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Silent Hunter III (DVD-ROM) | 
| From: Ubisoft
Category: Video Games
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $6.60
as of 9/6/2010 01:15 CDT details
You Save: $13.39 (67%)
New (11) Used (17) from $4.93
Seller: NYC Electronics
Rating:  93 reviews
Sales Rank: 4279
Format: DVD-ROM
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP
Genre: action-game-genre
ESRB: Teen
Media: CD-ROM
Number Of Items: 1
Batteries Included: No
Age: 12 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows 2000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.5 x 1.5
Memory Card
MPN: 005535-CVR
UPC: 008888681953
EAN: 3307210220028
ASIN: B00023XXN6
Release Date: March 15, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Features:
| • | Submarine warfare simulator | | • | Command a sub crew on patrols and consider their morale and fatigue when making decisions | | • | Historically accurate subs, ships, and aircraft | | • | 3-D interface and simplified learning curve make the game more accessible to all skill levels | | • | Online cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 93
 A wonderfully immersive game March 29, 2005
A Reader (CA, United States)
212 out of 221 found this review helpful
'Silent Hunter III' is simply the best WW2 sub sim yet. 'Silent Hunter III' covers German U-Boat operations in the Atlantic from 1939 until the end of the war. There are more than a dozen individual scenarios as well as a dynamic campaign where you can pick the starting year and theatre of operations. The game is on DVD (not sure if there is a CD version or not). It says this online and on the box but DVD games are rare so you may not even notice. So if you don't have a DVD drive you may be out of luck. Also the game takes 2.5GB of disk space so be sure you have the room.
The game comes with a nice campaign map as well as a full-color keyboard guide. The small instruction manual is excellent for explaining the basics but completely lacks information on more advanced features or operational matters (like what is the ideal firing distance for the various torpedoes, etc). The game also includes a number of well done video tutorials that will teach you the basic functions quickly. After you've watched these you can delete the files from your hard drive and reclaim about 500MB of space. Unfortunately, again, there are no tutorials on more advanced features or operations/tactics of the boat. Realism settings let the real sim diehards turn off external cameras and other aides. In general these are just too much fun to watch even if they are not realistic.
Overall the graphics and sound are excellent. There are 3D views of many of the sub stations. You can freely rotate and look around at these stations but you can only jump from spot to spot not actually move through the sub like you would with a FPS game. There does seem to be a few issues with nVidia graphics cards (at least) where looking through the deck scope and binoculars causes major video slow downs through sea spray and fog. This is not a major problem because you can jump stations with keys and do the same functions from the periscopes but it would be nice to have the issues fixed. Sitting on the bridge and watching the waves, weather, sunsets, etc. is simply gorgeous and adds tremendously to the immersion level of the game. The various 3D crew members are rendered well but are stiff and have no facial emotions and little movement. One small quibble is that crewmen's beards don't grow over time nor do they don different attire for rainy/snowy days. Ship and aircraft models and explosions are very well done. Ships sink and aircraft crash in various ways commensurate with the way they were sunk/hit. In addition to your boat views there are torpedo/target cameras and even a free view where you can fly around and look at whatever you want. Again, not realistic but great fun and with the great graphics it enhances the experience considerably. Such view options are also of great use while learning the game and proper boat handling.
You move about your boat either in the 3D mode or simply hitting keys to take you from spot to spot. You can run all the major stations yourself (radio, sonar, periscopes, deck guns, navigation, weapons plot) or let your crew handle them and just give orders. Crew management is a major task and you can freely assign crewmen to the various positions (and the crew accrue experience and you can give them awards, promotions, and additional ratings between campaign missions). Unfortunately crew management is also one of the confusing areas of the game. Some crew seem to tire very quickly whereas others will go for days. It would be nice if the computer handled crew rotations and let you intervene only when necessary. It is also not explained what the various crew ratings do for you. For example, is a torpedoman good just for reloading torpedoes or useful as a weapons office as well or both? You don't know. Also confusing is the orders interface. You can click on various hotlinks or officers to access various game/ship functions. This works well for the most part but the problem is that functions that are not supported by your current boat still show up. Thus on the early boats you will try to do things such as radar sweeps, etc that you can't do. To make matters worse the interface doesn't say the function isn't available it just doesn't do anything (or sometimes even tells you someting misleading). It would be nice if these options changed appropriately from boat to boat.
Individual scenarios (missions) usually begin right at the moment the action is going to start. Campaign missions start in port. For campaign missions you'll need to navigate to your assigned zone and patrol for 24 hours. After that you are free to do what you want (within the limits of your fuel and ammo). This has some advantages but isn't the most interesting way to run the campaigns either. Time compression up to 1,024 times real-time is available so you can move through the outbound and returning cruise portions quickly. The game automatically goes to 8x speed upon contact (I wish it would just go to real-time). It also doesn't seem to let you do anything silly like run into an island with time compression on, which is nice.
