to buy it and mailed me his for free. Now I know why. And I'm giving it back.

Silent Hunter 2 is an excellent sequel to Silent Hunter. It doesn't have that polish-perfect design of the original one, but it's still great. Before you buy this game, note the you will be the GERMANS. Many people haven't bought this game becasue of what the Germans did in WWII. But, the war is over, and it is just a game. This is a game for submarine fanatics who like stalking their prey and finding the perfect moment to strike. An average summary of a mission would be leaving port, steaming out to see and proceeding to the convoy you've been assigned to attack. When the perfect moment comes, unleash your torps, and run for it. The destroyers will start depth-bombing in all the wrong places as you watch through your periscope the ship you have just hit sinking. Then, evading aircraft and maybe firing your main guns at a destroyer, you head back for port. Sound like fun? You won't be bored. However, note that you may have to play many missions over and over again.

Being a fan of the Sierra game "Command: Aces of the Deep", I have been patiently waiting for this game to be released for the past two years. I can tell you that the wait has been (mostly) worth it!

While this game isn't a true "replacement" for C:AoD, this game does fill in its shoes better than I had hoped. The sea animation is better, the realism is better, and the fun value is better. While there are a few minor things I would have changed/added, for the most part I find this a great WWII sub sim.

As for bugs, there were only a few minor issues I've found while running it under Win2k. The first problem (which might just be hardware related) was that I had to copy the entire contents of the CD to the HD and install from that copied data (I later deleted those files). Secondly, a bug occurs when I'm in the damage control room, and with a certain key combination the game displays a blank screen and causes the game to crash. Also, I've noticed that when I crash dive, sometimes I decend to 50m in only a few seconds. Other than these 3, though, I've found it to be more stable than C:AoD.

Overall, this sim is great and really gives you an appreciation for what WWII submariners went through (both the allies and axis powers). While some may say the graphics aren't that great, frankly I don't understand what they're talking about. Seeing how much time is spent underwater, overly complex graphics would just be a detriment to the game.

I bought this game, installed it, and had problems with it. When I asked for help, Ubi Soft (the people who support the game) replied "Unfortunately, Windows XP and Windows 2000 are not supported Operating Systems for most Ubi Soft games."

If you are a die-hard sub fan running Windows XP, be prepared to spend a lot of time getting the game to work and to deal with the freezes and crashes.

As for me, I won't be buying any more software from these folks.

John