Silent Hunter III review

No more imagining things. In Silent Hunter III, Ubisoft has created a phenomenon that makes dreaming, fantazising or hallucinating about the really good submarine game redundant in one fell swoop. Until now, no game has managed to establish an illusion measurable alongside the greatest submariner movie ever: Das Boot.

Something has always been amiss. You as captain have always been alone onboard your ship and have had to be grateful for gritty 2D scenery instead of real habours and bays. Reliving the submarine war has been, in other words, an impossibility, even if some games in the genre has been quite good. They have just lacked that final phenomenal element to wash you from the dry edges of the screen into the seething waters of the Atlantic. From reality into the perfect illusionary universe. Silent Hunter III has that element.

The Rumanian department of Ubisoft has developed Silent Hunter III and it has assailed the task with enormous energy and the will to create the best submarine game ever. Loads of research and field studies around the world have been conducted - and it has managed to conduct lengthy interviews with Jürgen Oesten - one of the few surviving German submarine commanders, who during the war sunk 19 ships for a total of 88970 tons.

Delicacies for any Submariner

We leave the harbour while family and friends wave and the band plays the German national anthem.

Silent Hunter III deals with the German part of the submarine war. As a German commander in the making you can hone your skills in a few practise missions or play some of the readymade historical or fictitious scenarios. But the core of the game is a dynamic campaign running the entire length of the war, form 1939 to 1945. Depending on your starting point you are given a variety of submarines to choose from, ranging from the small coastal vessels Type II over the immense ocean crossing vessels that are the Type IX to the highly modern XXI ships, that laid the template for the nuclear submarines of the post war period. The game has more technological goodies than any other game in the genre and there are plenty more to come. Commanding a submarine is not a single handed job.

The greatest innovation in Silent Hunter III is the crew. Any submarinecrew consists of officers and sailors, who -like in a roleplaying game - have different special abillities (like radio operator or gunner), and certain general characteristics like morale. It is cruzial to use these abilities optimally as, for example, failure to fully man the engine room will result in a stationery ship. Fatal in a critical situation with enemy destroyers closing at 25 knots... You might as well get used to the fact that you never have enough manpower and therefore have to manage the available hands. Luckily the developer has included premade templates that make for rapid reconfigurations of manpower, readying for a torpedo attack or prioritizing repairs.

When will I get my Knight's Cross?

The morale is high as the latest patrols have been succesful and we have been given many medals.

Normally in a submarine game we have been given promotions and medals as commander, but an extra feature lets you hand out promotions to your crew after each patrol. Even though this is quite fun I do not believe it to be a historical feature, but I am willing to let it slide. The great part is the fact that you at any given time can see your crew in full 3D, and that they actually wear the medals you have given them.

After each mission you are given prestige points that can be used to hire better crewmembers or upgrade your submarine. This might seem somewhat silly and 'Need-for-Speed'ish, but the upgrades are historically correct, and it is quite lickely that famous commanders found getting the newest gear somewhat easier. All in all details like this only increases the durability of the game.

Remember your map

We are in a great storm and enemy ships are hard to find.

The campaign area is enormous, stretching from the North Cape to Cape Horn with all historic convoy routes and quite a few habours. It is even possible to sail beyond the marked areas and i.e. towards Greenland even though the game does not seem to simulate enemy vessels as far away from anything as that. I encountered none. Another weak point are the pretty habours that you can enter. Imagine my dissapointment at carefully sneaking into Scapa Flow only to find it devoid of any ships...

On the other hand there is plenty of life at sea as long as you remain in the normal theaters of war and Ubisoft has gone to extreme lengths to ensure a realistic experience. I have encountered anything from a Norwegian fishing boat over a camouflaged German warship to a small British torpedo boat, heroically circling my submarine with blazing machineguns. The cool thing about that encounter was that they kept close enough for me not to be able to use my deck gun.

But the weather clears and a beatiful evening sun is the only witness to our first hit on this patrol.

In the early years of the war you often encounter freighters or oiltankers alone at sea, but the Allies are quick to establish the convoy system and minimize their losses, and as the number of escorts and planes overhead increase it becomes harder to sink ships than it is to chat up girls at a supermodel convention. Unfortunately Ubisoft has failed to implement the Wolfpack tactics developed by Admiral Dönitz. This means that even though you might report a convoy, you will not experience the collaboration between numerous submarines trying to sink it. This is pretty dissapointing, especially from a historical perspective. However, you might encounter single German submarines or planes along the way.