You can man any of the major stations on the sub (radio, sonar, periscopes, deck guns, navigation, weapons plotting) or let your crew do the work and just get reports. For best results you'll need to take some direct command on certain occasions. You have free reign to run the sub as you wish within realistic limits. The only complaint with gameplay is you actually have to know how a U-Boat works to play the game well. For example early torpedoes need to hit targets at close to 90 degrees to explode (mostly), etc. When spotting targets with the periscopes how do you use the stad lines to determine range, etc.? It is in areas such as these that the game does a poor job of explaining. But those who know their U-Boats, or take the time to learn through trial and error, will have their knowledge/time rewarded with some rich gaming experiences.
Missions (especially campaign missions) are overall slow affairs. The shortest is probably around one and a half hours and you can easily find three or four hours going by. Even with time compression there is considerable patience required to arrive on station, find targets, properly stalk your prey, attack, and most importantly, successfully evade attack. You'll also find yourself doing some of your own sonar work for best results. Often times you can spend hours on a mission without firing a shot or, worse, spend the time setting up a shot only to miss or have a dud torpedo. But this is what being a U-Boat commander was all about. If this sort of thing fits your temperament you will find 'Silent Hunter III' an extremely enjoyable game. The game does a wonderful job of letting you run the boat and feel like a real U-Boat captain with all of the highs and lows that position experienced.
The computer AI seems to be well done. Merchant ships will start to zigzag if they spot you. Escort ships will attack intelligently and even coordinate attacks. Your computer-run shipmates range from acceptable to poor. It is hard to tell if this is an AI problem or a result of their inexperience or lack of a rating. This is one area where the game could use some better explanation. If a close enemy contact shows up on the plot table why can't my sonarman hear it? Also, when spotting targets through the periscope, the target ship can be identified for you but the nationality is not listed. So if you don't know that a Type 45 Destroyer is German you'll be committing some fratricide. There is a great ID book available in-game organized by nationality but you'd have to flip through the half-dozen nations manually to find the target type. Most ships fly national flags but you have to be pretty close to see them even through the scope. If you are showing plots on the map table the indicators there do seem to show friendly, neutral, or hostile.
Overall 'Silent Hunter III' is a very well done game with a few rough edges that will hopefully get fixed in follow-up patches. It will definitely be worth your time to know your U-Boat history or do some reading to get the best results from the game as well allow you to appreciate what the game does provide. If you've always wanted to command a U-Boat 'Silent Hunter III' is a must get.
There are a ton of great books about U-Boats and their crews. I'd also recommend 'The U Boat Commanders Handbook' by The High Command of the German Navy, High Command of the German Army, Kriegsmarine, Wehrmacht, which is a reprint of the actual 1943 U-Boat handbook.
new generation graphics, physics, gameplay WOOOHOOO March 20, 2005
ocean enthusiast (CA United States)
107 out of 114 found this review helpful
if you have an inkling at all to try a submarine (or naval combat sim), this is for you. the graphics are insane. the movement of the water and ocean is very well modeled, you really feel like you're in a sub, pitching and rolling in the atlantic. the ocean conditions also vary, stormy weather (and in some cases rain and lightning), will make the ocean stomier, and the waves get bigger. i've never seen the ocean modeled this well in a game before -- awesome. makes the waves in far cry look like kiddy stuff.
the full day is simulated, that is the dawn gradually turns to day, then dusk, then night. beautiful.
I am very impressed with the AI. destroyers, if they detect you, will cooperate with each other, form search parties, and search for you, dropping depth charges, and calling in air support. all kinds of different planes buzz around trying to spot you, dropping charges.
damage on ships is awesome. with the deck gun you can shoot cargo off ships, destroy masts, etc etc. the effects of hitting a ship with topedos and sinking it are also very good, everytime you sink a ship it goes down differently, a reflection of how you happened to detroy it. high particle explosions, water spray, yeah baby....no repetition here.
there's also enough sohpistication built into the game of eluding destroyers and other warships (keeping your sub quiet and keeping the profile of your sub in a way so that they can't ping you) that make for some nerve-racking warfare and help the replay value.
again, if you have any inkling for a naval warfare sim, i'd recommend this one highly, it's very immersive. perhaps too immersive...wait for the weekend to get this one, it kept me up late 2 nights in a row.
i have a pretty high spec PC and the sim flies, but my only words of caution here is make sure your PC is a fairly powerful gaming system. probably doesnt need to be top of the line, but i'd imagine it would have to be in the upper third for best results. it's not going to run very well on your 4-year old dinosaur, thats for sure.
