Silent Hunter
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A World War II submarine combat simulation for DOS, developed by Aeon Electronic Entertainment and published by Strategic Simulation Inc. in 1996. The game takes place in the Pacific War, the player commanding a submarine of United States Navy. Most contemporary US submarines and Japanese warships are featured along with some generic merchants. Silent Hunter has received high appraisal from subsim aficionados and is considered to be the best Pacific War subsim.
A single encounter generator is available, but the standard mode of play is the career mode, where the player must take his boat to patrol far behind enemy lines with the mission to search for and destroy any enemy shipping. For best success, the player should concentrate his search on shipping lanes, which may be deducted from contact reports. The boat is actually commanded by manning various stations in first person (no crew is visible, even though their voices are heard), which is usual in the genre.
The game models many characteristics of the warfare, such as the faulty Mark 14 torpedo and anti-submarine warfare tactics used by Imperial Japanese Navy. However, wolf pack tactics are not available, even though US Navy did use them to some extent.
SVGA mode is used, but the graphics are in 2D, which was old-fashioned by the time of the release. However, the game (rather exceptionally) models spherical Earth by having visibility be limited by the horizon.
The game was re-released in 1997 under the title Silent Hunter: Commander's Edition, which had the original release with all official patches applied, some additional patrol zones and a scenario editor.
No multiplayer modes are available, but because the game-play is based on randomness inside certain patterns, it inspired an off-line Internet campaign Pacific Thunder [1] (http://www.subsowespac.org/).
See also
- Silent Service older Pacific War subsim
- Silent Hunter II sequel released in 2001
- Silent Hunter III sequel released in 2005
- Silent Hunter IV sequel to be released in 2006
External links
- http://www.subsowespac.org/ Pacific Thunder off-line campaign played on Silent Hunter
- http://www.subsim.com/ Sumsim review, one of the largest submarine simulator community sites