[Silent Storm] Feel the heart pumping adrenaline of methodical action!

Axen

The story is crazy, but it's fun as hell!

Hey friends! Today I'd like to talk to you about Silent Storm and its various Kin.


Silent Storm? But what is Silent Storm?

The game is a fully 3D turn-based, tactical strategy game set in the backdrop of World War II. The player (thats you BTW) creates a character and picks either the Allies or Axis side. Then you recruit a squad of rough n' tough commandos and take on various missions.

Sure it doesn't have the base building and research of UFO or the territory conquering of Jagged Alliance, but what Silent Storm does have is fully destructible environments! Sniper in a bell tower? Blow up the building! Machine gun nest in a house? Collapse the Goddamn roof on them! Oh and keep your eyes peeled for any explosive barrels. A well placed shot can save the day, but one stray bullet can ruin it.

Yeah


Gee! That sure sounds swell, but how does it play?

Fantastically is how!

Oh, uh. The game is turn based and caution is the word of the day. Each side (Your side, Civilians/allies, Enemies) each take a turn moving their people around the battlefield. You can have at most 6 people in your squad. Each squad member will have a limited number of Action Points (AP, duh) to spend on, well, actions each turn.

Usually for each mission you will have a specific objective (retrieve this, kill that, rescue him). This means that you don't necessarily have to go in guns a blazing and take on every enemy on the map. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.



Wait, you said I can create my own character?

Sure did! You can pick you side (Axis or Allies), then you can pick your nationality. For the Allies you can picj from: British, American, and Russian. For the Axis you choices are: German, Italian, and Japanese. Your nationality really doesn't have much effect on the game aside from what your characters crazy accent will sound like.

Next you can pick you class.

Wait class? Is this one of them Arr Pee Gees?

Well sort of. All your squad members gain levels and points to put in a spec tree.

But like I was saying. You can pick from several classes each one comes with it's own Spec Tree.

The Classes

Soldier:
Skilled in using machine guns and the like. While the Soldier does have good combat capabilities he has little else to bring to the squad.

Engineer:
Not quite as skilled in the art of war as the Soldier is, Engineers are handy with mine probes, lockpicks, explosive charges/mines. He can even booby-trap doors and windows.

Sniper:
What is there to say? Fine. Snipers are not to great in a stand up fight, but that isn't the point of a sniper. The Sniper can stealth and sneak around and take out a soldier halfway across the battle map. Other then killing shit from afar, Snipers don't really have any other skills.

Scout:
Scouts combat capabilities kind of suck. However they are masters of stealth and can sneak right up to an unwary guard and plant a knife in his back.

Medic:
This one should be self explanatory too. Medic heal people. They can stop bleeding, heal "wounds" (wounds can lower your accuracy, AP, evasion, or any number of things). They're not to great in a fight either, but give a medic a rifle (not a machine gun or sub-machine gun) and they will do fairly well.

Grenadier:
These guys are all about grenades. Big guns and grenades! They are great in a fight and can blow shit up. Still, they lack any other skills.


Well, enough with the introduction. Chances are you know what this game is and what it is all about. So lets skip on to the good stuff.

Mods!

AddMod Tool
This makes it incredibly easy to add ANY mod to ANY saved game (though it's recommended you save on the world map). Super easy to use, this means no more starting over if you want to add mods to your game!

FastMod
Doubles the speed of animations, which speeds up gameplay. Somewhat handy to have since at times there may be so many NPCs (both good and bad) on the field at once that turns take a fair amount of time.

Replacement Hardware Cursors
This replaces the slightly boring hardware cursors with images of the software cursors. They're still a little rough, but you might like them more. Really the only reason you would want this mod is if the Software cursor lags like a motherfucker.

DieHard v1.52
This is one of a couple "balance" mods. This particular mods makes the game somewhat harder and makes the NPCs use grenades more often.

Oddball's Mod
This is another "balance" mod, though I prefer this one myself. It removes the you-know-whats and those-things as well. Also, IIRC, it unlocks all the NPC uniforms so you can pick from anything while creating your character.

NO-PK
This mod simply removes the you-know-whats.

Well, that's it for mods I recommend. There are more mods here.

Trap!



Silent Storm also has an expansion called Sentinels (or S3). It is quite awesome and adds money to the game. Which can make things pretty hard in the earlier game. Actually, if you can track down Silent Storm Gold it comes with the expansion.



There is also Hammer & Sickle. I have yet to play it myself, but it looks exactly like Silent Storm. They didn't even reskin the UI! At any rate, if it is anything like Silent Storm, then it is probably fairly fun.


