So being laid up last week, I decided to see if I could find something to stop my mind from wandering. I had an urge to play a submarine video game for a while... not just any submarine game, something World War II ish... something U-Boaty. I found Silent Hunter III. I did some checking and the world confirmed that it was a good U-Boat game, so I downloaded it for $20.00. It was state of the art last year, but the passage of time means savings for me.
Yay me.
Firstly, this isn't going to be game review. There are lots of them out there by better people. I liked it, it was good. That's my review.
After playing through all of the naval academy scenarios (with video tutorials) I felt like I was ready to take a sub out and sink British ships. One note, it took 3 hours to get through all the tutorial exams and training scenarios. You don't have to do them all, but they help quite a lot.
So I was put in command of a type VII U-Boat circa 1939 and ordered to patrol a 20 mile square of North Atlantic west of England. I was starting out in Kiel and had to plot my courses to get there, avoiding British warship areas, etc. It took me about 45 minutes to plan out my mission and make sure I had fuel for the trip (and back)and to patrol around and then a bit left over in case I found a convoy to chase down and sink. Finally it was time to leave. I put myself on the bridge (outside, top of the conning tower... the "fin" that sticks out of the top of my sub) and ordered us out. To my surprise, there was a German band playing us out and a bunch of German women waving and throwing flowers at us. Not a cut scene, they were just there... kinda cool. Nice touch I thought.
We rode on the surface most of the trip. I set up time compression to get us through the boring bits quickly. Time compression is like fast forward... it makes the game go faster... you can play anywhere from paused, real time, all the way up to x1024 speed.
Since it took three days to get to the patrol area, I sped the game up.
I arrived at my patrol zone, stayed on station for 24 hours as ordered and then headed home.
I hadn't seen one ship.
The seas were very rough and the sound gear couldn't hear crap with all the waves hitting the sub.
Keep in mind... 1939 technology... I didn't have sonar yet or anything fancy. The best way to find an enemy ship was to have a guy on the bridge with binoculars.
One night we hit a very bad storm. Near the coast of Scotland, my watchman reported a contact... hooray! I'd been playing for hours and finally something to shoot at.
Except it was night time... in a storm... and the ship was heading away from us at top speed... it saw us too.
Screw it, I said. I ordered my sub to chase it down. Engines all ahead flank, crews to the deck gun... we're going to sink a ship!
If you've ever seen Das Boot, I basically re-enacted the scene of Jurgen Prochnow on the bridge of his sub driving fast through a bad ass storm.
I wonder what's German for yee-haw!
Anyway, I caught up with the ship... big cargo ship. The storm was too rough for the deck gun... part of my crew almost drowned fromt he large waves going over the sub. Screw it. I fired three torpedoes at it.
I was about 500 meters from the ship... so it really wasn't complicated to shoot it. The first torpedo was a dud... it hit and just bounced off it. The other two hit in rapid succession and blew a large hole in the side of the ship. The ship started listing to that side (sinking and rolling over), caught fire, and finally went under completely. The coolest thing was that after the ship had sunk about 50 meters, the engines and boilers blew up... so there were a series of cool underwater explosions. At first I though someone was shooting at me... but an underwater cam view showed it was the last breath of the dead cargo ship.
Rock. Out.
I continued back towards Germany. I sank two more ships on the way home.
The last one actually involved stalking a tanker at periscope depth, doing the requisite work to plot a firing solution (note, the reason that it's called a firing solution is because it is the result of a trigonomic math process... the solution is the answer that puts the torpedo where you want it.) The sub has an analog computer that determines your solution... you input range, angle of the bow, speeds, etc and the computer tells you what to tell you torpedo to do.
There's also an "easy" mode that is more point and shoot.
After the third sinking, I was out of torpedoes. The seas were still too rough for using the deck gun, so I decided to return to base.
I plotted a course for Kiel, back through the fjords.
I also found that time compression would not enable if I was close to land... which made the trip through the fjords annoying.
I kept clicking the stop watch trying to get it to go faster... and finally it did... it was a dark moonless night... and as I approached my hope port... time compression suddenly started working... and I ran my submarine into a pier and it sank killing all 42 men on board.
Game Over.
I basically re-enacted the movie of Das Boot... but instead of Jurgen Prochnow as the Captain... I had Corky.
Stupid Game.