The premise of the game is simple enough; stick yourself in a powered sardine can with a few torpedoes, a deck gun and map of the Atlantic and set off in search of unfortunate merchantmen to sink in the great Battle of the Atlantic. The devil, however, is in the detail, and it is all too easy to make a long patrol half way around Scapa Flow and back again one of the most droll experiences since watching the paint on your bedroom wall dry. One has to provide distractions, occupy the players time with the operations of a submarine whilst not over burdening them with mundane tasks.

Drowning in Pretty Seas
The first step Ubisoft have taken towards immersing players (…we're sorry, but that pun just won't go away) is with the games all new graphical engine which recreates glistening water and dank interiors with equal allure. The attention to graphical detail goes so far as to reproduce the blurring effects of water on optics, particularly affecting the periscope, which has to drain off a certain amount of water when it emerges from the waves, giving a vital few seconds more of exposure time during a cat and mouse game in which a single hint as to the location of a submarine can spell disaster for its crew and mission.

Also vital to a submarine game is sound; if any here remember watching Das Boot they'll remember the tense scenes whilst being hunted by destroyers, all quiet onboard the U-Boat with a crew afraid to sneeze and the sound of approaching depth charges to thicken the atmosphere to near crushing levels, and that serves as a perfect example as to why sound is so critical to submarine simulations. Sound travels much further in water than it does in air, and so one can spot a submarine on the hydrophone based solely on the sound of a mechanic dropping a wrench during repairs a couple of miles away. Thus the sound engineers have pulled off a brilliant feat and convincingly recreated everything from the hissing noise of a leaking bulkhead through the sounds of a North Atlantic storm and on to the terror inspiring noises of a destroyer's propeller passing overhead and the crunch-crunch of approaching depth charges going off in the water.

Torpedoes Away
Great says you, it can simulate the player being hunted down, but what about the player doing some hunting of his own? Well here Silent Hunter III excels, providing scalable levels of realism to accommodate the hardened grogs and fresh faced seamen alike.

At its most realistic, the game is a sheer joy to play for those who want to plot every torpedoes run; setting up a single torpedo is a multifaceted task, involving runs between the periscope and targeting computer, judging of distances, angles and speeds. You can even just time yourself on the runs to see if you can't improve to near German-efficient levels of proficiency with the whole process.

Of course for those who are less confident, the computer can take control of just about any function of the ship, though managing the crew to ensure the right people are in the right place is another element Ubisoft has got right. One can move crew around the boat, rest them and during a career mode even promote them with new skills; ensuring the right people are in the right spots can make the difference between life and a watery grave.

Going Solo
Unfortunately the game does have one glaring omission - there's no Wolfpack in the single player campaign. Ok, so it might be more than a little difficult to program AI that could handle the extremely complicated manoeuvre of attacking a convoy with multiple U-Boats - first having to get them to the same location in the sea to intercept a convoy, then setting them up in the correct positions and finally launching a coordinated attack, but dammit it'd be a hoot to be able to do it without having to go online and look for a few other restless souls to go out to sea with.

In multiplayer one can grab a few other wannabe U-Boat captions and head off for some of the said missed-out upon wolfpack action, and successfully taking down a convoy is all the more satisfying with a few mates. It's also a lot safer, as two or three U-Boats against a destroyer are far better than one…

Conclusion
What, you need a conclusion?! Sheesh, go out and buy the game already… if you liked Das Boot or feel the compunction to go for minutes underwater in the bath, then this is a must buy.