User Reviews (1 - 11 of 48)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Should have been released 2 years ago...and it shows.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 48 / 52
Date: November 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I've enjoyed sub simming since first playing "Sub Hunt" on my Intellivision and have bought practically every sub sim since. Needless to say, I've highly anticipated Silent Hunter 2's release since I first heard of it 2 years ago. (Honestly, it's been so long I can't remember exactly when it was first announced.) Release dates were pushed forward so many times I can only assume that the game had severe production and finance problems. Well, it's finally here and it seems obvious that the extra time taken in releasing the product was not spent on improving the program. I wanted so much to really love this game. I feel for the small teams of software developers that don't have the big $$$ that companies like Microsoft do and I like to support them in their efforts with my purchases - but this program lacks some key elements and took way to long to arrive.

The graphics, or lack thereof, betray the game's age. I was hoping for a look comparable to "Sea Dogs", but no such luck. The highest resolution the game supports is 800x600, and on a 17" monitor that just doesn't cut it. As mentioned in earlier reviews, the title screens are poorly done, as well. The sim does have wave and sky effects along with decent 3d models, but they just don't match up to the graphics of today's games. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are much better than the original Silent Hunter and there simply aren't any other WW2 submarine simulations on the market to compare, but after 2 years of waiting, I expected more.

Aside from the graphics, the game has two other GLARING flaws: no multiplayer available yet and no free-roving campaign. I guess the folks at Ubi soft figured we wouldn't need multiplayer yet, since their upcoming destroyer sim (meant to be played with Silent Hunter 2) won't be out for a couple of months. They're promising a patch, but this is still an obviously incomplete product. The game also comes with predisigned missions that can be edited, but I loved the option in previous sims to spend the whole war roaming freely around the ocean, looking for prey. The lack of this limits the sim big time, in my eyes.

On the positive side, the sim, itself, is acutally pretty good. I thought the overall AI was impressive and enemy destroyers were none to easy to evade. The sound room (something I hadn't seen in a sub sim before.) added an eerie touch of realism. For dedicated sub simmers, you'll find all the bells and whistles of earlier sims, including advanced realism settings to let you control as much or as little as you want. The waves and weather do add an extra layer of variability that has been lacking in sub sims until now. The subpar graphics also have a positive side as far as performance on lower-end machines is concerned and the game has been very stable on my computer, so far.

The bottom line is, beggars can't be choosers and, as Silent Hunter 2 is the only WW2 sub sim to come out in a LONG time, we sub lovers can't be too picky. I guess the market simply isn't out there to encourage companies to do a top-notch job on a submarine simulation, so SH2 will have to do.

Pre-orderer beware

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 38 / 44
Date: August 04, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game has been due out for two years, but has met with many delays during development. Also, I believe the software company producing it has been bought out (possibly twice) during the past two years. The current date may say Sept, but don't hold your breath. With due respect to Amazon, do not order this game until it has been released. Hopefully, the developers have used the extra time well and we'll have a really great game when it finally comes out. The 3D graphics are supposed to be excellent. Patience is a virtue.

Fun but with some drawbacks

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 26 / 27
Date: March 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've been waiting for a good sub sim realease for a long time. The sims I enjoyed the most have been long forgoten: Silent Service, Red Storm Rising, Aces of the Deep.

While SH2 is no match for any of the above titles, it is a decent substitute. The game play is fun, u-boat stations are done very well providing atmoshere of operating the boat, and the missions are quite interesting.

The game comes with a few drawbacks, however. The AI is to say the least quite peculiar. In the first mission, I successfully destroyed 2 of the 3 Polish destroyers (I scorred a direct hit on the 3rd one after the reload but the torpedo, my last one, was a dud). The 3rd destroyer attempted to locate me and started firing depth charges like it should. I was able to disengage and surface at a safe distance while maintaning a good fix on the contact. Here comes the sily part: the ship remained motionless for 2 days of game time while the German surface groups (having the Polish destroyers as primary target also) returned to the base without engaging the "sitting duck." Guess nobody wanted to read my contact reports. Latter in the game, I saw an enemy destroyers stopping next to a sinking ship while rest of the convoy moved on unescorted. This action definetely improved my score as the mission progressed.

