Gameplay

Silent Storm is an incredibly intuitive and natural game. Things that make sense in the real world, make sense in SS. Your character not only takes cover behind trees, but he can be concealed. However, if he makes noise, he might also be heard and enemies will be able to take blind shots at him.

Similarly, if you hear an enemy coming for you, you’ll see an ear icon and a red outline of his standing form. You can shoot and be given a percentage chance of hitting, but for all you know, he went prone or crouched and the percentage is incorrect. On the other hand, if you can see your enemy, the percentage will be accurate. You can also aim at specific parts of the body. Hitting the legs takes away action points, hitting the arms ruins his accuracy, and hitting the head increases the chance of a critical hit or knockout, not to mention deafness or blindness.

Characters generally take realistic amounts of damage. Rarely will just one bullet take one down, though a powerful rifle combined with a critical hit on the head can do so. Most pistols can take forever to kill someone, but some use the powerful .38cal parabellum ammunition that some SMGs have.

On the other hand, the developers clearly kept the focus on fun and gameplay. Realism won’t compromise the strengths of the game. For example, maps are quite small – I doubt any is larger than 150m (~500ft) in any dimension. Most are likely under 100m by 50m. Weapon accuracy is scaled down accordingly. SMGs and pistols have pathetically poor accuracy, having difficulty hitting someone at even 30 feet. Even the best sniper rifles are limited to a range of “50” – presumably 50m (~160 feet). This is hardly realistic and yet works well, since the game scales all weapons down proportionately. The rifles really do feel like they’re really hitting from extreme ranges, and the SMGs, despite their poor aim, are the deadliest of weapons up close.

The game is also remarkably realistic for the most part. The various stances have an immediate and noticeable effect on aim, movement, spotting and obviously your profile as a target. There are skills like hide which permit characters to sneak upon the enemy for quick, silent, disabling melee attacks, and other skills like engineering that allow the setting of grenades as booby traps at doors, or the planting of mines. A character hiding behind a wall that gets hit by a panzerfaust will definitely feel it if not get killed outright. Coverage is calculated quite believably – sniping with impunity from up high while in a prone position at standing targets down below is proof positive of that.

Intricate concepts like familiarity with a weapon are present, in addition to the now-mandatory RPG stat system. However, not only do characters improve in skills they use, they also gain abilities with every level. Most of these abilities are one-time improvements to a skill or remove certain penalties (like shooting from the wrong position), others boost the character’s ability to gain experience or familiarity with a weapon.


The AI is challenging though not spectacular. It rarely implements stupid tactics, the mistakes it makes are believable. On the other hand, a careful, experienced player is pretty much unbeatable – with practice it’s easy to exploit the weaknesses of a turn-based system.

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