Customer Reviews

Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific Gold Edition

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is by far the best submarine simulation game available right now. It caters to both hardcore armchair submarine commanders and casual gamers who are attracted to the genre after watching Run Silent, Run Deep by offering a wide range of realistic settings. After trying the highest level of realism, I quickly admit that I fall into the latter category and revert back to the default level, which is a lot less tedious and more fun.

The sizable hardcore fan community does have a positive impact on my experience, specifically, the availability of mods. Like most niche games, this title is bug ridden and poorly supported. The mods help alleviate some of the frustration. After some experimentation, I settle for the Trigger Maru Overhauled super-mod. It is frequently updated and relatively well maintained. The looks and feels in the game improve greatly as a result.

I run the program on Vista x64. It still hangs the entire system on rare occasions, but I have been able to complete quite a few patrols with frequent saves. I am no teenager with twitchy trigger fingers, and this game requires just the kind of deep strategic and tactic thinking that I enjoy. The graphics are beautiful, contributing to an immersive experience that deserves recommendation.

I came across the German U-Boat version, and enjoyed it very much. That game had a steeper learning curve than this one. The series allows you to set the realism/difficulty level that you are most comfortable with. This game ranges from full manual torpedo attacks to "point & shoot" from the periscope. I have had a lot of fun with this and highly recomend it. Even though I don't have a top of the line PC, the graphics and gameplay flowed smoothly.

Video game's are generally patronized and thought of as a newfangled toy. Few would dream of calling a video game "art". Yet all art is in a sense a "toy"-it is an exercise of our aesthetic sense and imagination and is designed to give pleasure both to the maker and the audience. And Silent Hunter for has a gift for aesthetics and a laudible craftsmanship that certainly make it worthy to be called, if not high-class art, certainly folk art. And occasionally folk art is more attractive.
And yet Silent Hunter IV is not just a game. It is a time machine. It is a way for him to feel a little of the spirit of the times, when the mightiest fleets ever assembled strove for control of the world's oceans.
SHIV is a simulation of US submarine operations in the Pacific. The player takes the role of a sub captain. One of the most interesting and challenging jobs in the service and one of the most demanding to a persons fortitude. A sub captain is one of the few that has to choose to put himself into peril and when he does he must endure a different type of war. It is a geeky type of war , in which a man cannot prosper by letting his aggression run away with him like an Achilles. A sub captain must go on for hour after hour, calculating the subtleties of math, physics and oceanography as well as the even greater complexities of the human mind of his opponent. There is not a sudden spurt of action, but a long drawn out process, for hour after hour waiting for death or victory in a split second. And if a sub captain fails it is forever. Most lost submarines were lost with all hands and often without trace.
The intro shows a short trailer with a quote from Milton's "Time" in a deep voice. I don't know why they chose that poem-it seems rather inappropriate to the theme. Yet on the other hand the talk of "time" does express the point that the player is experiencing his grandfather's war.
The graphics are beautiful. From the seascapes, to the detailed pictures of ships and sailors to the explosions and flames and smoke from your victims. The game mechanics give you the feeling of actually being there. From briefings and intermittent broadcasts from the radio, you get the feeling of creeping despair during a defensive phase of the war, and of elation during an offensive phase. And you get a feeling that war is now not so much an event as an institution and that the whole world has become one vast Valhalla. That there was no longer "a" war, but just "war". Which, of course, was true at the time. There are also little details, including the players "office" at the navy base with papers sprawled along the desk, and a cup of coffee in the corner(as Samuel Eliot Morrison once said,"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but it wouldn't like to try").
The actual combat gives a glimpse of what it must have felt like. Of course not one could give more then a glimpse otherwise it would be no longer a game. But once you gain confidence you start to gain the arrogant predatory instinct of a submarine captain. And when you are in danger the tension can be frightening. When the enemy gets a close enough pattern of depth charges you hear the cries from all over the ship, "pressure hull damaged", "We have flooding", etc. And if it is close enough this process starts to carry you down, down,down into the depths. It is so intense that once I actually felt I had to get up and make myself a cup of tea just to calm myself down after a session in which I died bravely(no doubt the Japanese gave me the proper tribute for an honorable enemy).
There are other twists. There is a little role-playing attached. In the "Career" version you are given the pleasure of glory, reputation and promotion; and even a wee bit of the frustration of dealing with the naval establishment(don't worry; just enough to maintain the atmosphere). You also get the experience of juggling crew assignments in the most advantageous manner.
SHIV is an attractive, educational, and entertaining piece of work and well worthy of one's attention.

This game has really great realistic graphics, and the action is intense, especially in the American campaign. The German patrols are also realistic in the amount of travel time in game. I recommend this to anyone interested in WWII Naval action games, this has it all; surface ships, aircraft and submarines.

This game is awesome, easily loaded on my computer and I have had no problems to date. Game graphics are really nice down to being able to seeing crewman on the decks of the ships as they pass by in close up camera view. Game is addictive and the AI is very good at giving a sub commander a run for their money. Example, as I attacked an enemy convoy and was relentlessly pursued by convoy escort destroyers. Tip for players, when attacking enemy ships and trying to avoid being detected by escorts, go beneath the thermal layer, about 120 ft and drop your speed to about 1/3. Sound is not as easily detected below this depth and unless you are running at high speed you can actually sneak right beneath enemy escorts and still find a way to then go to periscope depth and launch torpedoes.

