Silent Service II war game

Silent Service II (1990)

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First Silent Service wasn’t a greatest game if you consider the graphic side, sounds were not that great either, but the basic concept of the game was brilliant and set the standard for future productions - the whole submarine was split into just few screens (bridge, gauges, map, periscope, etc) in a way that you had the feeling of being aboard the ship. The simplicity of that solution gave the standards for such later titles as Silent Hunter.

No wonder Silent Service II was more or less the same as the first one - it is not easy to improve something that turned out to be the perfect solution for the simulator. While the hardware have improved between Silent Service and Silent Service II: we no longer had to guess what kind of ship we are looking at - instead of simple big pixels presenting the vessels in second version graphic objects were used representing the ships from different angles. On first glance it was a vast improvement, but with time and experience it proved to be only a slight step forward - the images used were still a bit oversimplified, so sometimes it was really tricky to guess if the vessel you are looking at is actually coming at you or moving away due to low details level. In some of the angles it was hard to determine what kind of ship is the target, not to mention it was sometimes annoying when the enemy ship was switching between different angles in a matter of seconds and you were not sure if it was turning or was it difference caused by a movement of your boat and the target.

Another improvement was the career option - while in first one we could take part in war patrols, in Silent Service II the patrols were linked together to create a chain of patrols. This way after completing one patrol you could have start another with the same boat or could be assigned to a new submarine. Also during patrols when we stumbled upon enemy units we were given the status page with details of the contact as well as the weather conditions before we made the decision if we want to approach the enemy or avoid further contact.

Overall Silent Service II was improved comparing to the first one, but at the same time it seemed to have lost a bits of its identity - the atmosphere was different, the game engine was different, some of the things seemed to be too simple even though it looked much better.

Silent Service II videos