The graphics are quite dated so don't expect any bells and whistles here. Scripted campaign is a major drawback providing no surprized when replaying any of the missions. Also, the end-mission screen is quite anti-climactic. A player is provided with dry mission statistics (excel style) and sent back to the office for mission replay or new mission brieffing. Personally, I prefer a nice animation of returning home or death at the bottom of the see followed by a de-brief maintaining some role-playing elements.

There are some technical bugs. I did not experienced any of the problems indicated by the XP users -- maybe I got lucky. I was able to run the game on both XP Pro and 2000 Pro. 2000 Pro has a minor intermitent screen flashing problem. I think it's a display driver compatibility issue but it does not interfere significantly with the gameplay. During the installation I encountered critical error informing me that a link to some .dll file could not be established. To my surprize, the installation proceeded and completed succesfully.

Over all, it is a decent product. I love the dud-torpedo feature (especially if this is my last torpedo). Similarly, the missions are well designed and provide a fair insight into submarine warfare WWII style -- to bad all of them are scripted. Finally, this game is a lot of fun to play and provides oportunity for long, sleepless nights of planning a stealthy approaches, firing torpedoes, diving away and counting second until the impact (hoping it won't be a dud this time) while pursuing destroyers lay depth-charges around your fragile iron coffin.

Unseaworthy

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 28 / 30
Date: March 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Ah...the WWII U-Boat; it instantly conjures up memories of classic movies such as Das Boot. Imagine the terror of a depth charge attack, the thrill of a successful torpedo attack, and the repugnant stench of forty-four sweating sailors stuck inside a steel cylinder no wider than a city bus...

Well there's none of that here. If Ultimation and Ubi Soft were aiming to create a highly realistic and enjoyable simulation of WWII submarine warfare, they missed. If they intended to create a poorly-coded, antiquated and historically inaccurate pile of unstable hacks, then congratulations. Without a doubt, this was one of the most disappointing games I have ever played, with glaring faults and bugs that should have easily caught by QA.

The graphics are mediocre at best, a fact made worse by SH2's maximum resolution of 800x600. Remember the famous storm scene in Das Boot? Well, in SH2, there are two types of weather: sunny and cloudy. There is no rain, no sleet, no spray in your face, nothing. To SH2's credit, the ship and aircraft models are nicely done, but the pyrotechnical effects are severely underwhelming. While the ship's control stations look decent, there is no control view room. Admitedly this is a quibbling point, but a control room would have made you feel as if you were inside a real U-boat, not just gazing at static displays.

Which wouldn't be so bad if those stations were actually USEFUL. Everything, navigation, rangefinding, attacking, it can all be done from the map view. This is rarely, if ever, any reason to visit the other stations. Particularly useless is the sound station, in which the game automatically marks down contacts, their bearing, and the type of vessel, so all you get to down is simply turn the dial and listen to the sounds of their engines. Speaking of sound, the game's audio is severely lacking. When I hit an oil tanker with a torpedo, I want it to sound as if I am bringing about the end of humanity itself, not a tinny, stock "boom" that I have heard in countless games before.

I have never captained a naval vessel in my life, but I am sure such a vocation includes concepts like "do not run into other ships" and "do not run into ground." Unfortunately, the AI of Silent Hunter 2 seems to have not taken notice of these basic martime rules. In one mission, I was tasked with sinking two British battlecruisers, so I quietly slid into their midst and unleased all my torpedoes against the lead battlecruiser. Shortly afterwards, the trailing battlecruisers gleefully rammed into the flaming hulk of the first battlecruiser, allowing me to pick it off with ease. The nearby destroyers would have been a threat to me had they NOT ALSO RAMMED EACH OTHER AND SUNK coming to attack me! Another time I avoided the H.M.S Ark Royal's destroyer escorts when they ran themselves aground on nearby islands. To add insult to injury, the beached vessels were sticking out of the ground at a 90 degree angle like giant lawn darts. While the AI can be monumentally stupid, it can also pinpoint your exact location 100 meters under the water WITHOUT THE AID OF SONAR and drop depth charges upon your hapless submarine with unerring accuracy.

