Silent Hunter 3 Gameplay

[Eleanora Parrot]

Slicingthrough the frigid North Atlantic waters, my wounded Type VII-C U-boat is one well-placed depth charge away from bursting open like a cheap German piata and sinking rock-like to the ocean floor. Those British destroyers circling manically overhead show no signs of bugging off and leaving me to lick my wounds. Probably because I sunk two of the fattest ships in their convoy 15 minutes ago with a perfectly-aimed torpedo spread. But the sense of elation I felt is transforming into terror. After my fish made contact and turned the freighters into flaming steel coffins, the convoy's three destroyer escorts descended on me, peppering my crash-diving sub with hull-ripping depth charges.

That's the mercurial nature of Silent Hunter 2. Your emotions swing from euphoria to despair in seconds as you alternate from hunter-killer to passive prey. Sub sim fans have had a pretty good time with Ubisoft Romania's graphically sumptuous Silent Hunter 3, 4, and Vofferings but the franchise first got its Windows sea legs in 2001 with the Ultimation-designed SH2. The sim's well-researched U-boat dynamic created a sense of historical imperative that transcended convention. During key moments, it actually made you feel like you were sharing claustrophobic boat space with Kriegsmarine veterans like Otto Kretschmer and Erich Topp.

Some hoarding-afflicted simmers (like myself) still own original boxed retail copies of Silent Hunter 2. Today, the best way to revisit this naval pioneer is to grab the fully patched, $9.99 download at GOG . You won't have to seek out and install patches or scour message boards looking for tips to make it work with Vista or Windows 7. I had the game downloaded and running on my Win7 64-bit PC in less than 20 minutes.

That's the way I like to play it anyway. SH2 can't compete with its progeny graphically or through superior gameplay mechanics. In fact, the older game eschews the sim community's favored dynamic campaign structure for a series of hard-scripted missions that you must individually beat in order to progress. Critics and fans slammed it for its inflexibility here (the AI can also be quite flaky at times), but this simplified linear format makes SH2the perfect candidate for time-constrained gamers who just want to spend 20 or 30 minutes sinking Allied tonnage.

Double-clicking the Silent Hunter 2 desktop icon launches the game in less than 10 seconds, and after selecting your historical or user-created mission, you'll be at the helm a few seconds. (A refreshing change from the languid 3D loading screens in Ubisoft's later Silent Hunter chapters.) What's more, you won't have to worry about any Starforce or DRM issues with this 2001 release, because it hails from an era when respect for your consumers trumped zealous IP rights enforcement.

Fast loading and an absence of copy protection hassles normally aren't compelling reasons to play a PC game. But in this case, you can put virtual submariners behind the periscope so quickly and efficiently that it's almost a new gaming experience. Take a break from your routine in the middle of the day and load up a manufactured or historical offensive against a lightly-defended convoy in the Med or an armed-to-the-teeth warship flotilla off the coast of Scotland. No lengthy navigation challenges, no interminably slow load screens: just you and your prey. Scrap it out for half an hour and return to your life. SH2 is so resource-frugal, in fact, that you can Alt-Tab between the game and other programs without Windows skipping a beat (a paused North Sea battle awaits me behind MS Word as I write this).

Hunter and Hunted is the fifth and longest mission in Absolution. The mission takes place in a seedy portion of Chicago, eventually leading back to Chinatown, where Agent 47 had previously eliminated the King. During this mission, two gameplay types are present: stealth and assassinations.

The first segment covers a tunnel and a courtyard filled with police officers. At the start of the tunnel, pick up a bottle or metal pipe in case you need it for a distraction later. When you continue through the corridor, stop at the end of it and take cover. There will be a roughly square-shaped hallway going around a smaller room with metallic grating as one of its walls. There are two police officers searching it. When you get to the hallway, wait for one of the cops to turn away and then walk past the pillar. Hug the wall close to the center since the two cops will be looking in the room with the grate wall and can see through it. When they turn away, go through a nearby doorway up a flight of stairs. This will lead to the courtyard, which is filled with police cars. To the right is an alleyway of police officers leading to the level exit that's only an option if you are disguised as one of them. The alternative is to go left, from cover to cover. There is a police officer patrolling back and forth under the roof, but he can be subdued and his body hidden in a nearby dumpster. When you move out from underneath the roof, there is a staircase leading down to the right. Climb down the ledge to the door and exit the level.

