Sound of Silence
Format: PC.
Developer: Nival Interactive.
Publisher: JoWood Productions.
Release date: 31st Oct, 2003.
Let me begin by saying I'm prejudiced. Very prejudiced. About as prejudiced as a Jew on the jury of a court trying Hitler for war crimes. Yes, that prejudiced.
You see, I've been primed by numerous films about small elite squads operating behind enemy lines in WWII. Blowing up supply depots, sniping enemy sentries right in the fucking face, machine-gunning platoons of soldiers and generally teaching the Jerries a thing or three about warfare. So if you're expecting me to be impartial about Silent Storm, a squad-level turn-based game set against the background of WWII, you're a damn fool.
Of course, I chose a Brit, and got a bit of a surprise. Now don't get me wrong, I love cheesy accents. I was raised on cheesy accents. Actors hamming up lines like "Ze Reich vill last vun zousand years, Englander schwein!" and "Now, see here, Jerry!" are my bread and butter.
But the voice actor doing the Brit accent in this game sounds like Shrek.
It's obviously meant to be a Scots accent, but sadly falls (falls? Collapses!) short of the mark. It didn't spoil the game for me, it just proved a bit disconcerting. Every time he spoke I had to scroll over to him and make sure he didn't have a fucking donkey in tow. Still, apart from that minor detail, the accents are great.
Then add a whole plethora (that's right, plethora, bitches) of weapons into the mix. You can arm them with pistols, rifles, submachine guns, grenades, rocket launchers, machine guns and a medley of melee weapons. Each trooper can carry and use any weapon, with varying degrees of efficacy. Obviously, each role favours certain weapons, and there is also role-specific equipment to load up with. The weapons come in a variety of flavours, each model has its own characteristics which make them suitable for very different roles. Thanks to the huge amount of equipment each trooper can carry (no weight restrictions, big mishtake!), you can arm each one for a wide variety of different situations. There are easily more than seventy weapons in total, most are authentic WWII vintage, a few are anachronisms, and still others are...rather futuristic, shall we say?
Vitality points, or VPs, represent health, and are lost by being shot, blown up, masturbating (it makes you BLIND!), and so on. As they decrease, so do the character's fighting skills. If all of a character's VPs are lost, they faint, like a little pansy, and have to be carried off the battlefield to recover. A character can be permanently killed by suffering extreme damage. Like having a fucking building collapse on them, Doug, you careless it's-only-a-grenade twat, or a vindictive enemy putting six rounds into their head after they've fainted. You can always recruit more troopers, but if your main character faints or dies, it's Game Over. Complicating the situation are critical conditions, such as bleeding, deafness, unconsciousness (that's the manly blacking out kind, not the pansy fainting), AP reduction et al, which is why a medic is a must.
The interface is nothing less than beautiful in its economy, displaying everything you need to know and providing easy access to every character, their skills, status and inventory. The keyboard shortcuts are also useful, and memorising them speeds gameplay up somewhat. One thing I don't understand at all are the base sections, where you hire and fire troopers, heal the wounded and manage your weapons and equipment. This section would have been better as a simple menu, as the base interaction is simply too shallow to be effective on any level.
Enemies are often present in considerable force, usually outnumbering you significantly. Armed with a wide selection of weapons and not in the least hesitant to use them, they provide a good challenge on anything above the 'normal' difficulty level. The AI isn't perfect, but it's not totally stupid, either. Enemies will not rush into your gunfire, and they think nothing of hiding behind closed doors in silence, waiting for you to open them. Unlike other games where enemies can be lured out from their positions, the opponents in Silent Storm stubbornly hold their ground, whether it be a bunker, house, or indeed, an open fucking field. Now, full marks for improving the AI beyond the 'Gee, what's that noise?' level, and to be honest they do move well on the attack, but if you're shooting at them from long range, they tend to just remain where they are, twiddling their fucking thumbs. I don't know what they're trying to prove. Perhaps that faces can stop bullets? Well, as my rather numerous gaming sessions have proved; they can't. The civilians are even crazier, delighting in running directly through ongoing battles, and sometimes picking up weapons and joining in. Geneva convention my arse.
You're not just limited to seeing enemies, you can also hear them. Enemies detected this way show up as red silhouettes, and although you can still shoot at them, you have no way of knowing if you hit them or not. Unseen civilians also show up this way, so you might pour on a full belt of machine gun ammo only to find you've blown a housewife halfway across the battlefield. Not that I did that. Enemies can hear you too, and although I never found stealth to be much use, I didn't try very hard. The 'Hide' option is still useful, and comes into its own combined with quiet weapons and some sneakiness.
Sonically, it also excels. The sound effects are sharp and high quality, the explosions are shockingly loud, the gunshots differ depending upon the weapon (even the reloading noises are different), walls collapse with a chunky crumbling noise I have grown to love, and even the sighing fall of leaves makes my cock weep at the sheer beauty. Alright, I exaggerate slightly, but they are good. A lot of the characterisation comes not from the extensive profile that comes with each trooper, but their exclamations during battle. Shallow, but effective. Plus, hearing a Frenchman shout “My weapon is naked!” is funny. Every time.
The battles themselves proceed at a fairly steady pace, with the AI sometimes taking its own good time, but if you don't like it, buy an attention span. They can last for several hours, though the random encounters (which you can choose to participate in, or not) are smaller and usually take up less time. It's very deep and involving, requiring you to invest a fair bit of time, but the more you put in, the more you get out. Even at its most frustrating, I went away immediately thinking up strategies and tactics, unable to take my mind off the current mission. More often than not, I simply loaded up my last save straight away and tried something else. There is a great deal of satisfaction to be gained merely through trying out new things that you have only just learned, or have recently occurred to you. Long playing sessions are a basic requirement to get the most out of the game, and I thank the Lord that I don't have a disabled relative to look after, because thanks to this game they would have been completely ignored for weeks (well, more so than usual). So let that be a warning to you. Sadly, there's no multiplayer. The story is thin and unsatisfying, progressing only through recovered documents and the occasional cut scene, but the campaigns are a good size, and the missions appear in a different order each time you play through, which keeps things fresh.
Still, the game is nothing less than excellent. This decade's X-Com, if I may be so bold. As far as I am concerned, the score is Nival = 1, Other Developers = 0.