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Silent Hunter 3 quickie review

Posted: 2005-03-17 08:47am
by MKSheppard
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I got this yesterday and have been playing it a bit. Started
out in September 1939 with a Type IIA U-Boat, and am
now on December 1939 with four patrols under my belt,
and with 2200 renown to my credit, plus 12,000 or so tons
of merchants sunk (two ships). Soon I shall be able to
upgrade to a Type VIIB.

FYI, "Renown" is how well you're known within the U-boat community;
the higher your renown, the more experienced officers and men will
ask for a transfer to your boat; plus you can use your renown with
the dockyard workers to have your U-boat modified, or to trade up
to a different boat.

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Right now, I'm holding off fleeting up to a Type IID, or getting those
AFA 44 MAL 570 improved batteries that can increase my
underwater range, since a few hundred more and I can get that
Type VIIB, which is much better than a riced-up Type II.

The game is only available on DVD, which makes installing it much much
faster than swapping out three or so discs, and takes up about 2 GB
of hard drive space. 512 MB of RAM is required, as are Windows 2000
or XP. Windows 95, 98, or ME are not supported.

One small problem is that SH3 is StarForce copyprotected. If this game
did not have the Silent Hunter franchise name, OR an incredibly dedicated
development team PLUS a publisher which delayed it TWICE so that it
would be polished and include a dynamic campaign, I would have
passed it over because of StarForce.

I have declined to install Half Life 2 on this computer because of the
invasiveness of Steam; and I hope that this trend of invasive copy
protection is only a fad which will pass shortly.

Posted: 2005-03-17 09:07am
by Faram
What do StarForce do with the system?

The screenies looks so nice!

I must have!

Posted: 2005-03-17 09:20am
by MKSheppard
Starforce installs some drivers or crap onto your computer. At least they have a driver uninstaller on their site.

I'm really having fun playing this, it's a lot more fun than SH2
ever was, and the graphics are top notch and smooth, even
on my year-old computer with only 512 MB of RAM.

One problem I'm having, (and so is everyone) is long load times,
but these only happen when you first load up the game or begin
a patrol.

And yes, I have the dreaded GeForce UVO white mist
bug, but I just use periscopes instead. The interface is very
very clean and intuitive, you really don't need to read the
manual.

Time compression might be a bit confusing for some people;
you can only go up to a maximum of 32x when viewing a 3D
screen, which probably keeps your poor computer from melting
down; on the 2D Navigational map, you can go all the way up
to 1024x, and apparently, you can edit the config file to allow
faster time compression than this, although I can't figure out
how to get it to stick...

Posted: 2005-03-17 09:28am
by MKSheppard
Oh yes, and the game art is in TGA format; including skins, etc. The
data files are in ASCII TXT format, example being this one:

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Posted: 2005-03-17 09:10pm
by MKSheppard
This game is great! It's fun!

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"Sir, Merchant detected on collision couse with us!"

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"CRASH DIIIIIIVE!"

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"Try and find me now you britischer scum!"

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"Suck hot torpedo death, englisher scum! Gott Strafe England!"

"Oh yeah, the Event Camera is cool."

*Much later*

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"Eat hot 88mm death from my deckgun britischers!"

Upon returning to port...

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WHOO HOO! Knight's Cross!

And every single ship I sank was operating by itself, unescorted. How's
that for realism!

Posted: 2005-03-18 02:04am
by weemadando
I WANT IT! And I have to review it too - mmmm... Hand me my stopwatch...

Posted: 2005-03-18 02:28am
by MKSheppard
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Das Britischers will never find me now!

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Go forth my eels and kill, KILL ALL IN YOUR WAY, MWUHAHAHAH

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This coastal freighter just had a terminal dosage of 88mm rounds and
is slowly sinking beneath the waves.

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Weather off the Norwegian coast; crappy.

Posted: 2005-03-18 03:48am
by Faram
To bad that they have a crappy copy protection!

I am not uninstalling Alcohol 120% to play a game.

I'll wait for a alternative means of playing it.

Posted: 2005-03-18 04:14am
by PeZook
MKSheppard wrote:And every single ship I sank was operating by itself, unescorted. How's
that for realism!
Wait 'till some of the allied U-Boat killing toys come around, I'm sure they'll surprise you yet :)

The game looks sweet, though. Looks like it's time to upgrade my rig.

