Silent Hunter II war game

Silent Hunter II (2001)

Categories: naval simulatorssubmarine simulators

Second game from Silent Hunter series simulated the German U-boat operating on North Sea, Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea during World War 2.

It was designed with multiplayer mode, where Silent Hunter II as submarine simulation could have been linked with separate Destroyer Command game as simulation of escort destroyers. Unfortunately this meant that what was offered for single player was rather poor - there was career option and single missions, but the career mode, unlike previous and following games, did not give the opportunity to choose patrols nor concentrate on hunting the targets. Nope, there were only missions with strict targets and goals to achieve during them, without reaching all of the criteria it was impossible to move to next mission and thus continue the career.

In multiplayer mode it was possible to link up two Silent Hunter II games or link up with Destroyer Command game, which was very interesting option, but still it was only addition to games that did not actually became that big hits.

The graphic side of the game was slightly improved, the options available were slightly improved, but overall the game was a bit disappointing. Some of the missions were interesting - imagine being in English Channel during D-Day - but the lack of freedom in choosing targets and goals of the patrol with time were very annoying. For example your patrol area was west of Scotland, but your goal was to sink a specific tonnage of the ships or to intercept specific convoy when you could find more interesting targets elsewhere. Also one of the flaws was insanely powerful and accurate gun on the U-Boat - you could sink even destroyers from long range before even getting hit by their guns (sometimes before even getting within range of their guns).

Silent Hunter II was step into interesing direction, but it was not that big step in right direction - in Silent Hunter III and IV the idea of that specific goals was dropped and freedom of patrols was more or less restored.