Reviews Other Games Silent Hunter IV: Wolves Of The Pacific
| Silent Hunter IV: Wolves Of The Pacific |
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| Written by Starfox | |||||||
| Friday, 06 June 2008 10:11 | |||||||
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When I assumed command of the Pacific Fleet on 31 December 1941 our submarines were already operating against the enemy, the only units of the fleet that could come to grips with the Japanese for months to come. It was to the Submarine force that I looked to carry the load until our great industrial activity could produce the weapons we so sorely needed to carry the war to the enemy. It is to the everlasting honor and glory of our submarine personnel that they never failed us in our days of great peril.
In WWII and unlike popular beliefs, ships had a pretty good chance to elude a submarine when they had the luck to spot it before the attack occurs. They only needed to break their course regularly and to augment or decrease their speed from time to time to throw off all the targeting calculations that even the best submarine crew could make. Torpedoes back then were not guided but acted more like a bullet. You had to launch them so their course and the course of the targeted ship would meet at some point hoping that the target wouldn't suddenly change heading or speed before the torpedoes strike. What's more? Although submarines were sailing rather well on surface (sporting a fair 21 knots max speed) they were awfully slow underwater (8.5 to 9 Kts for American submarines, 7.5 to 8.5 Kts for German ones). The fact is that any ship was able to sail at least twice faster than a submarine underwater at max speed. Warships were even better equipped since they could go as high as 30 kts and over. And going full speed underwater was a bad idea anyway since the submarine could easily be spotted (by the enemy's hydrophones). So as a general rule, the speed during an attack run was more like 3 Kts. For all these reasons, the submariners’ task back then was a real hunt and not some video game. You didn't need the best submarine; you needed the best nerves, the best crew, the best tactics and a real taste for the sneaky side of things. When a submarine infiltrates an enemy task force to strike right in the middle... Think about an underwater version of Thief. Unlike WWII subs where the only viable way to attack something was to look through the periscope at short range, modern subs are more like a battle fought behind computer screens, most of the time from a long range and no one ever sees the enemy. That's not to say that I don't like modern sub simulations but it's just not the same thing. But before going further in the presentation of what Silent Hunter IV is, a word of warning must be given: you have to update SH4 to at least patch 1.4. It's not an advice, it's a requirement. The number of bugs that have been fixed between version 1.0 and version 1.4 is too huge to be listed here; it suffices to say that your experience won't be the same, both graphically and in gameplay.
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