Silent Hunter 3 Review

Overall Rating

-Quality graphics
-Quality realism
-Some elements of micromanagement (adding equipment to your Submarine for a cost of reknown
-Interior view of the submarine with officers and workers

-Gameplay can be annoying if you cannot find the merchants
-Can become repetitive
-Needs good computer specifications

Well, Silent Hunter 3 is quite simply (at the moment) one of a kind.
As usual with the manufacturer (Ubisoft), they have considered all abilities with this game, from those of us, such as myself, who have never commanded a sub and do not know the maths and formula, to the hardcore gamers who know exactly what to do and want to play the game in real time.

For amateurs, the most important aspect is the play as your taught tutorial. The game will give you objectives (and a video tutorial if you choose to watch it, by clicking on "view tutorial") and you must complete these objectives. The game will give you a grade and if it's satisfactory enough for all of the exams, a boost of reknown will occur when you start a campaign, so this is quite good motivation to actually complete the "Naval academy" or training to the simple minded.

After completing the recommended tutorials, the player can choose between pre-set single missions or go for the Dynamic Campaign.

The dynamic campaign starts, as usual, by requesting your players name, then you move on to choosing the start year (anything from 1939, September the 1st, to 1943) and which flotilla or "company" you'll serve for. This affects which grid patrol space the player will patrol and which Submarines will be available, so read the background information before finally confirming which flotilla you, the player, will serve with.

The player is then taken to the captains office, where he/she'll have options such as video and sound (which includes changing the voices into German for more realism with English subtitles) and then the options such as enlisting sailors, petty officers and Officers before finally making any additions to your Sub and then clicking the map to check the realism settings before finally loading the mission

Once it has loaded up, the player has the task of navigating out of the docks and any channels and then sailing to the grid space to patrol, however the open endness of the game means you could patrol some where else, provided your fuel doesn't run out before returning to the grid space and patrolling for 24 hours and then return to base.

The player will most likely soon find how difficult finding merchants is in both the early days and near the end.

You may also discover the atmosphere when you are detected by a warship and fired out, such questions as "should I dive to emergency death to avoid detection, or should I try to fire back at the warship?"

It is very gripping for a while, but you may find an hour is easily enough for one day unless you are skilled at finding merchants.

Finally the last point is, unless your computer is great by the system specs:

"1.5Ghz minimum
512mb of RAM minimum
64mb memory card (3D)
Direct X 9 or higher (included on the Game)
4X DVD-ROM drive
Direct X sound card compliant
2 GB hard disk
Keyboard/Mouse

then you just isn't going to be able to run this classic properly. It is very annoying. What's worse is that Geforce MX cards wont run this game either (as I found to my annoyance) as the graphics cards need Pixel shading.

So to conclude,
A classic, would recommend considering it, and possible buying SH3. Value for money.