The good news is that Silent Hunter II is the second best sub sim to come out this year. The bad news is that it's only the second sub sim to come out this year, Electronic Arts' Sub Command being the first. On the surface, it looks good and seems to get all the details right. But once you go a little deeper, you'll find the functional equivalent of screen doors on this sub sim. It's not quite all wet, but it's hardly in shipshape, either.

Silent Hunter II lets you command a German U-boat in a linear campaign.

Silent Hunter II is set in the German U-boats of World War II, ranging from the coast of Norway all the way down to South America. This is rich subject matter for a simulation. German U-boats prowling the Atlantic were perhaps Germany's best chance to win World War II. Hitler almost succeeded in cutting Europe off from the United States' industrial and military might. Since both the Axis and Allies knew the stakes, the battle was fierce, prolonged, and expensive. Men, steel, and technology were poured into the Atlantic. In the end, Germany traded the lives of nearly 30,000 of her sailors to sink approximately 3,000 enemy merchant ships. This was a struggle of mythic proportion, captured beautifully in movies like Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot, books like Herbert Werner's Iron Coffins, and games like Dynamix's Aces of the Deep, one of the finest sims ever.

This is also rich subject matter for a simulation because of the nature of the action. The pace is slow, deliberate, and tense. Submarine warfare is more about stealth than combat. You spend most of your time stalking your prey and waiting for the perfect chance to strike. You get one opportunity to land a blow, and from then on, you're the prey. From hunter to hunted in the launch of a torpedo.

On both counts, as a nod to that period of history and that style of warfare, Silent Hunter II does a decent job. The single-player campaign tries to capture the epic nature of the U-boat struggle by following the flow and ebb of Germany's fortune through the course of the war. Rather than playing like a traditional career mode, Silent Hunter II is more of a globe-trotting showcase for the U-boat's greatest hits. You start out heading off the fleeing Polish navy, then you dabble in the Atlantic, then you join the invasion of Norway, then it's a brief jaunt into the Mediterranean (with the obligatory "slip through Gibraltar" mission), then to the East Coast of the United States and down to the Bahamas, and so on, all the way to Buenos Aires at the end of the war. The campaign begins in the submarine's halcyon days with coordinated wolf pack attacks and frequent reports from Luftwaffe reconnaissance planes. As the war progresses, you get a good sense for the developing technology, Germany's increasing desperation, and the Allied dominance of the seas with their ubiquitous destroyer escorts and air cover. Silent Hunter II takes you through the rise and fall of the Third Reich, as seen through a periscope.

The scripted missions diminish the replay value of this sub sim.

While this is an interesting concept, the developers at Ultimation sacrifice any long-term replayability by building Silent Hunter II almost entirely around this historical story arc. Each mission is tightly scripted and offers almost zero chance for freedom or exploration, which means there's very little replay value. Not that you won't be replaying missions, because Silent Hunter II's campaign is a strictly linear affair. Each mission must be completed before you can move on to the next. If you fail the mission's primary objective, you get to replay it--only this time you'll know exactly what to expect, as well as when and where to expect it. Unlike in Sub Command's missions, there's very little randomness in Silent Hunter II. The tension of uncertainty is replaced by the tedium of repetition.

This will also impact the way you play the game. For instance, take the realism setting for dud torpedoes. Torpedoes that failed to go off when they struck their targets were a very real problem in World War II, particularly early in the war. Sometimes subs would return from a patrol with a 100-percent dud rate. But the commander didn't have to go back out and fire over and over at the same ship until he got a live torpedo, because failure was a part of submarine warfare. It is not, however, a part of this sim, which demands you go back and do it over. And over. And over. Who wants to contend with dud torpedoes when you're dealing with a primary goal that must be achieved to unlock the next mission? War might be hell, but Silent Hunter II is the frustration of often having to replay the same mission.