3 years on, I need to update the score.

User Rating: 7 | Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic PC
The box has been gathering dust on my shelf since 2010, but I decided to give it another go. It's nice to see that the DRM is dead after the patches. However, as seen in my old review, this wasn't the real problem with the game. Patches did not fix much and without mods, this game is still quite unplayable, if you actually want to sink stuff. With mods... meh... hit or miss. Even with tons of mods it's still not up there where Silent Hunter 3 was with the ACM interface (and we got better ones since), and nowhere near the Silent Hunter 4 OMEGU mods (with my interface).

If you happen to stumble upon this title and think that it might be fun, just get Silent Hunter 4. You have american and german subs, you get a simple huge mod to install and you can play it right away. SH 5 is ok, but takes more effort. All in all a really missed opportunity. We'll get Silent Hunter Online in the future but the promise of a real uboat simulator has died with SH5. As a real marine officer this hurts me more than most. In a world of GPS and electronic navigation, a WW2 sub sim on par with DCS A-10C (the mother of all current simualtors) would've been to die for.

What hurts most is that some of the features which could've made this a training tool were easier to implement than the silly 3d interior. We could've had Gyro errors, real sextant navigation, dead-reckoning navigation, tides, currents, wind factors, ballast simulation, the works. I mean, Christ, I did these in Microsoft Excel, the formulas are THAT simple. Anyway, no need to punish the game too much for this. As it is it's a pretty solid experience, but if you're new, give Silent Hunter 4 UBM a try, then go to Subsim and get Operation Monsoon+OMEGU a go first.


OLD REVIEW:
I know that many of you are blind and can't read the net or the game box that says that you need a permanent connection. Well, most fans have read it. We've known about it for months, and yes we've complained about it. A LOT.
Then we've heard that there is only one type of sub and that the campaign only goes as far as 1943. Then we realized that most "must-have" improvements had been ignored and it's up to moders again to waste time and implement them AGAIN, as they have had for SH3 and SH4. And then we saw the new interface and realized that it was flawed and that it will hinder the game.

And yet, we've bought the game. And we'd even be happy about it, if it weren't for BUGS. So many bugs and missing features (some even included in the manual itself) that we've had the feeling that it's a BETA version. And yet, the nerve of some people at Ubi... they actually believe that the poor reception has been caused by DRM only! No it hasn't, I have a good net, I've bought the game on release date, never had any problems logging in or saving the game online. So guys, please stop focusing on DRM. f_k it. It was a BAD choice and they'll soon realize it. But just fixing that still leaves us with a broken game.

So yes Ubi, we love the genre so much that we were actually willing to go with your DRM and to mod and play the game again. And yes the game really has a whole lot of potential. But if you don't want this worthy series to die, you will need to patch this game until it shines. There are so many new (and old) bugs, that the game will never really recover through moding alone. You need to finish your job. Shame on you for releasing a game in such a poor state. Shame on you for not testing it or using testers who have no idea how to actually play this game and and no interest in naval sims.

There IS true potential here. The graphics are simply amazing, the modeling and environment programming teams need a raise for this one. The dynamic objective campaign has a lot of promise even in vanilla. And the crew would grow on you if they were actually useful at their jobs. There are lots of good new ideas for newcomers and intermediate players. There are good things that might be even better if they actually WORKED.

But the game needs patches. You need to hire someone or overwork some current employees to patch this game up and also put in requested features. Some of them have even been included in the Manual, but not in the game (same happened to SH4). Yes, normally companies DO patch the game, but hey, this is Ubisoft. This is the "we love respawning road blocks in Far Cry 2" company. This is the "so the Uboat Missions addon has a faulty Notepad. So what?" company. Yes, I know they'll patch it, and already moders have repaired SOME of the damage. But with a game in such a state, I bet that the patches will also be a "patch-up" job for a dead game with poor sales. A decision which would be a true shame and should be avoided at all costs.

I'm pretty sure that the only ones to blame are those that rushed this game forward and released it to the wolves. People which actually thought that 5.0 score Reviews are better for a rushed buggy game than 2 more months of testing and preview releases for loyal fans that would've lead to a 9.0 sim with imba graphics and newcomer-friendly gameplay. I don't know who you are, or why you did this, but gratz for f_king up a superb long-time series.

I'll resist the temptation of giving the game a 1.0... I'm actually sorry to give it a 5.0 too. But at the moment, I'm generous. If the game is fixed well, then we're looking at at a 9.0 score game (deducting one for the silly release state).