Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific

Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific
Developer(s)	Ubisoft Romania
Publisher(s)	Ubisoft
Designer(s)	Dan Dimitrescu, Tudor Serban
Composer(s)	Jason Graves
Platform(s)	Windows
Release date(s)	NA March 20, 2007 EU March 22, 2007
Genre(s)	Submarine simulator
Mode(s)	Single player, Multiplayer
Distribution	1 PC-DVD, Download (Steam)

Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific (known in the United States as Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific) is a computer submarine simulation for Windows developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft in 2007. It places the player in command of an American submarine during World War II and takes place in the Pacific theater. The game allows players a variety of play modes including career, single war patrol and single battle engagements.

Gameplay features

The simulation uses detailed and accurate 3D graphics to immerse the player in the environment of a World War II submarine. The systems of the vessel are largely functional and the player is exposed to many aspects of submarine warfare of the time. The game allows the player to choose how realistic and challenging the game experience is to be and it is designed to allow new players to easily master the basic game play, while allowing for experienced users to manually control systems such as crew management, torpedo allocation, radar, sonar and target trigonometry.

Like its predecessor Silent Hunter 3, the simulation features a dynamic campaign. The game gives players various mission objectives and unique rewards, and attempts to make each campaign a unique experience. The major naval battles of the war in the Pacific, such as the Battle of Midway are re-enacted and players are informed of them via in-game radio messages. However, unlike the earlier title, the game gives more specific and varied mission objectives during the campaign—including rescues, reconnaissance and agent insertions—rather than just assigning a specific patrol area.

Multiplayer

Silent Hunter 4 features a new online adversarial mode and gives players the opportunity to command Japanese destroyers and pit them against US submarines. Servers will support up to eight players and let them choose from several scripted and generated missions.

Playable submarines

• United States S class submarine
• United States Porpoise class submarine
• Salmon class submarine
• Sargo class submarine
• Tambor class submarine
• Gato class submarine
• Balao class submarine
• German Type IX submarine (U-Boat Missions add-on)
• Type XVIII U-boat (U-Boat Missions add-on)

"Hollywood movie" graphics

Graphics have been enhanced significantly over those of the predecessor, and according to the developers, the game's menu system and game-play is to look like a Hollywood movie. The developers chose this approach to appeal to a larger fan-base, hoping to attract players of less realistic, action-oriented games as well as simulator players.^[1]

Graphics were enhanced in the following ways:

• Character models were greatly improved
• Water can be set to be transparent in the graphics option
• Smoke and flames extend further
• Terrain and terrain features such as trees were greatly improved
• Harbors feature eye-candy such as animated cranes and cars/trucks
• Ships hit by torpedoes or grenades now show visible damage (SH3 torpedoes and grenades only created black "dots" on the impact area), meaning if the player makes a hole in a heavy cruiser using a Mk-10 torpedo, then he/she DOES make a hole in the said heavy cruiser, allowing the player to actually turn the enemy ships (or his own sub if not careful with the destroyers) into piles of slowly sinking scrap
• Radars and hydrophones on subs now move
• When the player sub is damaged, crew personnel may sometimes have stains of oil on their clothes
• Enemy ships ramming the player sub receive damage
• Enemy ships communicate with signal lights
• The damage control crew is visible(when active, crew members can be seen around the interior working with wrenches)
• Crew at the bridge look dizzy and disoriented when wounded
• Enemy ships have visible deck crew
• Said deck crew "goes away" when torpedoes or grenades hits the ship if the crew is close enough to the blast area
• If the mentioned "go away crew" blast area does not reach a crew member, he will start to look confused and scared instead

Mods

Many mods have been produced for Silent Hunter 4. Some of them have been combined into major mods such as the realism-focused Real Fleet Boat mod (the successor to SH3's popular Real U-boat mod) and the Trigger Maru mod. These mods combine popular gameplay and realism mods as well as unofficial bugfixes so that players have a 'one-stop' modding solution that prevents potential confusion over the hundreds of mods that are available for the game.

Critical reception

Reception
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings 79.41%[2] Metacritic 79/100[3] Review scores Publication Score Edge 7/10[4] Eurogamer 8/10[5] GameSpot 8.3/10[6] GameSpy [7] GamesRadar [8] IGN (US) 8.8/10[9] (AU) 7/10[10] PALGN 8/10[11] PC Gamer (UK) 87%[12] PC Gamer (US) 78%[13] X-Play [14]

The game was released to generally favorable reviews.^[2][3] This is despite the fact that upon release a variety of bugs plagued the game, ostensibly because the game had a compressed development schedule. However, many of the more serious issues have been addressed in patches that have been subsequently released. The current version of the game is 1.4 ^[15]

Due to concerns relating to the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, as well as U.S. federal laws regarding depictions of the Medal of Honor, the original release of the game awarded players with fictional decorations which in no way resembled actual United States military awards. This drew heavy criticism from many players, leading to several mods which altered the game to display actual United States decorations.

Expansion Pack

On October 31, 2007 Ubisoft announced The U-Boat Missions add-on to Silent Hunter 4. The expansion focuses on the German U-boat campaign in the Indian Ocean (the Monsun Gruppe). The U-boat Missions add-on features new strategic elements, new playable submarines, an improved navigation map, and an improved upgrade system.^[16] It also upgrades the engine to version 1.5.

Gold Edition

Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific Gold Edition was released on October 11, 2008. This is the full version of Silent Hunter 4, which includes the U-Boat Missions expansion pack.

See also

• Silent Hunter, released in 1996
• Silent Hunter II, released in 2001
• Silent Hunter III, released in 2005
• Silent Hunter 5, released in 2010
• Allied submarines in the Pacific War
• Pacific War

References

External links

• Silent Hunter 4 Official Homepage
• Silent Hunter 4 Official Forum
• Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific at MobyGames
• Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific at the Internet Movie Database
• Subsim website for Silent Hunter 4