Silent Hunter IV First Impression

What a load of... wait, let me calm down.

First, this is from the perspective of someone who played and enjoyed SHIII. A quick summary of my first impression is that if you're only mildly interested in this type of game, and not a hardcore subsim fan, you should wait a while. Given enough time, it will probably be patched and modded to the point where it's enjoyable for the non-hardcore simulation gamer. Right now, only the hardcore should buy it, and even then, not if you have high blood pressure and a quick temper. The core of the game works... it's playable, but there are so many bugs and missing pieces that it takes a strong suspension of disbelief, plus workarounds, to get through a mission.

First the bad, and the ugly:

* Graphics are a mixed bag, mostly negative. There is an interesting "painterly" texture option and the water looks very nice (both over and under the surface). But the 3D part of the game runs at a fixed 1024x768 resolution, so textures can look a bit blocky on a higher res monitor. And there is no anti-aliasing, so guy wires on the sub look like dots and dashes instead of a straight line. Ubi might be working on this. On the positive side, when it does look good it looks really good... little details like rust stains and bolts on your sub look great.

* There are effectively only two difficulty/realism settings: easy and hardcore. There is no middle ground, because they removed the WSO officer (I used him for range and speed of target, and did everything else manually in SHIII). I'm using the dummy mode because the targeting is completely different, and I can't figure it out. Even if I can figure it out, I'm not sure how I can crunch the speed and range fast enough in the middle of hot and heavy convoy action. Sub skippers never did all of that by themselves. OTOH, I don't like the "lock and fire" dummy mode either. I hope Ubi brings back the WSO.

* There is even less ability to move around or look at your sub's interiors than in SHIII, and the crew members are no longer interactive (can't click on them to give orders). That doesn't bother me much... I can deal with an icon and hotkey driven interface, but it's bothering others who want more immersion.

* The documentation is awful. The manual is sketchy, and there isn't enough in-game help to know how vast areas of the sim are supposed to work. I doubt Ubi will release a new manual, so we'll probably have to wait for a user-generated Wiki to know how to do some things.

* In a case of realism gone too far, you can't start a career at the beginning of WWII and follow through to the end. The game retires you (mothballed) after a certain number of patrols. This is historically accurate -- successful skippers went to Groton to teach the newbies, different from the German practice. But that's gotta be frustrating for a lot of players.

Now a few good words:

* They're not using Starforce and I haven't had any trouble so far with the CP, but a few people have reported issues.

* There is a bit more mission variety, like photo recon, special ops insertion, and rescues at sea. Lifeboats are modeled too, which is nice.

* The tedious micromanagement of the crew is improved, although the new system isn't that great either, and there isn't a strong feeling of attachment to your crew. Maybe I haven't spent enough time yet with this aspect.

* Ubi released on patch already (right after release) and there's another coming up. With SHIII they released somethng like 4 major patches, and the game is moddable. So in a few weeks, or a few months, it should be a tighter game.

Hmmmm, interesting. Thank you for the review, Zenicetus.

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What a load of... wait, let me calm down.

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I agree with Zen. It seems the industry standard is now to forego paying for beta testers and to have paying customers perform this task (it seems one must wait months for a newly released game to function acceptably). There are many stupid glitches that make this very obvious. The depth dial doesn't match your actual depth etc...very frustrating. No torpedo salvos or depth adjustment on torpedos for keel shots. No descriptions or timeline of different torpedos, sonar/radar upgrades, funky damage control teams that don't fix anything etc... very disappointing indeed.

Hi Guys,

I've only managed a few hours on it so far... there is a little tab on the side of the periscope screen that you click to get a panel that tells you range/angles. It has another switch on that side panel that allows the depth/spread to be adjusted. Not sure about how to fire the salvo though... I'm not up to tackling convoys yet ( slow learner! :) )

Im still waiting for patch 1.2 before I try anything serious with it.


CBR

Zenicetus, your initial impressions seem very accurate and they pretty much agree with everything I am hearing or reading about the game at the various fan forums.

As a side note, I saw a posting over at SimHQ that SH4 actually displaced the Sims2 as the number 1 PC seller last week.

The quote is from this site:http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=13221

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The Silent Hunter series sequel Wolves of the Pacific snatches away the top PC sales spot from The Sims 2: Seasons in a surprise upset this week, while S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl also debuts to impressive sales numbers in the U.S. and the UK. Amazon additionally reports a steep rise in preorder interest for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Shivering Isles and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, both of which will see release in the UK and the United States early next week.

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I am sure that the vast majority of people who buy the game will probably play it in arcade mode and may never notice many of the problems such as sub operation functions that simply don't work, or the many historical inaccuracies. Sadly, the rest--meaning the serious sub sim fans have been tricked in to becoming final level beta testers just as Hosakawa Tito said.

Have you noticed the totally made up US award medals and the total lack of the correct US aircraft for the Pacific War. (They actually modeled the English Lancaster Bomber as the US search and recon aircraft and what looks like the Brewster Buffalo as the only US fighter aircraft--there just seems no reason for something this stupid!)

--and just like the sim junkie that I am, I also purchased a copy of the game the day it came out. I have all the others, and I still remember spending countless hours years ago playing the first game in the series. It was all in 2D, but still fun at the time.

It's funny, I've had the game since it came out, and I have downloaded the first patch, but until yesterday I hadn't even bothered to load the thing on my system.

I mainly did so just out of curiosity about the menus, graphics and such--I have no intention of playing it right now. I would rather wait until the last patch is out and the mods have fixed the rest before I try to really get into it.

