Silent Hunter 4

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2007-03-20 11:46am

My overall summary from a few minutes playing SH4:

THE GOOD:

An idea taken from the modders!

Hitting ESC near a base brings up this menu:

Graphics are cool

Many more options than simply 1024x768, including some widescreen formats (I think)

THE BAD:

The Career screen is 3d. Yes. 3d. You can click and drag your view around, which causes you to miss selectable areas due to the initial default view angle. And it used up valuable time that could have been used for something else, and really adds no immersion.

The User interface is much less intuitive and clunkier than SH3's.

While there are some nice things from mods for SH3 that have been incorporated like enlargeable dials, e.g. you put the mouse over a dial and it enlarges, etc, too much of the user interface is clunky and takes up more room compared to the SH3 incarnation:

Too much was changed around from SH3 for no good reason other than "change is good!"

Why was it necessary to move the report list from the bottom of the screen, where it's grouped with all the other controls and dials to it's own window, which constantly gets in the way and is distracting, no more simply scanning the bottom of the screen? Yes, I know the report window is now draggable around but it's a pain to drag it around so you can see certain things on specific screens.

Also, you can no longer click on people in the 3D view, and tell them what to do via the menu which appears when you hit them like in SH3.

It also appears that you can no longer tell the Weapons officer equivalent to come up with a solution on the target (something which I think happened due to the shift from "crewmen" to "Stations" as a design decision).

No longer does a single button bring up the fuel status, air status, CO2 status, etc; but now you have to click buttons on the bottom of the screen to bring up that status, and it's displayed as a simple filled bar, no more immersive graphics of dials.

(Blown up 200% to make it easier to see)

More Damning, is that AFAIK, the TDC is confusingly all over the place AFAIK, there's no immersive single "go to" screen for the TDC like there was in SH1.

SH4 TDC (best you got)

SH1 TDC single screen

The Radar isn't much better

SH4 Radar. Yes, I'm sure WW2 radars displayed the range scale on the CRT screen itself. There are no labels on the switches, so you have to sort of guess how many clicks on the switch to get the range you want.

SH1 Radar. Quite a bit more useable, no?

Particle Sprays will enamanate from the limber holes in your boats; I guess this is to simulate cascading water off your hull. But it just looks bad.

Why, I didn't know that the US used Lancasters as long range bombers and search planes in WW2!

Also, I didn't know that the US used metric to measure distances and depths in WW2!

The flickering light problem is also present in this. Guess they didn't fix it.

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-03-21 03:47am

Damn. And I had high hopes for SH4.

Is it worth buying or no?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2007-03-21 03:56am

Shep, that SH1 radar is a thing of beauty.

Is it as easy as a game killing Japanese shipping could be, or have they been 'creative'? That USN Lancaster... well.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2007-03-21 12:00pm

Apparently this is what the game looks like with all the post processing stuff turned on. I want a Sextuple core now.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2007-03-21 03:56pm

Too much has been changed from SH3 to SH4; that the game is essentially broken; it's like the devs looked at SH3 and saw what worked quite wlel, and said "we won't keep that, too hard to program, now lets work on groovy 3d wakes and post processing instead!"

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2007-03-21 04:39pm

So, Shep, the final analysis is that if I want some Pacific submarine warfare action I should buy SH3 and get a mod. Right?

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2007-03-21 04:42pm

Uhm, no. Get Silent Hunter 1 Commander's Edition, and find some way of palying it on Win XP or VISTA

Ubiquitous · Post by **Ubiquitous** » 2007-03-21 04:53pm

That last picture you posted is a real thing of beauty.

Post by **Vympel** » 2007-04-03 09:34am

Here's what IGN said about SH4:

Ubisoft has done it again. Silent Hunter 4 is yet another Ubisoft game that does not work with anti-aliasing (AA). The designers are apparently stuck in 1997, where working AA was a novel feature that only those in the magical land of Silicon Valley got to experience. Even forcing AA via the driver control panel does not work. Making matters worse is the fact that the game doesn't truly support resolutions over 1024 x 768. The 2D interface scales nicely to increased resolutions, yet the guts of the game, its 3D engine, appears locked at 1024 x 768.