Posted: 2005-03-18 05:09am
by MKSheppard
Faram wrote:To bad that they have a crappy copy protection!

I am not uninstalling Alcohol 120% to play a game.

I'll wait for a alternative means of playing it.
Well, I'm playing this, and I have Alcohol 120% installed,a nd I recently
burned a CD with Nero...

Posted: 2005-03-18 05:21am
by MKSheppard
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The Death of a C-Class Destroyer.

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SCHIESSE! ITS THE RAF!

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CRASH DIVE! ALAAAAAAAAAAAAARM!

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The Payoff, tonnage to the bottom!

Posted: 2005-03-18 05:24am
by MKSheppard
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Not me, but someone else; I cleaned up the photo; scary eh?

Posted: 2005-03-18 09:47am
by Jade Falcon
Looks good, I've been looking for something like this ever since Aces of the Deep.

Posted: 2005-03-18 11:11am
by Faram
MKSheppard wrote:Well, I'm playing this, and I have Alcohol 120% installed,a nd I recently
burned a CD with Nero...
Not using any crack? if so then I am plasing an order ASAP :D

Posted: 2005-03-18 01:40pm
by Ma Deuce
That's awesome: I must buy this when I get my new computer later this year...

Posted: 2005-03-18 04:15pm
by MKSheppard
Faram wrote:Not using any crack?
No crack. Straight from the box install. Although I will figure out a crack
eventually, for the simple reason I want my SH3 DVD safely tucked away,
due to a bad experience with a game CD and toothpaste two years ago...

Posted: 2005-03-18 07:01pm
by MKSheppard
While patrolling off the english coast, I saw this bright thing and I wondered WTF it was, until I realzied it was a searchlight looking for ME!

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ARMED TRAWLER!

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"No one fart, boys..."

BTW, I ordered a crashdive, and slammed into the bottom and
damaged my boat, since the ocean floor was only 40 meters deep
at that point...

After that scary mission, I got reassigned to Brest, and had to
transit the straits of Dover submerged on e-machines for an
entire day, because of the british blockade with destroyers.

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Once again, no one fart boys.

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After escaping past the English Channel, I entered the Atlantic and
ran across a old Clemson class Four Stacker... and set up a torp
shot.

They both missed, and I found myself majorly screwed, with shells
landing left and right of me...and of course I ordered a crashdive..

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I escaped a desultory depth charging which damaged my Flak
gun on the bridge, and after sinking a merchant, slipped into
Brest badly shaken....the easy pickings of one year off the
English coast are over...

Posted: 2005-03-18 08:22pm
by Kamakazie Sith
What? Where's the report? You damage your boat, narrowly escape death and there's no report!

I like how things get more lively. Sounds like a whole lot of a fun, sadly it's sold out at a lot of places. Specifically, Walmart, where I happen to have a coupon. Damn you Walmart!

Posted: 2005-03-19 01:23am
by MKSheppard
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Looks like no survivors from that one... (not my scrreenshot but someone elses)

Posted: 2005-03-19 11:01am
by MKSheppard
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Ahhh, a nice FAT convoy ripe for the picking...

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SCHIESSE...

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oh crap...

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And I'm dead by depth charging after a wartime
career of 1 year in 1940...

Posted: 2005-03-19 12:29pm
by PeZook
Told ya...

Oh, by the way, you consistently spell "Scheisse" wrong :)

A little more on topic: is Silent Hunter 2 any good? My rig is too weak to carry SH3 (and besides, you can't get it here yet), and I saw SH2 in a store nearby...so I've been wondering if it's worth getting.

Posted: 2005-03-19 02:35pm
by Ma Deuce
A little more on topic: is Silent Hunter 2 any good? My rig is too weak to carry SH3 (and besides, you can't get it here yet), and I saw SH2 in a store nearby...so I've been wondering if it's worth getting.
SHII is still pretty good (SHIII blows it out of the water of course), but unfortunately has no dynamic campaign, though the campaign missions are somewhat different each time you play them...

Posted: 2005-03-19 04:43pm
by 2000AD
Is everything in the game in German? Is there anyway to change it to English?

Posted: 2005-03-19 09:50pm
by MKSheppard
2000AD wrote:Is everything in the game in German? Is there anyway to change it to English?
It's in english or german (selectable)

Posted: 2005-03-20 09:33am
by Julhelm
This looks cool and all, but I'm missing a ww2 pacific sub sim.