Days spent crossing the Pacific (albeit only minutes on 8000x time compression) really feels like the odyssey it really was the thrill of entering enemy waters and spotting your first contact really get the blood going. Fortunately for you and us, itвЂ™s one thing that SH4 has in spades. In our opinion, itвЂ™s the factor that makes or breaks a simulation. Suspension of disbelief that state where you forget where you really are, and youвЂ™re dragged into a different world. ItвЂ™s touches like these that really put you there, in the hot seat of a submarine thousands of kilometres from home in direct and deadly contact with the enemy. For instance, shadowing a convoy and then sneaking away and surfacing the boat to send a contact report may result in being told to eschew the merchants in favour of the escorts, in order to give other boats a turkey shoot at the hapless merchants. These missions really make you feel part of an overall war effort, not just a lone Rambo out to win the war single-handedly. Contact with COMSUBPAC (your headquarters) is actually interactive and may influence how patrols play out. One patrol might have you hunting for shipping in a particular location, but others will have you covertly inserting special agents behind enemy lines, performing the role of lifeguard and retrieving downed airmen, to sneaking into harbours at the heart of the enemyвЂ™s war machine to snap a few pictures of ships in port. Unlike SH3, though, the dynamic engine isnвЂ™t expected to provide all the action for the player far from the вЂњpatrol grid reference XвЂќ missions and lack of interactiveness prevalent in the last game, SH4 has a variety of unique missions which are assigned to the player. Upon leaving port, you are given an objective and pretty much left to wage war in the Pacific as you see fit - in a dynamic, immersive and persistent universe. You perform the role of virtual skipper of one of a plethora of different realistically modelled US submarines. From sunny days with crystal clear water common in the south Pacific, to the frigid waters and frequent typhoons that are native to the north of Japan, SH4 has it all down perfectly.ДЇor anyone familiar with Silent Hunter 3, SH4 will immediately seem very familiar the essence of the game is unchanged.

SH4 conveys the feeling of the Pacific theatre just as well as SH3 captured the feel of the Atlantic. Fortunately, the change in setting works. Given the intended market for this type of simulation, one can only assume that this is a very shrewd move from Ubisoft. Unlike the previous iteration in the Silent Hunter franchise, the universally acclaimed Silent Hunter 3, 4 moves the action from German U-Boats in the Atlantic to US submarines in the Pacific. Silent Hunter 4 is, in many ways, a game from a different time. Long before introspection, rivet counting and ever-tightening budgets forced simulations from the metaphorical radar, simulations like SH4 were a common sight immersive, engaging, and unafraid to assume their audience was endowed with a modicum of both intelligence and patience. Not just back to the days of 1942-45, but to the halcyon days of the late 80s to the early 90s, when simulation gaming was king for PC.

ItвЂ™s a crying shame, because Silent Hunter 4 is, in effect, a time machine. ThereвЂ™s so much to like about Silent Hunter 4 that flaws which, in a mediocre game could easily be ignored, have their intensity magnified precisely simply because they contrast so much with the brilliance that is the rest of the game. Brilliant and broken вЂ“ possibly the two best words to describe the unpolished gem that is Silent Hunter 4.

Silent hunter 3 review