Silent Hunter III

Back in "The Day," the PC was the platform of choice for hardcore simulation gaming. Store shelves were full of flight sims, tank sims, helicopter sims, mech sims ... you name it. But the relatively small size of the simulation market and the high cost of creating modern PC games has really put a crimp on the genre. Nowadays, only a handful of great sim titles brave the odds. We are thankful that Silent Hunter III is among them.

Silent Hunter III is the Citizen Kane of serious simulation titles. The game packaging might tell you that it's a simulation of a World War II submarine, but what it doesn't tell you is that it'll put you right in a submarine. But for the spray of the sea, you're there.

Of course, Silent Hunter III is not for the timid. If you just jumped into your sub and started ordering your young impressionable German soldiers around, you'd run into disasterous consequences. No, this game has to be approached with a healthy respect for the material. Like the movie classic Das Boot, Silent Hunter III is as much about the people as the hardware. If your engines are going to run at full efficiency, they're going to run that well because you've kept your engineers Otto and Klaus well fed and rested during the long, treacherous nights clawing through the English Channel.

A game of Silent Hunter III isn't spent staring at a bunch of dials or simulation readouts. Instead, you actually get a captain's-eye view of the submarine, complete with your haggard crew standing around and fidgeting with authentic controls. Sausages hang from the ceiling and sway with the ship. When you fire off your torpedoes, you pull out a lovingly modeled German stopwatch to time the impact. It's incredibly engrossing, especially when your ship is racked by a depth charge right off the port bow and the entire interior swivels some 90 degrees in either direction like you're standing inside a child's toy.

A dynamic campaign mode allows you to experience the whole scope of submarine warfare during World War II, from the early days where U-Boats were the terrible invisible masters of the sea to the bitter end of the war, when allies had perfected sub-hunting and every convoy was armed to the teeth. Do well and your crew will gain more experience as you unlock more and more goodies for your sub. Do poorly and, well, the Atlantic is a cold, cold place. Not everyone will get into a hardcore simulation like Silent Hunter III, but we're happy to number it among the best for the PC this year.