Silent Hunter III Hands-On

It's no understatement to say that submarine sims are few and far between, so it was understandable that sim fans reacted with dismay last year when Ubisoft delayed Silent Hunter III to 2005. This World War II submarine simulation caught our eye at the Electronic Entertainment Expo last year, in no small part because of its gorgeous graphics and beautiful re-creation of U-boat warfare. The delay was so that the developers could have enough time to incorporate a dynamic campaign, which is a popularly requested feature in sims. Was the delay worth it? It appears so. We've been playing around with an early beta of Silent Hunter III, and so far we're very impressed with the amount of detail packed into the game.

Silent Hunter III will let you play as a German U-boat captain during the Second World War, from the heady, early days of the war, when U-boats ran rampant across the Atlantic and Mediterranean, to the desperate, last days, when the feared predators became the prey. The game will feature several gameplay modes, including a naval academy mode to teach you the basics on navigation, naval artillery, torpedo attacks, and more; a single mission mode, which will let you select from historical scenarios, individual missions, and custom missions that you can create using the mission editor or download from the Internet; and a career mode, which represents the aforementioned dynamic campaign. In the career mode, you'll take the role of a U-boat captain tasked with conducting long-range patrols in search of Allied merchantmen and warships. In theory, the dynamic campaign means that no two campaigns will ever play out the same way, since your decisions as to where you go will affect the progress of the campaign. You can start your career between 1939 and 1943, which will determine the types of U-boats at your disposal, and you can choose a flotilla, which affects the area of operations that you'll patrol. The campaign will always end in 1945, so your goal is to do your duty and try to survive, which is no small feat considering that 75 percent of Hitler's U-boat crews never came home.

Whatever mode you select, you'll soon discover yourself within the cramped quarters of your U-boat. Though you won't be able to "walk" around the beautifully rendered interior of the U-boat, you will be able to click and enter certain compartments, such as the command room, the radio and sonar room, and the deck (assuming the sub is surfaced). To help command the submarine, you can rely on your officers, such as the chief engineer, the navigator, and the weapon officer. Giving orders to them is simple, thanks to the icon-based menu system. Simply click on a man, and various options will appear on the screen. This way, it only takes a few clicks to order the chief engineer to execute a crash dive, rig the ship for silent running, launch underwater decoys, and more. Click on the navigator, and you can plot a course or order him to execute a number of different types of search patterns. The weapon officer can be instructed to identify a target, program a firing solution, and target a certain ship. Meanwhile, if you're more of a hands-on type of simmer, you can take direct control of each station, such as sonar, and do all the work yourself.

Silent Hunter III will be geared toward both veteran submarine fans and newcomers to the genre. For the newcomer, the game has various settings that eliminate or minimize the learning curve. For example, with casual targeting selected, all that you have to do to sink a ship is to lock onto it using the telescope, choose a torpedo, and fire. It's point-and-click warfare at its simplest. At higher difficulty levels, though, you'll have to use the torpedo data computer to generate firing solutions, taking into account the target's bearing, range, speed, and angle on bow. In either case, it's somewhat of a nail-biting experience as you wait for your torpedoes to hit the target. In some cases, you'll miss by the barest of margins. In other cases, the torpedo will explode prematurely, sending up a geyser of water and alerting ships to your presence. Still, in other cases, the torpedo may hit the target and not explode. Even worse, it does explode, but it's not enough to send your target to Davy Jones's locker. However, when ships do sink, it's a glorious sight. Some ships sink quickly, others flip over, while others go aft or stern first, with the other end sticking straight up out of the water.

Das Boot

When you execute a torpedo attack, you sacrifice your submarine's greatest asset: stealth. Stealth is a submarine's best defense, especially against the speedy destroyer escorts that accompany each convoy. As fearsome as a U-boat is, it's extremely vulnerable when it's on the surface, where it's outgunned by both warships and heavily armed merchantmen. And when it's submerged, a U-boat is extremely slow and vulnerable to depth charges. Hence, the best tactic is to avoid being detected at all and to disappear after you've revealed your presence. However, at the game's more realistic difficulty levels there are impediments to staying submerged for long periods of time. U-Boats need to run on batteries when they're submerged, or raise their snorkels (assuming they're equipped with one) in order to run their diesel engines. However, the snorkel can be detected on the surface of the water. There's also the fact that as your crew breathes, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increases, limiting the amount of time the submarine can remain underwater before it has to surface and replenish its oxygen supply.

To assist you in stalking your prey, there is a color-coded stealth meter that represents your submarine's overall stealth. The stealth meter takes into account various factors, such as the speed of your propellers (the faster the propellers turn, the more noise they make), the proximity of hostile vessels, the lighting conditions on the surface (which determine if your periscope can be seen), and more. If the enemy does fix on your location, you may take damage from gunfire or depth charges. (In one case, a destroyer even rammed our U-boat.) In such cases, you will have to manage damage-control efforts before they become critical and doom your ship. This is done by assembling repair teams using the crew-management screen and directing them to where they're needed.

The career mode will let you go out on war patrols, hunting for the enemy. Using the navigator's chart, you can plot a course and speed and then use time compression to accelerate the passage of time while your U-boat cruises from waypoint to waypoint. If you encounter enemy vessels, you can drop back to regular speed and prosecute the attack, if you wish. As the war progresses, assuming you survive, you can take command of newer and more advanced boats, armed with more powerful and reliable torpedoes, to take the fight to the enemy. The game will include the four major classes of U-Boats that served during the war, including the different variants of each class.

In terms of visuals, Silent Hunter III is easily the best-looking naval simulation to date. Even at this early stage, this is a gorgeous simulation that captures the feeling of being at sea, even when you're firmly rooted in your chair at home. The water and waves are beautifully rendered, and one of the best effects in the game is how the waves wash over the periscope, distorting the view. Meanwhile, both ships and subs are rendered in sharp detail. Look closely and you'll see sailors manning deck guns on ships, as well as tanks tied down to the top of cargo vessels. You can also experience part of the terror of life aboard a U-boat, such as when during a depth charge attack you can watch from the inside as the ship rocks from the explosion and pipes burst apart.

The game will feature a free camera mode that lets you move the camera around to soak in the action. In one mission, we executed a torpedo attack at the same time German warplanes strafed and bombed the convoy, and the battle was cinematic at times. Antiaircraft cannons on the ships fired, flak bursts erupted in the sky, and dying planes plunged into the ocean trailing smoke. In terms of system requirements, it looks like you're going to need at least a 1.4GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, and a 64MB video card. And, as always, you'll probably want a more powerful machine to maintain high frame rates with all the eye candy turned on. Still, Silent Hunter III is looking very promising at this point, and it could very well be the next-generation submarine sim that sub fans have long been waiting for. We'll have to wait a bit longer, though, as the game is scheduled to ship this spring.