Be wary though if you slip the escorts and come above the thermal layer and try to increase your speed to try to catch up to the convoy, the destroyers hydrophones will pick up the change in engine speed and you can watch as they kick into high speed heading in your direction. Just drop back below 120 ft and drop your speed back down again to 1/3. Oh and you'll probably get depth charged in the vicinity as they try to ferret you out. Watch out for searchlights at night from escorts. Also if you do get damage be sure to go to the crew management screen and set up your damage control team to repair damage. Another tip is when trying to sneak up on a convoy go to silent running mode to avoid unecessary noise.

Had a fun mission attacking a convoy from the middle of the convoy and after firing a salvo at a large merchant ship and getting a hit, then swung the periscope around and locked on to a searching escort destroyer. Fired a salvo from the aft tubes and he picked up the incoming torpedoes with their searchlight at last minute (yes the escorts use searchlights at night to look for your periscope), ship dodged all but one and took a hit towards the rear. Fun watching the ship high tail it for port as I was right off the Japanese mainland.

Great game and you will have hours of fun playing it.

I've been running this on XP, so I didn't have some of the problems some of you had. I enjoy this game, when I live through a patrol. Sometimes, the game may hiccup a little on the view when I'm making an approach on a target. Otherwise, I love this game. It's also fun to be a German U-boat in the Indian Ocean, especially in 1943. You don't deal with so many Allied planes. It's pretty accurate on the history, but not so much on the ranks of crew members. Senior Chief and Master Chief are post WWII ranks. I can't really quibble on much else.
If it's going to run on your machine, get it, and man your battle stations.

I happen to be a student of WWII with specific knowledge of the US fleetboat evolution in the pacific. I know in particular about the Balao class submarine since my father was a quartermaster on the USS Catfish SS-339. He is also on the current crew of the USS Pampanito SS-383 docked in San Francisco. I have been through that submarine many many times and even spent the night on her. This game is one of the most realistic submarine games I have ever played. You can almost smell the diesel and the grease. Because of the detailed accuracy contained within, I would say that this "game" is not a game at all. For my money it is nothing short of an educational simulator. You learn by doing... submarine tactics of WWII. Many of these tactics are still valid today. The realism also gives you enough of an appreciation for what submariners actually go through. ie: The Japanese Navy was bad enough but the tedium was the real enemy. Thank God for the time compress button..Nice going UBISOFT.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only guy keeping the sub-sim industry in busines. From the original Gato to Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific I was there. This particular game, however confuses the heck out me.

Flaw: The US and German console display features are different eliminating familiarzation. Granted the subs are all different, but the icons that assist you as the Submarine Commander are two different depictions and styles. Why is this?

Flaw: A lot of time when you have a specific objective that is annotated on the map and accomplish it, the objective doesn't get completed. On numerous occasion, I would have to circle around and dive for days (sub compression) until it finally went through, or I would have to start over.

Other than these two peeves the game is just like Silent Hunter III. Plety to destroy and user friendly for noobies. My only other recomendations for this game is that the campaign mode allows you to individually choose the difficulty not by percentage, but to be able to click what you want to turn on and off (like in single mission mode). I also wish that the instruction manuel was much more descriptive. A good sub sim needs a long manuel in my opinion.

I originally purchased this game as a gift for someone else, except, in the short run of things, they couldn't play it on their PC, so they allowed me to keep it. I dislike returning things because of the hassle of shipping it. I kept it and loaded onto my Windows Vista Celeron PC. The game has great graphics, unfortunately, the game was very slow. I checked my memory, (fine with 2.3GB) to spare, I checked my RAM, (fine as well), made sure I didn't have any viruses on the PC, (checks are done everyday, so nothing there). I uninstalled the game and re-installed it, no luck. The game was designed to work on just Windows XP or Vista. I have Vista, why wasn't this working?

Now, I'm just trying to re-sell it. Unfortunately, with such a broad range of compatibility, there aren't many takers on this product. The game, when re-installed was slower than the first time, so I simply uninstalled it. If you want this game t work up to its designed speed, I suggest you have as much memory as possible, a quick processor, and maybe a patch.

The seller contacted me about my low rating. In my response, I stated that this problem has absolutely nothing to do with the actual seller themselves, this is a technical aspect. Sometimes games are compatible & sometimes they're not. This I want to make very clear, the seller was by far (ONE OF THE BEST VENDORS I'VE EVER HAD THE PRIVILEGE OF DOING BUSINESS WITH HERE ON AMAZON.COM). That is what I most definitely want to make certain that other customers see. They contacted me on every occasion & then some. They also responded to the matter of the technical aspect, stating, "They would ask the game maker UbiSoft for a detailed review and technical repair issues for me if I still have trouble". To me, that is exceptional service.

SO, HATS OFF TO THE VENDOR!!
Unfortunately, the game needs some fine tuning.

Joseph Freas
Montgomery Twp., Pennsylvania

If you like submarine simulations than this is for you.
Silent Hunter 4 gold has most of the bugs solved and includes the expansion "The U-Boat Missions" allowing you to take command of a german u-boat operating in the indian ocean.
And there is a great community over at [...] for mods and fixes.