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Silent Service II

DOS game, 1990

Genre:: Simulation
Year:: 1990
Developer:: MPS Labs
Publisher:: MicroProse Software
Perspective:: 1st-person, 3rd-person
Theme:: History, Naval, Real-time, Warfare, Submarine

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In this game, you become the captain of an American submarine. Your task is to sail into battle, dive Japanese ships and stay alive so that you can sink more next time. In combat, it is necessary to take into account the specific characteristics of this type of vessel. Submarines are fighting covertly, you have to find a suitable target and then carefully sneak around it and estimate the situation. How close you can get, from what angle to fire the torpedo, in which direction to escape. You have to think about the speed of the convoy, the strength of the escort, visibility, depth under the keel, all the possibilities of your submarine. One of the submarine captains' main weapons is - patience.

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Game review

Silent Service II from Microprose is a submarine war simulator in the Pacific in the period 1941-1945. The beginnings of the simulator go back to the wonderful 8-bit prehistory of the Atari and Sinclairs. Then came the remake for PC and finally its improved version of SS-II, which you now have in front of you.
In this game, you become the captain of an American submarine. Your task is to sail into battle, dive Japanese ships and stay alive so that you can sink more next time. In combat, it is necessary to take into account the specific characteristics of this type of vessel. Submarines are fighting covertly, you have to find a suitable target and then carefully sneak around it and estimate the situation. How close you can get, from what angle to fire the torpedo, in which direction to escape. You have to think about the speed of the convoy, the strength of the escort, visibility, depth under the keel, all the possibilities of your submarine. One of the submarine captains' main weapons is - patience.

There are several ways to play. The easiest way is to try one isolated battle, when your submarine is in sight of the Japanese fleet. You can choose an action based on an actual historical event, or a randomly generated one. The battle ends when the enemy ships are sunk (or you are sunk), or when you lose contact with the enemy. It is also possible to set sail on one isolated combat cruise, during which you patrol the area and search for suitable targets yourself. Or you can go through the whole war from Pearl Harbor to the Japanese surrender.

The game is made quite in accordance with history, so here we encounter only those types and characteristics of submarines that actually existed at the time. For example, it also respects the lingering problems of Americans with defective torpedoes - it's annoying when you hit an aircraft carrier and the torpedo does not explode ...

The graphics and sound are of course imperfect from today's point of view, but the game also dates from 1990. In its time, however, there was practically nothing better. I've won a lot with that, and even today I sometimes come back to SS2 when I need to kill half an hour. Try it too, and if you're not a hopeless land rat, you'll love it too.

Reviewed by Anonym – 1. april 2014