Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific

Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific is a computer submarine simulation for Windows developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft in 2007. It places the player in command of an American submarine during World War II and takes place in the Pacific theater. The game allows players a variety of play modes including career, single war patrol and single battle engagements.

Gameplay
The simulation uses detailed and accurate 3D graphics to immerse the player in the environment of a World War II submarine. The systems of the vessel are largely functional and the player is exposed to many aspects of submarine warfare of the time. The game allows the player to choose how realistic and challenging the game experience is to be and it is designed to allow new players to easily master the basic game play, while allowing for experienced users to manually control systems such as crew management, torpedo allocation, radar, sonar and target trigonometry.

Like its predecessor Silent Hunter 3, the simulation features a fully dynamic campaign. The game gives players various mission objectives and unique rewards, and attempts to make each campaign a unique experience. The major naval battles of the war in the Pacific, such as the Battle of Midway are re-enacted and players are informed of them via in-game radio messages. However, unlike its prequel, the game gives more specific and varied mission objectives during the campaign, rather than just assigning a specific patrol area.

Multiplayer
Silent Hunter 4 features a new online adversarial mode and gives players the opportunity to command Japanese destroyers and pit them against US submarines. Servers will support up to eight players and let them choose from several scripted and generated missions.

Playable submarines

 * United States S class submarine
 * United States Porpoise class submarine
 * Salmon class submarine
 * Sargo class submarine
 * Tambor class submarine
 * Gato class submarine
 * Balao class submarine
 * German Type IX submarine (U-Boat Missions add-on)
 * Type XVIII U-boat (U-Boat Missions add-on)

"Hollywood movie" Graphics
Graphics have been enhanced significantly over those of the predecessor, and according to the developers, the game's menu system and game-play is to look like a Hollywood movie. The developers chose this approach to appeal to a larger fan-base, hoping to attract players of more simplistic, action-oriented games as well as simulator players.

Graphics have been enhanced in the following ways:
 * Character models are greatly improved.
 * Water is now transparent.
 * Smoke and flames extend further.
 * Terrain and terrain features such as trees have been greatly improved.
 * Harbors feature eye-candy such as animated cranes.

Mods
Many mods have been produced for Silent Hunter 4. Some of them have been combined into major mods such as the realism-focused Real Fleet Boat mod (the successor to SH3's popular Real U-boat mod) and the Trigger Maru mod. These mods combine popular gameplay and realism mods as well as unofficial bugfixes so that players have a 'one-stop' modding solution that prevents potential confusion over the hundreds of mods that are available for the game.

Critical Reception
The game was released to generally favorable reviews. This is despite the fact that upon release a variety of bugs plagued the game, ostensibly because the game had a compressed development schedule. However, many of the more serious issues have been addressed in patches that have been subsequently released. The current version of the game is 1.4

Some minor historical inaccuracies remain, some due to legal restrictions. On April 19, 2007, an Ubisoft Community Manager responded to these criticisms on the official forum posting that, among other things :

"' ... The dev team is very passionate about naval history, and wanted to include the correct medals, and planes in the game. They worked hard and tried their best to do so. However in the end they were not allowed to include these items in the game due to copyright and legal issues. The respective companies owning the copyrights to the medals and planes which were actually used by the US in World War II would not grant Ubisoft permission to use them in Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific... '"

It should be noted, however, that there are currently no legal restrictions against using American military medals in video game titles.

Expansion Pack
On October 31, 2007 Ubisoft announced The U-Boat Missions add-on to Silent Hunter 4. The expansion focuses on the German U-boat campaign in the Indian Ocean (the Monsun Gruppe). The U-boat Missions add-on features new strategic elements, new playable submarines, an improved navigation map, and an improved upgrade system. It also upgrades the engine to version 1.5.

Gold Edition
Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific Gold Edition was released on October 11, 2008. This is the full version of Silent Hunter 4, which includes the U-Boat Missions expansion pack.