With the possible exception of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000, this has to be one of the most poorly coded simulations I have experienced. While I was successful in running the game under Windows XP, I could rarely complete a mission without a crash to desktop. Other bugs are numerous; sometimes I would lay one waypoint on the map, and the game would lay down 100 waypoints right on top of each other. The pitch of the engines would often remain unchanged, even when I increased speed to flank from a near crawl. It is impossible to play through SH2 without wondering if the developers flunked all their computer science classes. For example, for reasons beyond my explanation, Silent Hunter 2 and vehicle viewer are two seperate programs, so to keep the user from (heaven forbid!) seeing his desktop when switching between the programs, the game actually has a "SH2 Screen Blanker" to blank your screen! Such inexplicable programming practices points to a lack of experience on the developer's part.

Even if the game were eventually patched up, I still could not recommend this game. Don't let the current dearth of submarine simulations part you from your hard-earned money. Go play a real WWII submarine sim, like the original Silent Hunter or Aces of the Deep.

really enjoy this game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 21 / 22
Date: December 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Well, have seen some poor review of this game here at Amazon. Find this unfortunate because this is really a good game. The graphics are wonderful, and don't understand the complaints about bugs. I did not have any until I upgraded to Windows XP, and then had a crash problem when switching views. However, the tech support at Ultimation sent me a patch and that cleared things right up. Other than that, no problem. There have also been those complaining about the lack of a Dynamic Campaign ala Silent Hunter I. To be truthful, I was also worried about that, however, my worries have gone away, there is more than enough to keep you busy the way the game is lined up. Other additions, such as manning the AA guns and shooting at Sutherlands is really exciting. The addition of the passive sonar is great. crusing along at 1/3 throttle in Scapa Flow looking to be a new Gunther Prien, hearing the waves slap the ship in the 3d rolling enviorment is absoultely great! Try this game if you are at all into World War Two or Subs in general, the folks at Ultimation did a really good job with this one.
Thanks,
william

A BIG Fan of the first...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 22 / 26
Date: June 23, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If this is as good as the first game, it will be terrific. I have been a big fan of submarines since a young age when I read "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". Many a Saturday, I will launch the game on my PC, go do some work around the house and come back when my crew signals there is an enemy contact.

However, if you do not like hearing the sound of the propellers of enemy destroying coming overhead as you are trying to dive deep enough to get under the coming depth charges, struggle to keep you depth when you forward compartments are flooding and you are low on battery power, hear the creeking of the hull when you are deeper than you should be to get under the enemy attack, sneak through shallows barely deep enough to submerge in while an enemy patrol is overhead as you head for a large naval base rich with targets, or put 7 or 8 torpedoes into the Yamato sending her down and then having to run and evade like hell while her 10 or so escorts are after you in anger for what you have done, I guess you will be bored.

Not prefect, but still entertaining.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: December 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you like subsims or the WWII naval genre, you'll probably find several points about this game that you'll like, and a few that you don't. For the most part, I found this game was worth the purchase for the entertainment value. The scenarios were historically accurate, thorough in command and control complexities, and challenging in terms of developing an attack strategy and successfully pulling off disengagement and escape. The menu pages were simple and stylishly rendered in German art-decco propaganda. The sound effects were pretty good, as well.

The graphics were reasonably good, but you can definately tell that this is a game that has been in a time capsule for two years or more. If this game is the only thing you've been looking forward to for a while, you may be a little disappointed. I was hoping for more interesting land and ocean bottom features, which make the game more fully realistic. To its credit, I thought the deck officer propulsion and steering controls, as well as the conning perspectives, were the best I've seen in just about any WWII+ naval sim. Adding a better near-shore piloting and docking element to the already cool anti-aircraft and surface action opportunities would have been real icing for this cake. We'll have to wait and see what "Destroyer Command" comes up with. A reliable saving option for exiting a mission was lacking as was the time compression feature a little tedious at times. Having spent plenty of time staring at the water while in transit to points over the horizon in real life, I found doing it in near realtime on the computer really isn't any more fun.

If you have an older machine then you shouldn't have many problems running SH2. The simple graphics makes the game pretty stable, though I did experience the "XP" glitch (blanker screen shutdown after switching to the DC view) but understand there is a patch available to remedy it. Still, given few other choices in this very interesting game genre, SH2 is good fun and is worth owning.