Reach the summit - every time

Luck is smiling upon us as we two nights later encounter a large convoy. Escort vessels look for us in vain.

Sinking a ship is quite a challenge, a fact which actually is a great asset in the game. Even with a low difficulty setting - which has the computer make all calculations with regards to direction, depth, speed and other factors with influence on the torpedo - it still gives you a kick for every direct hit. It takes experience to deploy a submarine correctly, spacial awareness, as well as an icy gut for you to wait until the last possible moment, since launching a torpedo prematurely will give the enemy time to avoid it. And when same enemy is doing his best to stop you, there is plenty to keep you occupied. Simulator fans will propably cry salty tears of joy when they discover just how close to the real thing they will be by increasing the difficulty. This forces you to deal with everything from identifying enemy vessels in the horizon over measuring the distance to the target by placing a line across its mast and across the horizon to choosing torpedo type, speed, spread pattern and soooo much more.

On full realism it is a major satisfaction to actually hit something, but even when the calculations are automated it is a sweet sensation every time, since no hits are scored easily in this game. Damage simulation is incredebly detailed and the game renders every effect your torpedo has had on a target. unfortunately it is not shown graphically precisely how large a hole you might have made in the hull of an enemy.

Every sub apart from the early II and late XXI have deck guns and anti aircraft weaponry which can be manned by you if you wish. This allows you to save valuable torpedoes if you encounter a small ship. But you better forget taking on enemy warships like this - your sub cannot sustain taking a hit and you risk the death of your sailors and officers.

Is that a tear or saltwater in your eye?

We score several hits and explosions light up the night sky.

Silent Hunter III has a graphics engine that surpasses anything in the genre. The developer provides almost photorealism in some cases, especially water and waves. The game simulates anything from completely undisturbed water in a sunset to massive waves threatening to crush the ship. There is a few errors in clipping the submarine, but the impression as a whole does not suffer. Ships explode and sink in a huge variety of ways, with perfect pyrotechnical effects, while sunlight dances on the hull of the sub. The best part is when waves leave a glaze of water on the lense of your periscope. But it is the many small loving details that make Silent Hunter III something special. When you leave a German harbour for the first time and a band plays the German National Anthem while people wave and girls throw roses in the water, you cannot help but think of Das Boot. Inside your ship the game provides details such as food hanging all over the place due to the permanent lack of space, and actually seeing your crew (even if their beards do not grow on patrol) is a treat. Silent Hunter III is evidently made by enthusiasts who love the genre.

After the succesful raid on the convoy there's no need to sink this small fishing boat, so we continue homewards.

Everything can be seen with a freely moving camera on lower difficulty levels, and the game does everything to give you that close feel. At night warships track you with huge blinding searchlights, the cargo of tankers combusts spectacularly and so on. Unfortunately the graphics engine has troubles when dealing with height, leaving for instance Norway looking like a flat muddy bank. But when you dive deeper into the Atlantic everything goes pitch black around you, and you have strong nerves indeed if you do not feel claustrophobic.

The sound leaves nothing to be desired. Musically a few known songs from the war are lacking, but the game accepts MP3 files placed in the grammophone fixing that problem. The sound effects are no less than genius. You get explosions, sonar, crew running on the deck, even seagulls screaming when they fly alongside the boat close to shore. The crew even whispers when submersed and you can choose between German or English dialogue.

Best. Submarine game. Ever.

A picture perfect sunset frames the final day of patrolling before a well deserved land leave.

Silent Hunter III also includes a multiplayer part but a warning about playing with some stranger on the net is due here. Silent Hunter III demands high levels of preparation and thought and it is quite dificult having a good experience when playing with some fool who simply rushes forward or stays as passive as a brick. Hook up with some friends and employ some sort of team speech.

There is but one area in which Silent Hunter III stumbles. The game offers no background information during the campaign like the old games in the series did. This means that your knowledge of the war need to be substantial if you do not want to feel a lacking sense of purpose to your sailing the seven seas. I miss some newspaper clippings with famous incidents (Stalingrad, the invasion of France, the lauch of a new type of submarine...) or the old function of gossiping with other commanders in the officers club. The many shortcut keys can be frustrating at times since pressing a wrong key at a critical moment is never fun. But these things aside there is no weaknesses. Silent Hunter III is quite simply the best submarine game ever, and it will provide months of entertainment.

Source: Boomtown DK
Translated by: William Bjarnø (Dworkin)