Silent Hunter Online previewed: Ubisoft goals to torpedo the F2P market place.

Whilst it may annoy some of you that Ubisoft are most often making ‘Online’ versions of a bunch of their major franchises (especially strategy-related ones), for Silent Hunter Online at the least it’s probably the smartest thing they can have done with that team. After the fourth title-that-shall-not-be-named, as well as an okay-but-not-as-good-as-three fifth instalment, there wasn’t really much Ubisoft could do using the series — but it’s a string oddly suited to the a lot more casual and ‘paced’ nature connected with free-to-play games.

That’s not to convey Silent Hunter Online is an informal game, not by any stretch on the imagination — it’s got every one of the core elements the original online games had, it’s just been stripped down and simplified for any fairly low-frills package. As usual, the setting is during World War II, and as usual (bar that random one time) you play because the Germans as you control your U-boats in an attempt to wrestle control of the high-seas from your Allies.

The main draw of SHO is the co-operative elements though – as being a solo player, you can command a ‘wolfpack’ of several submarines that will help you complete missions, but if you link up with other players, the wolfpack becomes a whole lot more dynamic and exciting since you work together in real-time that can help track down targets and torpedo them. When it comes to managing individual subs, you don’t have to are actually a closet Navy Officer either — use many of the tasks can be automated, including torpedo trajectories, or even simple such things as depth and movement. Most of these (bar one) may be accomplished by yourself as well though, if you want to get stuck in the realism of it all.
All of those other game is made up on the management elements — where you take care of the subs in your solo wolfpack, and the campaign itself. Your subs are a not at all hard affair – you need to ensure you’re fully supplied with ammunition and fuel, that all the actual compartments are repaired, that you have officers for the various stations, and so with. As you go long, you may also buy special ‘mods’ for certain aspects of the sub to improve the capabilities for the reason that area, and all of this is tied into the in-game economy (which includes micro transactions).

Employing a simple 2D interface, SHO presents a fully dynamic campaign that may represent the ebb and flow of warfare during this period period. There will be specific objectives for you to destroy, which will require one to go a certain area as well as hunt, and as you start racking up kills the Axis will gain dominance over a place, and then you can move on to another area. You ought to be careful though, as the Allies will progressively reclaim dominance over zones in the event players aren’t running missions inside them, and if you’re on a later mission but one of the earlier ones gets ‘recaptured’, it makes things in the later mission that much harder available for you.

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