Change masquerading as progress

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 13
Date: November 26, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you fell in love with the original Silent Hunter you will be very disappointed with this version.

Controls are clumsy.
Want the periscope up? Click on the up lever and HOLD THE MOUSE BUTTON DOWN until the scope is where you want it!!

It takes 20+ seconds to sweep the periscope 360 degrees. Time compression does automatically slow to 1x in dangerous situations but usually keeps ticking at the faster speed just long enough to get you into trouble.

If you choose to use the mouse for viewing you will constantly be picking up the mouse and stroking the pad to get a fast traverse.

Also, if you enable mouse panning, you will also get mouse elevation control by default and you end up looking at the sky or the ocean unless you move slowly and carefully. Also the mouse elevation control has no provisions for reversing the default input (whether moving the mouse forward looks up or looks down)

I found the graphics to be a disappointment. The manual stresses repeatedly what the minimum requirements are for full enjoyment of the experience. My system far exceeds their requirements. I don't believe the game would even had made use of all the capabilities of my old computer.

Might as well say: "This game plays best on a Cray computer with 3400 gB of RAM and a 152 inch monitor" Well, yea. I would suppose so, but it wouldn't look any better.

There are other quirks but I tired of playing this game so quickly that I leave it to you to find them on your own.

If you have seen your other favorites get trashed when re-issued you will know what to expect with this one.

This game reminds me of how GOD Games screwed up tracklaying in their release of RR Tycoon II.

Hey guys, there's a torpedo camera Mode!! I remember that. Wasn't it declassified in 1944? Intense realism?

Wow! You can watch a ship hit the bottom when it sinks. Again. So what?

Attention SSI, Ultimation and UBI Soft. I will no longer be the fool who's first to buy your new releases and I definitely will not waste my time pre-ordering your titles and anticipating their arrival only to be unhappy with the result. I especially will not get suckered into buying a title just because it had a II, III or MCMXXLII stuck on the end of the name.

Destroyer command will have to fall in my lap before I bother playing it.

Lucky for me a friend who loves SH-I had purchased a copy of SH-II. He said not to buy it and mailed me his for free. Now I know why. And I'm giving it back.

Pretty Good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 17
Date: December 16, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Silent Hunter 2 is an excellent sequel to Silent Hunter. It doesn't have that polish-perfect design of the original one, but it's still great. Before you buy this game, note the you will be the GERMANS. Many people haven't bought this game becasue of what the Germans did in WWII. But, the war is over, and it is just a game. This is a game for submarine fanatics who like stalking their prey and finding the perfect moment to strike. An average summary of a mission would be leaving port, steaming out to see and proceeding to the convoy you've been assigned to attack. When the perfect moment comes, unleash your torps, and run for it. The destroyers will start depth-bombing in all the wrong places as you watch through your periscope the ship you have just hit sinking. Then, evading aircraft and maybe firing your main guns at a destroyer, you head back for port. Sound like fun? You won't be bored. However, note that you may have to play many missions over and over again.

Overrated

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 17
Date: July 30, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Ubisoft boasts about how realistic Silent Hunter II is, balony! Silent Service II, which was released in the early '90s is much more so.
Having to meet requirements on a submarine patrol? It was'nt uncommon for a submarine to spend weeks on patrol and never sight an enemy ship. you searched until you found something and even then you wer'nt guarenteed a kill. You'd just as likely as not come home empty handed. If SH2 was "realistic" this would/could be the case. And how do you start a patrol out in midocean with full fuel tanks?

How is it that thermal layers dont reflect active sonar in SH2? That was/is why submariners look for thermal layers. Without them you hav'nt got a chance to evade detection/attack, which is denied you in SH2. How about single destroyers that dump hundreds of depth charges on you when no destroyer class even carried as many as 100 of them?

I could write a book on the gross inaccuracies/unrealism of this game but this I'm sure, will do. Just so you know that I have a good idea of what I'm talking about my uncle was a submariner in WWII.

The graphics and playabilty are the only redeeming features in the game.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 Next 

Actions