Silent Hunter III

Overview

Silent Hunter 3 allows players to experience WWII through the eyes of a German U-Boat captain. The dynamic campaign is somewhat simplistic, at the start of each patrol players are given a grid number. To successfully complete the patrol and gain a small amount of renown (experience) they must spend at least 24 hours in the assigned grid. Different grids are assigned depending on the players U-Boat and home harbour, Type II and VII can expect to spend a lot of time patroling around Britain while IX and XXI could be assiged a grind on the African coast or even the east coast of the US. Of course, players can also completely ignore their assigned grid, as it is usually easier and more efficient to gain renown by sinking ships along the known sea lanes provided on the map. SH3 also features 10 historical missions, which include the attack on Scapa Flow and passing through the Strait of Gibraltar.

RenownAs mentioned above, renown is similar to experience in an RPG. Players will gain renown for virtually everything they do to help the war effort, whether it is shooting down a lone recon plane or sinking allied battleships during the D-Day landings. When docked between patrols players can spend their renown on hiring more experienced crew, upgrading various parts of their U-Boat, buying better torpedoes, or upgrading to a completely new U-Boat.

Realism

As with other titles in the Silent Hunter series, this game offers scalable realism settings. This allows newer players, who merely want to run around the Atlantic blowing things up, to do so and have fun. However, for the truly dedicated, high levels of realism settings allow players to challenge themselves by learning to plot their own intercept courses, torpedo solutions, and so on, which cannot be done without study and practice. Real-life challenges, such as dud torpedoes, faulty detonators, and adverse weather effects, give players small sample of the perils of life aboard a u-boat.

Mods

A lively online community has supplied SH3 players with a large number of mods. Beyond mere re-skins, which are certainly available, modders have gone as far as complete overhauls of SH3 and reworking the GUI. Interested players can therefore customize SH3 to their liking, right down to adding their own gramophone tracks.

Playable U-Boats

• Type II A
• Type II D
• Type VII B
• Type VII C
• Type VII C/41
• Type VII C/42
• Type IX B
• Type IX C
• Type IX C/40
• Type IX D2
• Type XXI

System Requirements

• OS: Windows 2000 / XP(only)
• Processor: Pentium® III 1.4 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 1.4 GHz (Pentium 4 2.0 GHz or AMD Athlon 2.0 GHz recommended)
• Memory: 512 MB
• Graphics: 64 MB (128 MB video card recommended)(see supported list*)
• DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0
• Sound: Direct X 9.0 compliant PCI card
• Hard Drive: 1.5 GB

Supported Video Cards at Time of Release Nvidia® GeForce™ 3/4/FX series (GeForce 4 MX NOT supported)ATI® Radeon® 8500/9000 families or newer. Laptop versions of these chipsets may work but are not supported. As of Dec 2010, these chipsets are the only ones that will run this game.