Silent Service on the commodore 64 was my first simulation experience - and it was awesome. Over the years I've tried to find a sim that gave me that same balance of gameplay and challenge. Some were too arcade, some were too buggy and some were just too plain fiddly. Silent Hunter III is none of these.

Installation :
System Requirements:
DVD/CD-ROM: DVD-ROM
Supported OS: Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP (only)
Processor: Pentium® III 1.4 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 1.4 GHz (Pentium 4 2.0 GHz or AMD Athlon 2.0Ghz recommended)
RAM: 256 MB (512 MB recommended)
Video Card: 64 MB (128 MB recommended) DirectX® 9 compatible graphics card (see supported list*) Sound Card: DirectX 9 compatible PCI card

*Currently Supported Video Cards NVIDIA® Geforce™ 3/4/FX series with the exception of MX series cards ATI® Radeon 8500/9000 family cards or newer

Installation was simple, insert your DVD, the installer kicks in, select your install directory and off it goes. The installation takes up about 2.5 gigs of hard drive space.

Upon launching of the game a dialog box pops up informing you it is installing a security system onto your PC, requiring a reboot. This is the dreaded starforce copy protection - and it can cause serious issues, (take a look here for some examples). For some users the only way they will get the game up and running is to use a nocd crack as the copy protection is not compatible with some DVD's. This was a bonehead move on the part of the publisher - the copy protection was cracked in a week and for some users it's causing too many issues.

The product comes with a map depicting the atlantic and convoy routes, a keycard and a 60 page manual.

First impression:
After a short pause while the copy protection checks your DVD the game launches. A short intro is played that captures the atmosphere of the period. It sets the mood for the rest of the game and fits in with the gameplay very well.

Interface :
Generally very good. There's room for a few improvements like being able to use the mousewheel for scrolling through lists and being able to click on an item's label as well as the item itself - things users of the windows operating system have been taking for granted for a long time and requires the user to learn a 'new' method of doing things. To be nitpicking about this level of design is a good indicator that overall things are done very well.

From the initial interface screen you can select from the following areas.

Naval Academy:

Here is where you will learn how to navigate, use your deck gun against surface contacts, use your flak gun against aerial contacts, use your torpedoes and how to conduct a convoy attack. You can train in each of these items, but are required to perform a 'test' of the training missions to obtain a rating for each of the items. How well you do here will be reflected in 'renown' points you will get to spend outfitting your submarine and crew. More on that later.

Career: This is the dynamic campaign and is the heart of this simulation. You can choose from various periods of the war, from the early years when being a uboat commander was like shooting fish in a barrel, to the later years when the chances of coming back alive were slim.

Single Mission:

A selection of historical missions is available - allowing you to jump right in and most likely get sunk. The missions are challenging and can leave you sweating as you try to keep yourself and your crew alive dodging depth charges and angry destroyers.

Multiplayer:

There are only two options for multiplayer - through UBI and by LAN.

Gameplay:
This sim has gameplay in buckets. Due to it's dynamic campaign it is potentially unlimited. I'll take you through a typical campaign mission to demonstrate what this sim has to offer.

The main career management screen is very much like Janes or Microprose simulations of old. From here you can manage your crew and uboat, check your mission history and medals and begin your next mission.

My prior mission had been fairly successful and I had earned quite a few renown points. Since the next submarine 'upgrade' doesn't really give me much more than the submarine I already have I decide to upgrade the crew as much as possible by dismissing the inexperienced crew members and replacing them by the most experienced sailors currently in the barracks.

There are 3 classes of crewman, Officers, Petty officers and Sailors. Officers have the greatest influence on the effectiveness of a crew compartment within the boat. Extra qualifications that are relevant to the compartment that the officer has been assigned to magnify his influence and significantly magnify performance. The more qualifications a crewman has, the more 'renown' they cost. In this way the designers of the sim have implemented a 'reward' system within the game. The better you do, the more renown you get to spend and the more effective your boat is as a whole. This gives the player something beyond tonnage sunk to aspire to.

Petty officers are your senior NCO's of the boat. They can have qualifications but usually they will only have one qualification. Their effect on effectiveness isn't as pronounced as that of an officer but every bit helps.

Sailors fill out the rest of your crew.

As you progress through missions your crew can earn medals, promotion and qualifications. Judicious assignment of these will help you fine-tune the crew you have so that you will have exactly the crew you need.

