''Silent Hunter II'' is a 2001

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

U-boat U-boats are Submarine#Military, naval submarines operated by Germany, including during the World War I, First and Second World Wars. The term is an Anglicization#Loanwords, anglicized form of the German word , a shortening of (), though the G ...

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 ''Anno (video game series), Anno'', ' ...

for PCs with

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

/ 98/ ME.

Gameplay

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

s during the

Battle of the Atlantic The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allies of World War II, ...

. The game offers single-player missions 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 ...

gameplay. The single-missions include sinking HMS ''Laurentic'' and HMS ''Patroclus'' as , avoiding being sunk by as , sinking as ,

Operation Drumbeat The Second Happy Time (; officially (), and also known among German submarine commanders as the "American Shooting Season") was a phase in the Battle of the Atlantic during which Axis submarines attacked merchant shipping and Allied naval v ...

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, p ...

shipping Freight transport, also referred to as freight forwarding, is the physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo. The term shipping originally referred to transport by sea but in American English, it has been ...

, retrieving the war diary from the , the action in Tarrafal Bay, saving the German supply ship ''Python'' from ' and attacking a task force as as the last act of the Battle of the Atlantic. The campaign, which has the player being sent notes from

Admiral Dönitz Admiral is one of the highest ranks in many navies. In the Commonwealth nations and the United States, a "full" admiral is equivalent to a "full" general in the army or the air force. Admiral is ranked above vice admiral and below admiral of th ...

, spans 21 missions from the start of the war in 1939 to the end of the war in 1945. It includes attacking fleeing Polish navy destroyers during the

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...

, hunting British shipping off the English coast, penetration into

Scapa Flow Scapa Flow (; ) is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray,S. C. George, ''Jutland to Junkyard'', 1973. South Ronaldsay and Hoy. Its sheltered waters have played an impor ...

, assisting in the invasion of Norway,

Blitzkrieg ''Blitzkrieg'(Lightning/Flash Warfare)'' is a word used to describe a combined arms surprise attack, using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armored and motorized or mechanized infantry formations, together with ...

and

Dunkirk evacuation The Dunkirk evacuation, codenamed Operation Dynamo and also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, or just Dunkirk, was the evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied soldiers during the Second World War from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, in the ...

(" Dunkirk little ship" '' Sundowner'' appears in this mission), then battling in the North Atlantic, before passing through the

Strait of Gibraltar The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Europe from Africa. The two continents are separated by 7.7 nautical miles (14.2 kilometers, 8.9 miles) at its narrowest point. Fe ...

La Spezia La Spezia (, or ; ; , in the local ) is the capital city of the province of La Spezia and is located at the head of the Gulf of La Spezia in the southern part of the Liguria region of Italy. La Spezia is the second-largest city in the Liguria ...

, severing the British lifeline to Malta, Operation Drumbeat, attacking in the Caribbean, attacking

Arctic convoys The Arctic convoys of World War II were oceangoing convoys which sailed from the United Kingdom, Iceland, and North America to northern ports in the Soviet Union – primarily Arkhangelsk (Archangel) and Murmansk in Russia. There were 78 convoys ...

, to the Allies ultimately gaining the upper hand in the

Mid-Atlantic gap The Mid-Atlantic gap is a geographical term applied to an undefended area of the Atlantic Ocean during the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World War. The region was beyond the reach of land-based RAF Coastal Command antisubmarine (A/S) air ...

, repelling the

D-Day invasion The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D ...

and finally escaping to Buenos Aires, Argentina at the end of the war, whereupon Dönitz sends a final message. German war veteran and U-boat commander Erich Topp 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 players, and engage in sub vs. sub combat. 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 '' Anno'', '' Assassin's Creed'', ' ...

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

History

''Silent Hunter II'' was first announced in 1999, and originally developed by Aeon Electronic Entertainment, the developers of ''

Silent Hunter Silent Hunter may refer to: * Silent Hunter (video game) * Silent Hunter (laser weapon) {{disambig ...

'', but they had to leave the project unfinished, and Ultimation Inc. finished it. In November 2001, it was released 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. 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 or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

. The fan community raised over $7000 for an

unofficial patch An unofficial patch, sometimes alternatively called a community 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 alle ...

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, collectible card game or Miniature wargaming, miniature wargame. An expansion may introduce new rules ...

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 was re-released on the digital distributor gog.com.

Reception

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

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. A ''

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

References

External links

Official website
*

An authorized community upgrade for ''Silent Hunter II'' and ''Destroyer Command'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Silent Hunter 02 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 Cultural depictions of Karl Dönitz Ultimation games

Gameplay

History

Reception

See also

References

External links