''Silent Hunter II'' is a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

U-boat U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role ...

combat simulation published by

Ubi Soft Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include ''Assassin's Creed'', ''Far Cry (serie ...

for

PCs A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or techn ...

with

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...

/ 98/ ME.

Gameplay

''Silent Hunter II'' gives the player the command of a German

during the Second Battle of the Atlantic. The game offers single-player and

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

missions. In addition to some separate single-player missions, they also come as a string in the theme of "U-boat highlights", allowing the player to re-experience such well-known adventures as sinking as , retrieving the war diary from the and

Operation Drumbeat The "Second Happy Time" (; officially Operation Paukenschlag ("Operation Drumbeat"), and also known among German submarine commanders as the "American Shooting Season") was a phase in the Battle of the Atlantic during which Axis powers, Axis s ...

against

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

shipping Freight transport, also referred as ''Freight Forwarding'', is the physical process of transporting Commodity, commodities and merchandise goods and cargo. The term shipping originally referred to transport by sea but in American English, it h ...

. German

veteran and sub commander

Erich Topp Erich Topp (2 July 1914 – 26 December 2005) was a German U-boat commander of World War II. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords of Nazi Germany. He sank 35 ships for a total of . After the war, h ...

was one of the game's technical advisers, and a series of interviews with him appears in the game. Silent Hunter II was developed with multi-player support as a notable feature. Players were able to connect with other Silent Hunter II players, and engage in sub vs. sub combat. Furthermore, connectivity to the separate game Destroyer Command (also released by

Ubisoft Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include '' Assassin's Creed'', ''Far Cry'', '' ...

) was available, which enabled sub and surface ship combat.

History

''Silent Hunter II'' was originally being developed by Aeon Electronic Entertainment, the developers of '' Silent Hunter'', but they had to leave the project unfinished, and Ultimation Inc. finished it. After considerable delays it was released in November 2001 after three years of work. After release, instability with the multiplayer feature was found to be commonplace, yet Ubisoft never resolved this issue by releasing another official

patch Patch or Patches may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Patch Johnson, a fictional character from ''Days of Our Lives'' * Patch (''My Little Pony''), a toy * "Patches" (Dickey Lee song), 1962 * "Patches" (Chairmen of the Board song) ...

. While in 2002 Ubisoft had ended the official support, they authorized and enabled the game's community at

Subsim SUBSIM is an online publication founded by Neal Stevens in Jan. 1997 that focuses on naval and submarine computer game reviews, articles, and news. Subsim is short for Submarine simulator. Subsim's forums have been online since 1999, with archives ...

.com to fix the game themselves by giving them the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

. The fan community raised over $7000 for an

unofficial patch An unofficial patch is a patch for a piece of software, created by a third party such as a user community without the involvement of the original developer. Similar to an ordinary patch, it alleviates bugs or shortcomings. Unofficial patches do no ...

development project called ''Projekt Messerwetzer'' which ultimately fixed the issues. Since then, unofficial

expansion pack An expansion pack, expansion set, supplement, or simply expansion is an addition to an existing role-playing game, tabletop game, video game or collectible card game. These add-ons usually add new game areas, weapons, objects, characters, or an ...

s like the World War II Pacific war theatre-based total conversation "Pacific Aces" were released by community. In June 2009, after many years of commercial non-availability, the game got re-released on the digital distributor

gog.com GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt based in Warsaw, Poland. GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through its ...

Reception

''Silent Hunter II'' received "average" reviews according to video game

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

. A

review rated Silent Hunter II 80/100 in 2005 and named it ''"the new WWII subsim benchmark"''.review silent hunter ii
on

subsim SUBSIM is an online publication founded by Neal Stevens in Jan. 1997 that focuses on naval and submarine computer game reviews, articles, and news. Subsim is short for Submarine simulator. Subsim's forums have been online since 1999, with archives ...

.com (June 1, 2005, archived)

References

External links

Official website
*

An authorized community upgrade for ''Silent Hunter II'' and ''Destroyer Command'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Silent Hunter II 2001 video games Multiplayer and single-player video games Naval video games Strategic Simulations games Submarine simulation video games Ubisoft games Video games developed in the United States Video games scored by Kevin Manthei Windows games Windows-only games World War II video games

Gameplay

History

Reception

See also

References

External links