After I have done as much with the crew as I can, I move to the uboat management section and spend my remaining renown on an engine upgrade and battery upgrade. My boat is now completely upgraded and we are ready to undertake our mission.

Just prior to launching your mission you can scale the difficulty. This is excellent as when you start a campaign you will wish to play it fairly easy while you learn the ropes but as you become more skillful you will wish to increase the difficulty to provide more of a challenge.

Our mission is to cruise to a particular grid location that sits astride a major convoy route. If I can run into a convoy we might do a lot of damage.

We depart Wilhelmshaven with friends and rose throwing lovers waving good-bye on the docks. You must pilot the boat out of the docks yourself and wait until you are clear before you ask the navigator to plot a course. In one of my early missions I was below decks after plotting and was greeted with an almighty screech and crashes as my navigator had turned our boat into a battering ram that was attempting to take out a stone wharf. The damage we sustained was irreparable but we continued on our mission and returned safely.

I plotted a course to the north of Britain - giving scapa flow a wide berth since it is a major naval base. Uboats by necessity cruise on the surface wherever possible. Time acceleration speeds up the journey and with the majority of crew in quarters resting we travel for a few days with nothing to break the tedium other than swapping crew around to keep everyone rested. We are 400KM northwest of scapa flow in a storm when an explosion tears into the conning tower. One of the watch yells that we are under attack and i order a crash dive. I hear the crew racing down the ladder and hear the conning hatch slam shut as the alarm rings shrilly and our boat noses down into the deep. Water starts to leak from a valve and the sonarman yells that a warship is closing fast.

I switch to the damage management screen and see that our conning tower and light flak gun have taken damage. Nothing critical and since it's external damage I will have to wait until we are surfaced before putting a damage control team to work. I double-click the damage control team name and the sim automatically assigns crewmen to it. I am expecting depth charges at any time so having a team ready is a very good idea.

We reach 50 meters and I ask the combat engineer to rig for silent running. He whispers an affirmative and informs the crew. I order 1/3 speed and a left turn. I look around the crew area and see crewmen giving me furtive glances as the damage control team take care of the leaking valve. I ask the sonarman where the contact is and with this information I decide that I'll ascend to periscope depth and take a quick look around. Maybe I'll get a shot off at the destroyer.

The weather above is miserable and the rough seas make it almost impossible to catch more than a glimpse of the enemy.

I turn our boat around and start to depart the area. The sonarman whispers loudly 'depth charges in the water sir' and a few seconds later the distant sound of explosions carry to us. The destroyer continues to look for us but we quietly slip away and continue on our journey. A few hours later I feel that it is safe to surface the boat and make repairs while recharging the oxygen supply and batteries.

A few days later the storm has passed and we are cruising in calm seas when we receive a report of a large convoy heading towards our designated map area. After quickly consulting the navigator I determine we have more than enough fuel to race ahead of the convoy at full speed on the surface.

I plot a new course to the south south east and we race ahead of the convoy's route to lay in wait. As we approach where I believe the convoy to be heading I assemble the crew and place the best personnel for the job into each compartment. Before long our sonarman starts to read off multiple contacts moving slowly towards us. I find myself in the perfect position - ahead of the convoy which is likely to travel directly over us. I order a dive to 50 meters and rig for silent running.

The destroyer escort passes us by unaware that the wolf is about to start slaughtering the sheep. The main body of the convoy approaches us and we move to periscope depth and I begin to scan for fat targets. Before long I spot a large cargo ship. I have five torpedoes and I ask the weapons officer to plot a firing solution then launch. Switch to another target and launch two more. Then fire another at one of the ships behind me before ordering a dive to depth. I hear an explosion and the crew cheers. I wait for more explosions but none are forthcoming. One hit out of five shots. Dud torpedoes at too common place at this time so whilst a few may have missed, some may have hit their targets and failed to detonate. I turn the boat to follow the convoy beneath it, keeping speed up and hoping that the noise generated by the convoy is enough to mask my presence from the hydrophones of the destroyer. The crew is working towards reloading the tubes and I decide that I am going to try to take out the destroyer and hope the weather clears up enough to allow use of the deck gun. Once I have all of the fore tubes reloaded I surface amongst the convoy briefly to lure the destroyer to engage. It begins to loop around the convoy and I find that with only forward tubes reloaded I might be stuck in the position of being outflanked and in trouble. I order the crew to begin reloading the aft tube as I try and play for time.