So let us share our stories, favorite squad set ups, tips, tricks, mods, what-have-you! It can be stuff from Silent Storm, Sentinels, or Hammer & Sickle!

Lord Yod

The first half of the first game is so good.

Axen

I am currently plaything through Sentinels myself. The inclusion of money changes things a little bit. The early game is a bit of a bitch since you probably won't be able to afford a full squad right away. Stealth is your friend and setting up traps almost seems necessary. I am loving the challenge of it though.

Edit- I mean setting up traps is always useful, but I can normally get by in Silent Storm without them.

VeritasVR

Personally shilling the LP of this game in my sig.

Steev

I was really sad to find out that the only way I can get this game running on my newer PC is by changing the max ram setting in msconfig and rebooting. And then changing it back and rebooting again when I'm done.

Evil Multifarious

whoa whoa

whoa

what's this other game that is like Silent Storm all about, now

Igel

I keep hoping that this will appear on Gog.com.

Axen

Evil Multifarious wrote: »

whoa whoa

whoa

what's this other game that is like Silent Storm all about, now

Hammer & Sickle?

Here is what wikipedia says:

wikipedia wrote:

Hammer & Sickle is a tactical role-playing game for the PC, co-developed by the Russia-based companies Novik&Co and Nival Interactive and published by CDV in 2005. The game is set in the same universe (and runs on the same game engine) as Silent Storm, an earlier product by the same company.

The player takes on the role of a Soviet commando assigned to operate behind British-American lines in 1949 post-World War II Germany. Germany has recently been divided between Soviet and Western zones, the Cold War has just begun, and the Americans still have a monopoly on the atomic bomb.

The game features an open ended storyline whereby the player's actions determine the course of the game. The player also has significant control over the movement of his team between game maps and the passage of time, both of which also have an impact on the storyline.

The player can assign feats for his team members with each level-up as well as outfit them with disguises for moving through towns without attracting attention. A wide range of authentic weapons of the era can also be scavenged from dead enemies to outfit the player's team as well as bought and sold for cash.

As with Silent Storm, nearly all structures are completely destructible with enough firepower. Hammer & Sickle also employs ragdoll physics for bodies according to the precise velocity of an impact. Fully three dimensional mapping allows for obstruction calculations and cover effects from all angles, bullets ricochet and their stopping power depends on the weapon. Things are somewhat exaggerated for a more cinematic experience.

And a screenshot:

I know nothing about it myself. Though it was released in NA back in 2005.

Evil Multifarious

it's going to be impossible to find.

but god dammit i'm going to try.

Axen

Oh, one thing I did read about it is that based on your actions you can trigger World War III. I guess if you go around blowing everything up, kill everyone in sight, and generally making a lot of noise then the Americans will think it is a prelude to invasion and first-strike the USSR. I imagine that equals "Game Over".

edit- One of the Devs for Silent Storm made up a "geoscape" using the editor. Geoscape as in X-com world map thingy. I guess he wanted to show modders that you can create stuff like that, and perhaps even an X-com mod with the editor. However it seems no modders ever took up the challenge.

Hotlead Junkie

God damn I love how the guy's hat and gun fall a second later in that 'Trap' video. Straight out of a cartoon

Impersonator

Are these games available on GOG or Steam?

LionEyez

I wish I could find Hammer & Sickle...though I've heard bad things about it. Didn't it start out as 'just' a mod?

Still, the hours I've sunk into Silent Storm + Sentinels... I wish more people knew about this series.

Axen

Well Hammer & Sickle is up on Amazon for about $23 bucks. Sadly, Silent Storm Gold is $140.

While I'm not a too big a fan of digital distribution, for niche titles like these I'd say it'd be almost mandatory.

Steev

I would love a gog.com version of this.

MegaMek

Oh hey. I thought those mines my Axis engineer started with were like basic AP mines. The house I was in (and, not conincidentally, all of my soldiers) didn't survive the explosion. Gonna have fun figuring this game out.

korodullin

So you're aware, try to avoid buying any old boxed copies of the original standalone Silent Storm, as it comes with a classic DVD drive-destroying version of Starforce.

With that in mind, Silent Storm Gold comes with an old version of SecuROM, which has a bad habit of rendering either S2 or Sentinels unplayable entirely at random.

Oh, and one last bit: The Silent Storm engine is very poorly optimized. Even my PC that can run STALKER, Dragon Age, Fallout 3, Star Trek Online, and a large variety of new games at full specs still chokes on S2 at times.

TeeMan

The horrible accents in this game make it worth the graphical stuttering. There's an awful lot of engrish translations too, even in the first cut-scene if I recall correctly.