The result is one of the ugliest games we've seen in recent memory. We ran the game on a 22" widescreen LCD, with a native resolution of 1680 x 1050, and the jaggies made it a very unpleasant experience. They were so bad that visually identifying ships is much harder than it should be, as ships appear as a bunch of shifting pixels at long range. The community is in uproar about this woeful oversight, but there's hope on the horizon - a fix has been mentioned for the upcoming 1.2 patch, but it's not promised. For those of you who don't know what AA is, or run at the measly resolution of 1024 x 768, it's not an issue. For the rest of us, it's almost a show-stopper.

The audio department isn't much better. To our amazement, out of the box the game uses the exact same sound effects as the last game. Lazy. Except this time they were buggy, getting caught in loops. The 1.1 patch fixed the bugs and introduced new sound effects, but the game's audio system still shows just how rushed this game was.

They gave it an 8.8 rating all the same. The game being ugly is really the only problem.

Remarkable, given the sexy screenshots previously out.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2007-04-03 12:45pm

Uhhh, Silent Hunter 4 ugly? What the hell are they on?

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-04-03 12:51pm

They are exactly right.
Stuck at 1024 with no AA is UGLY.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2007-04-03 12:57pm

AI and historically-wise they botched some things.
1) Torpedoes - Mark XIV explodes every fucking time. Quite the opposite happened irl.
2) AI is shit. I sneaked into Tokyo port. Nevermind the dumbass destroyer which was patrolling the shallow water entry lane (he got 300m from me and still didnt notice me. Broad daylight, periscope depth. But that's details. I got a nice target: a heavy cruiser harbored in the gulf. I waited until it was night again, fired off a full P-class 4-torpedo salvo, sank the bastard and what? Nothing. No planes taking off, no additional patrols. That destroyer didnt even bother to come around and check. Now Im sneaking out past him and he acts like its peace time.

That whole region should have lit up like a Christmas tree when 4 torpedoes hit and sank that cruiser.

I want mods to fix this. I really like this game - plus I like easy action, but easy must not mean stupid.

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2007-04-03 01:11pm

Thanks for the review, Shep! I haven't played it myself yet, but I've heard that it feels more like an arcade game than SH3. I'm still playing SH3 and am testing the various mods.

montypython · Post by **montypython** » 2007-04-03 07:39pm

Mods and patches are a must for this to be truly immersive, it appears.

kheegster · Post by **kheegster** » 2007-04-03 09:10pm

Tolya wrote:AI and historically-wise they botched some things.
1) Torpedoes - Mark XIV explodes every fucking time. Quite the opposite happened irl.
2) AI is shit. I sneaked into Tokyo port. Nevermind the dumbass destroyer which was patrolling the shallow water entry lane (he got 300m from me and still didnt notice me. Broad daylight, periscope depth. But that's details. I got a nice target: a heavy cruiser harbored in the gulf. I waited until it was night again, fired off a full P-class 4-torpedo salvo, sank the bastard and what? Nothing. No planes taking off, no additional patrols. That destroyer didnt even bother to come around and check. Now Im sneaking out past him and he acts like its peace time.

That whole region should have lit up like a Christmas tree when 4 torpedoes hit and sank that cruiser.

I want mods to fix this. I really like this game - plus I like easy action, but easy must not mean stupid.

If you really want to avoid stupid action, then simply avoid trying to infiltrate ports. This was certain suicide in real life, apart from the Royal Oak which was basically an early-war fluke. If my memory serves me, I've read an interview with the SHIII developers who said that they simply didn't bother programming much realistic AI into the ports because realistic players wouldn't bother at all, and 'arcade' players would want their barrel of fish to shoot.