We manage to keep away from the destroyer and with a minute left to reload the aft tube I put up the periscope and spot the destroyer almost directly behind us. One of the cargo ships spots us and the destroyer turns to us and races at high speed firing it's guns at my scope. I put my scope down whilst awaiting the loading.

As soon as the aft tube light turns green I raise the scope to see the destroyer racing at us, intent to ram or force us to maneuver and spoil our shot. I ask the weapons officer to create a firing solution and we launch our aft torp. As soon as it has left the tube I order a crash dive as I watch the destroyer getting really close. I see the explosion of the torp hitting just before the scope descends beneath the waves and then see the hull of the destroyer flashing past. I cringe expecting an impact but they miss. I then expect to be depth charged but there is nothing.

I move to periscope depth and spot the destroyer sinking. Party time. We surface in the middle of the convoy and it quickly becomes obvious that the deck gun crew would need scuba gear to operate in these seas. I fire my remaining torpedoes which either miss or fail to detonate. I have only two left in external storage but the weather is going to have to clear up before I can make use of them. During a quick scan around with the observation scope I spot one cargo ship dead in the water behind the convoy. I mark it's position on the map to come back and finish off later if it doesn't sink.

I dodge through the convoy and start to move ahead, hoping that the weather will clear enough before another escort arrives.

A miserable 12 hours later with many of the crew exhausted one of the lookouts spots a destroyer heading towards the convoy. I give up in disgust and order a dive and we return back to the position I had marked on the map earlier. We cruise past the still floating destroyer who's aft end is visible above the waves. I can only guess if the survivors are huddling in an air pocket in the dark with no way of escaping. Maybe they'll be rescued. I arrive at the marked area and the ship is gone. I ask the sonarman to sweep the area and he locates a single merchantman moving slowly. We surface and move to pursue at flank speed. In a couple of hours we catch up. Somehow the crew have managed to reload a tube from the external storage but the seas are still too rough to use the deck gun. We move to a parallel course and at very close range I fire my remaining torpedo.

for a direct hit amidships that breaks the freighter in two and sends it sinking beneath the waves.

With a single torpedo remaining in our arsenal we turn for home and arrive days later - exhausted but victorious.

Graphics:
The graphics in this simulation are both detailed and beautiful. The interior areas of the uboat and crew members aren't up to halflife2 or doom3 standards but they are still excellent and react to your presence when you are talking to them.

The effects are both excellent and effective. The water running over your periscope lens distorting and blurring the view adds to the immersion. Small touches are everywhere and it's this kind of polish that makes the atmosphere of this sim both believable and compelling.

Sound:
The sound is excellent. About the only thing I have to complain about is the lack of environmental effect on crew speech. You can be in the middle of a storm and the crew will come across crystal clear. It would have added to the immersion if the crews speech was distorted by storm weather so that they had to shout at you while the wind was whistling in your ears.

Multiplayer:
The manual says 8 players LAN and 4 players through UBI online - I just completed an 8 player session online so i guess the manual is wrong.

There is no direct connect method to allow people to play over the internet without having to log onto UBI's game service. I don't like being reliant upon a third party to play online with my friends. If that service is down, either for a short period or permanently, online players are stuck without being able to play online. This is another bonehead move that just creates another potentially critical problem.

Multiplayer is fun, but limited simply due to the nature of what you can do in multiplayer for this sort of simulation. You load scripted missions and execute a cooperative attack on the enemy convoy. Very little of what is the meat gameplay wise for this simulation is present in multiplayer.

Immersion:
The presentation of the product is excellent in almost every way. The only simulations in recent memory that I have played that have had as much immersion are IL2 and Steel Beasts.

Longevity:
Dynamic campaign - in other words unlimited gameplay is available for single player. The included mission editor is a separate application using a standard windows interface. It's clear and feature full. I could see mission editors creating a series of missions to be used in cooperative multiplayer for private campaigns using historical reports.

The bad:
Starforce. Online multiplayer support through UBI. Limited multiplayer functionality.

Conclusion:
This is an excellent single player simulation much like the glory days of simming. Multiplayer is really a minor part of what this sim has to offer. Any simmer MUST add this software to their collection - even if naval simulations aren't their normal boat. The only thing preventing this sim receiving editor's choice is the use of starforce.