Trying to play the initial release of both SH2 and SH3 pretty well soured me on both games, and I am only now getting back into SH3 because the mods seemed to have finally turned it into a fairly decent sim.

Besides, I have other games I am involved in right now, so I think I'll just wait until all the smoke clears on this one.

Cheers

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Originally Posted by Rob The Bastard

Hi Guys,

I've only managed a few hours on it so far... there is a little tab on the side of the periscope screen that you click to get a panel that tells you range/angles. It has another switch on that side panel that allows the depth/spread to be adjusted. Not sure about how to fire the salvo though... I'm not up to tackling convoys yet ( slow learner! :) )

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Right, that pull-out panel on the left is how you set torp running speed and depth. You can also pull out those controls on the attack map. Note: there is a bug causing the Mk 14 torps to run a little slow when set to fast speed so it's out of sync with the TDC and will cause trailing missed shots. Until it's patched, only use the slow running speed. There is also a tendency for them to run too deep... like about 10 feet too deep in the first year or so, but that's apparently realistic and intentional. I'm not sure when they start running accurately. So if you're starting early in the war, aim shallow, even for the big ships. I use 4 or 5 feet, just a tick or two shallower than the default setting. Remember you have to hit "W" to cycle through all the tubes to change settings.

Regarding salvos... there's an auto-spread thingie, but I use auto targeting mode and do it this way. First, use "L" to lock the target in view while you're getting set up in a good firing position -- ideally, 90 deg. abeam and within 1000 yards. But don't keep it locked when shooting, or all the fish will arrive at the same place (not ideal for big ships with watertight bulkheads, or if you're just aiming to shoot out the engine and finish with the deck gun). When you're ready to fire, unlock the target by hitting "L" again, and just aim the verticle reticle over the parts of the target you want to hit, walking it along the hull as you're firing (use "W" to cycle to the next tube). Practice this on the training mission against the cruiser.

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Originally Posted by Forward Observer

Have you noticed the totally made up US award medals and the total lack of the correct US aircraft for the Pacific War. (They actually modeled the English Lancaster Bomber as the US search and recon aircraft and what looks like the Brewster Buffalo as the only US fighter aircraft--there just seems no reason for something this stupid!)

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Yeah, there's a lot of that in the game, which makes it look even more like a rushed alpha than usual, with these things. I've been peeking just a bit at what the hardcore modders are doing over at subsim.com, and apparently there's a bunch of working functions that aren't even mapped to hot keys.

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I mainly did so just out of curiosity about the menus, graphics and such--I have no intention of playing it right now. I would rather wait until the last patch is out and the mods have fixed the rest before I try to really get into it.

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Well, I'm still managing to get through missions and starting to have fun as I learn the workarounds -- basically, hit Save frequently, use auto targeting (unless you're a masochist or are better at it than I am), and don't ever hit the "A" key for maintain depth (it's an instant CTD for most folks). It's growing on me, but I still might hit the point of frustration where I shelve it until one or several patches are released.

I just find it impossible to believe that a US Navy sub sim dedicated to the Pacific would leave out almost every US fighter aircraft that saw service in that theater.

There are no Grumman Wildcats or Hellcats that I saw in the museum section. These were the backbone of the Navy carrier fleets until the Corsair was introduced, which is also not in the game. Instead they model the crappy Brewster which hardly saw any action at all. It was used in the battle of Midway, but suffered such heavy losses it was withdrawn from combat

For dive bombers and torpedo planes they omitted the Douglas Dauntless and the Grumman Avenger, but instead modeled the Vought Vindicator---once again an outdated bomber/torpedo plane that was removed from service after Midway.

The Lancaster bomber is the biggest error of all. The US Navy or Army Air corps never used this plane---period! And what is really odd is that the actual search and recon plane that the US Navy did use in huge numbers--the PBY-5 Catalina---was actually modeled in SH-3. All they had to do was bring it over to this game.

It's obvious this game was released before it was really complete--otherwise how could they not make a better attempt to model at least a few of the actual aircraft used by the US Navy in the Pacific, especially when they already had the PBY-5 ready from the previous game.

Oh well--rant over!

Wow, am I glad I held off buying the game when I had the chance last week!

Why on Earth did UBI insist that this game be released prematurely? I simply don't understand the logic in rushing a game out the door for a Spring release?!? It sounds like SHIV needed at least two or three more months of tweaking and testing, that would have made it ready for a Summer release, just in time to take advantage of students looking to go gaming crazy once their exams are complete.

Well, I suppose SHIV will be a real pleasure to play a year from now when it's been thoroughly patched and modded. :furious3:

Yeah, the timing is odd for a rushed release. Maybe they had to pull some of the team off SH4 and call it Gold so they could work another project that was under a time crunch. Who knows. I just hope there are enough programmers left working in "patch mode" to get it tightened up soon. All the potential is there for a great sub sim... it just needs some love from both the devs and the mod community.

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Originally Posted by Rob The Bastard

Hi Guys,

I've only managed a few hours on it so far... there is a little tab on the side of the periscope screen that you click to get a panel that tells you range/angles. It has another switch on that side panel that allows the depth/spread to be adjusted. Not sure about how to fire the salvo though... I'm not up to tackling convoys yet ( slow learner! :) )

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Thanks Rob, I didn't know that. Useless manual.
I use salvos for the big ships, usually takes 3-4 torps to sink them and firing them one at a time is a pain.

US subs couldn't fire salvos, so you can't do it in the game.