Old skool players of SH3 might not be impressed with this release. If I was honest myself, I'm not. Too buggy!
OK, so what's good about SH4? Well, from the little time that I played on it, it gets right in to the action, no more 'hunting' those convey's down. Many of times in SH3 we have gone on patrol and not saw a single ship. This is not the case in SH4. In next to no time, I had hit a convey and doing my worst. It also seems that there are other mission scenarios that you can take on, rescue pilots, recon enemy habours etc. The graphics engine is completely different, and when you are in External view mode, it does seem very real. Unfortunately, so what? You spend most of your time underwater, or in Map view for Time Compression, so you don't really get to experience the reflections in the water, the realistic wakes created by the ships. The downside that this hinders performance. I myself have turned all this off and the game both looks impressive but also performs well.
The sound is a hit and miss affair. The voices of the saliors is very low, and you have to adjust the sound effect volume to hear it. The music gets repeative, you just end up turning it off.
The big problems with this games are i) it's still very buggy and ii) the key commands are different in SH4 to SH3.
1. Yes, the game is extermely buggy, so expect those patchs from Ubisoft. Patch 1.1 has already been release! 2. Why or why did the developers can the key commands in this version of the game? Old skool users of SH3 will be constantly pressing the wrong key and unfortunately, you can't reprogramme them. For example, External view is F11 in SH3 and F12 in SH4. Other problems:
a) Very poorly written manual. In fact, there are a few errors and it's very out of date; also it doesn't really explain anything of use like torpedo ranges etc. Also, the tutorials are crap. There should be a nice walk through tutorials, but there ain't, massive shame.
b) You need a high res display! Things get very cluttered with a res of 1024x768. Ideal res is 1600x1200 or 1920x1200. Luckily for me, I have 1920x1200 and things are great on this res.
I could go on all day with the list of faults, but I just hope that Ubisoft sort this little problems so that Sh4 could turn into a very good game.
The game has massive potential to be very good, but the lack of beta testing and quality control has given this game and the Silent Hunter brand a bad reputation.
3rd April 2007