Silent Hunter 3 September 7, 2005
Stresstank (Santa Rosa, CA)
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
Silent Hunter 3 arrived about a week ago and I am totally hooked! This has got to be the most engaging simulation I've played. Though it lacks the high action of combat flight, I cannot overstate the joy one feels at stalking, lining up and sinking allied ships. Yesterday on the way to patrol. off the coast of Ireland, we spotted a British destroyer, approached it at periscope depth with electric engines running at slow speed, got within a 800 meters at 90 degrees (torpedoes were unreliable and less likely to detonate if hitting the hull from an oblique angle), and sank it with a perfect firing solution. I can't communicate how giddy that makes you feel. Continuing the patrol I sent five merchants to the bottom.
The level of simulation is scalable, and I'm only playing at around 50%. If you want to go all the way, you have to manually identify ships, calculate distance, course and speed, then do the trigonometry for the firing solution. Presently, I leave all that to the weapons officer and focus on approaching the target undetected. At full realism, you don't get to use the external cameras, and can only experience the action from within the boat itself. Not quite ready for that myself.
If you fail to sink warships, they start to hunt you persistently and methodically, which can get very tense indeed. I've done ten patrols and it's still May 1940. The allies will get their act together as the war progresses and survival will become increasingly difficult.
The sea, weather and ships are beautifully rendered, and the realistic looking damage from torpedo impacts is immensely satisfying. It is fairly time consuming to learn, and I spent probably about 8 hours in the games `naval academy'. When on patrol you also have to manage crew rotations, and there are numerous ramifications regarding the effective manning of the ships stations. If you are successful, you can recruit skilled sailors, and as technology improves, upgrade the U-boat types and armaments. I think I'll be at this game for months, if not years.
The Best Subsim Ever! March 28, 2005
UBootMann (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
The most anticipated submarine simulator is now on patrol hunting for fat convoys. The immersion level will have you peering at your monitor rocking slowly back and forth as you search for that merchant contact on the horizon while your U-boat rides the stormy seas. This sim has kept me up till the wee hours conducting surface gun attacks and torpedo salvoes. This is one of the best naval sims. And it's hard! No fps unlimited ammo stuff here, real navigation, real torpedo set-ups, this game makes you use your head not just your thumbs.
So if you are into sims this is one of the best if not the best ever. For all you one-star reviewers, gimme a break, starforce schmarforce. This game runs fine on my machine no crashes,nothin' runs fabulous. Nothing I've ever played has been so much fun. But it is no wimpy game, very realistic as sim should be. So if you are up for a challenge Silent Hunter III is the sim to get. And Silent Hunter IV is in the works, hopefully it will be the Pacific so we can lay off Surabaya hunting fat tankers or the emperor's aircraft carriers in the Phillipine Sea.
Now if you'll excuse me I'm in shallow water off the Firth of Forth trying to evade Winston Chuchill's anti-submarine forces after sinking 12,000 tons of merchant shipping and dodging air attacks. ALLAAAARRRMMMMM........
Do not install Game Shadow if you play World of Warcraft May 23, 2005
DB (Burlington, VT)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Just got this game a few days ago and love it. Play it with the lights off and in a quiet room and you will get a sense of being there, sort of the same feeling you get when you watch Das Boot. I have played sub sims for more than 20 years starting with Silent Service on the C64, which is still one of the best sub sims, despite being more than 20 years old. Silent Hunter III is easily the best sub sim ever.
One problem, do not install Game Shadow if you play World of Warcraft. After getting Silent Hunter III and installing it along with Game Shadow, I was constantly getting disconnected from World of Warcraft. Since I had done nothing else to my PC and Blizzard had fixed many of their problems 2 months ago I knew it had something to do with Game Shadow.
I am a little disappointed with Ubisoft, that they would put out something like Game Shadow that not only causes other problems than I have mentioned, but it is not a free service. Otherwise I have a lot of respect for Ubisoft because they put out complete games and don't withold content for expansion packs, unlike other companies(Microsoft and EA). And when Ubisoft did put out an expansion pack it was like getting a whole new game. I hope this is not a sign of things to come from Ubisoft. I can't help but wonder if this is not connected to the 25% of stock in Ubisoft that EA purchased. I do know that Ubisoft was trying to keep EA from getting more stock and were trying to buy back the stock that EA purchased, maybe they were trying to generate additional money to buy back the stock.
(edited on June 26th 2006)
Do Not Buy!! Has Starforce which damaged my DVD drive! Ubisoft, please come out with a Starforce-free version.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 93
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