The segment begins outside the Vixen Club. If you want to enter through the front door, wait for the police officer to walk away. A better idea is to climb up the ledges on the building wall and go through the window. The office is a minor treasure trove which contains a silenced Jagd P22G, a keycard to the club's hidden areas and a piece of evidence. Pick up the items and go down the stairs and past the register. The hallway will lead to the inside of the club. There is a checkpoint on the other side of the club near the private booths. You can use the keycard to unlock the door leads to the evidence, but do this with caution because the guards may come and investigate the unlocked door, if the guard is coming, there are some places to hide.

The target in this segment is the club owner, Dom Osmond, who will spend his time patrolling around the club. He will first appear behind the counter if you cannot find him. There are three ways to kill him:

This way is done near the dance floor where a stripper is dancing for a bachelor party and can be done without a disguise. If you took the keycard, just enter through the door. There is a control panel here that controls the disco ball above the dance floor. All you have to do is wait for Osmond to walk onto the dance floor and yell at the dancer, at which point she will briefly step off the floor and he will walk on it. The tricky thing here is timing the drop correctly since the ball rotates quickly and will fall towards the direction it's leaning when 47 speeds up the rotation. This method can also kill other people easily, so use the panel with caution.

This method is done in the private booths, where Osmond will occasionally make one of the strippers give him a lap dance. While he is gone, you can walk past the stripper and use the keycard to enter the room furthest away. It leads to a room with a two-way mirror through which the booth in which Osmond gets his lap dance performed can be seen. After entering the room, wait for Osmond and the girl to enter the booth. When the stripper is done and Osmond throws her out, wait for her to walk away, then shoot Osmond in the head through the mirror and hide his body in the box in the mirror room. You can do this with unsilenced firearm, as nobody can hear the gunshot for some reason (presumably the room is set up like a recording booth and has soundproof insulation.) But the safest way is to shoot him with silenced JAGD P22G, which can be found in the same segment.

The silent alternative to shooting is garroting. While on the phone, Osmond faces the one-way mirror. It is simple to slip in behind him and choke him to death. Throw an object at the glass, breaking it, then drag Osmond's body through to the container.

The restroom is the second stop on Osmond's route. There is a guard inside, but Osmond will throw him out after entering, at which point the area counts as trespassing. The safest way to kill Osmond this way is to throw a bottle into the room to make the guard turn away, then subdue him and hide his body in the locker. Then wait for Osmond to step inside to pee, garrote him and hide his body in the locker as well. An even safer way is to go to the restroom before Osmond gets there, subdue the guard, hide him in the closet and then just wait for Osmond to go inside.

The segment's exit is through a door leading to the club's upper floors and Osmond's office. While the door near the checkpoint may seem tempting, there is a guard and a stripper talking inside and a guard near the checkpoint who will spot 47. You will need extremely precise timing to avoid all of them. Instead, a safer option is to use the door near the dance floor. A guard will occasionally step inside. Hide in cover by the doorway, wait for him to come, subdue him and hide his body. Walk past the room with the two strippers and through the hallway until you get outside the room with the stairwell. Wait for the guard and the stripper to finish talking and disperse, then sneak up the stairs and to the exit.

The segment is easy to sneak through, especially with a disguise. Get past the room with the pool table by skipping from cover to cover to the other side. The exit is on the upper floor, which can be accessed either through a staircase near the strippers or another near the pool table. Both are easy to access, however, the staircase near the strippers can prove to be considerably easier to ascend while wearing the suit. In Osmond's office, listen to the phone's answering machine to finish the segment. Beware: on higher difficulties, there may be a guard standing inside the office.

The next segment is pretty straightforward. The exit is up yet another staircase and is, unfortunately, guarded by police officers who will attack 47 on sight. If you have a police officer disguise, you can just use Instinct and walk past them. If not, you have to go through the corridors and dilapidated rooms, past the room with the shotguns and ammo and into the room with the checkpoint. There are ledges on the wall leading upstairs. Climb them and you will find the body (presumbly Amber that the NPCs were talking about) of a stripper. Dump it over the railing, then go through the doorway leading to the edge. Once all the officers have gone to investigate the body, climb down the ledge and go up the stairs to the exit. Beware that there is a cop at the top of the staircase who will walk down. Wait for him to pass before proceeding.

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