Note to Buyers of SH4 ----> SH4 The Beautiful Letdown ????

[William516]

Ok I know that all sim games take time to mature and im not trying to start a war here just getting a few things off my chest and letting others know what your getting into before you buy this game.

Like so many others the minute it came out I went and got it. The thought of the beautiful screenshots and videos online made me crazy and I had to have it. Not to mention the fact that I'm an American and can actually go visit one of the older subs in Baltimore something I never have done and wanted to do with uboats but i dont live close to germany lol.

Anyways install went fine, thank goodness everything was on the right track so far. For once my DVD drive worked the way it was supposed to but only after i turned off the record feature in the options menu. Guess this is the or one of the many copy protection schemes.

Upon starting the game i was greated with the cheapest and by far worse movie I have ever scene. The idea of using MODIFIED screenshots and video to put together a fast paced movie blew my mind. It looked horrible. I would have much rather seen a GWX movie or even something similar to the SH3 stock movie.

Ok i will let the movie slide as well. We can mod it just like SH3.

Then comes the main menu, decent menu interface with all sorts of options and a decent track in the background. My hopes start going up again. I play with the options and decide to push my machine to her limits. Max out everything and check everything but window mode.

Hmm Hmm where to start, well lets start back at the academy with training, and here is where everything starts to fall appart. After setting up realism settings to everything real but outside view. I'm placed in what SHOULD be the command room of a submarine.

Looks decent but NOTHING AT ALL like the box, videos or pictures, eventhough they stated "screenshots" What a joke there! The first thing i noticed and hated was the fact that rather then add sections of the submarine they subtracted them. What were they thinking many people wanted to see EXTRA areas of the ship at least one, instead they took away the captains area as found on the other sim SH3. How could they detract from what they made before. Horrible idea and bad move. If this wasn't bad enough the also decided to take away the "click" interfase of all the stations. Now you HAVE to use the stupid buttons at the bottom. Where once in SH3 you felt like part of a full crew here you feel like a TV camara watching a poorly made film with bad acting. No longer can you click on ANY crew member of object and tell it what to do. UBI decided to force the use of the new and hard to understand or read control buttons. When something is NOT broke dont try and fix it. I jumped to the bridge view and again saw horrible grainy and block style grpahics. I went to click on the thing similar to the UZO and what happens???? Nothing, nothing at all i now have to use the interface to get to simple tools i used all the time in SH3. I cant control speed from the bridge, or anything. The crew members announcing "ship spotted" in a high pitched squeaky voice almost made me spit soda out my nose it was so funny. Where are the REAL crew voices and for that matter where are the real sound effects. Sound quality for most of the effects is horrible with looping tracks that get stuck. Sometimes it makes you want to shoot your own crew with the AA gun just to get him to shut up.

On a possitive note, the water and wakes are awesome and when they get the graphics fixed will look so real you may feel a little wet with every wave. The transparency of the water is excellent when it comes to diving. I now see why i have been bombed in SH3 while at perriscope depth with no scope above the water. You can in fact see the submarine from the air clearly at perriscope depth.

Unfortianatly there was not much else to talk about when it comes to the really good and anticipated parts of the game.

The suppossed crew on deck we all wanted and finally starting getting by the mods community in SH3, well they ARE in SH4 but they do nothing but stand there in stupid posses with little or no annimation. They do not RUN to man guns as some of os believed or were told.

The damage in SH4 is horrible. I rammed a cruiser durring the training mission at full speed and did not seem to take any damage, well i dont know if i did because there are no sound effects for damage other then the horrible screaching of the STOCK SH3 collision sound file. The damage control screen is useless well to me bacause i cant work it and the manual doesn't explain anything as to how to use it. I dove to crush depth and did not even know i was taking damage until the lights flickered on and off. What did they do with the effects from SH3? Who knows they didn't put them in SH4 thats for sure.

The other thing that many people asked for and never got was a decent death ending. HA HA Ha same exact thing as SH3. "Your dead" Dont know how or why but your dead basically.

Mastering torpedo attacks as another fatal flaw. I used to use the weapon officer for help while using manual targeting and yet his solution was too quick but it helped me learn when i had the correct solution vs his. In SH4 the weapon officer command do not exist. Either you do full auto targeting or full manual targeting. There will be no help from you silent crew.

I really hate to write a review like this for a game i wanted since the announcment but i have no choice. I'm not flaming this game but giving it an accurate review vs what people are expecting.

It should be illegal to say something is a screenshot that is actually a modified screenshot. Without the ability to use Anti-allias (something like that) the graphics look SH2th at times, exception the water and wakes.

The screenshots we saw on the SH4 website are a joke they have to have been modified to the point where they should no longer be called a screenshot. I'm very upset with the UBI for falsly presenting the screenshots and vids as being actual in game footage. The is no way in the cold waters of the Atlantic they were taken from the game and NOT modified.

Does SH4 have potential? Yes it does we have an awesome community that has found ways to over come most any type of screwup or shortcut the developers at UBI gave us. Will we ever see the extra compartments that we yearned for in SH3? Probably not as a matter of fact if SH5 follows the same trend we may only get the command room this time. Heck the conning tower is useless nobody likes to view it. Thats how the developers think. I will not be returing the game as i know the patches and mods will come. It upsets me though that many of the things i wanted to see, that we wanted to see were not done. Some of the things we loved in SH3 have been removed.

SH4 to me feels like a let down a "Beautiful letdown" when it comes to water, wakes, transparency, smoke, and so on but yet it is incomplete to say the best.

We all thought SH3 was incomplete well wait until you see what SH4 has in store for you.

My oppinion
"Wait" wait for the mods and patches before purchasing this game, stick to SH3 and grey wolves for the time being.

MY words to UBI
"SH3 was a great game, it wasn't broke why in gods name did you decide to try and fix it by creating a new game with less features then the original, listen to you FANS for crying out loud. We are the ones spending hard earned dollars on the sims / games!"

My words to the mod community
"Well get to work, lol they gave you guys with lots of tallent and time pleanty and I mean pleanty to fix!"

Any oppinions are welcomed as always

William

William
Captain
U-66
"Tiger Shark"

If you would like a copy of the U-66 Patrol log / story please feel free to PM me.

[scalelokt]

I have been reading a lot of posts on the forum lately, and most vary between absolute anger toward Ubi all the way to praise to Ubi and we should excuse the bugs which will soon be fixed anyway.

I was going to stay out of it, but everyone else has put in their two cents so I guess I may as well

I agree with William516 on pretty much every point. My first impression of SH4 was good, because the first thing I saw was beautiful graphics on the ships and water. Definitly got me excited. Well the more you get into the game, you very quickly start seeing some obvious bugs. I wont rehash them all since there are so many in previous posts. However I will say that while none of them make the game "unplayable" (except for maybe the stadimeter = CTD bug), they are annoying enough to at least make me not really want to play. Patch 1.1 did fix a lot of things, and I have faith that this game will be awesome after a couple more patches and some help from our mod community. However until then my advice is get the game if you have the money and just want to check it out, but hold off if the 50 bucks is hard to come by and you want a game you can really get into right away.

I dont want to flame or vent too much, I think its annoying. But I have to say a couple things to get off my chest. First, I just read that some of the bugs in SH4 were placed INTENTIONALLY by Ubi with the intention that they would only appear if you use a cracked exe (aka pirated the game). However at least one person with a legitimate copy of the game has run into these bugs. If one person has reported it on this forum, only days after release, there will be many many more believe me. I'm sorry, but that is total carelessness and will ONLY HURT THOSE WHO BOUGHT THE GAME. I'll bet anyone here 20 to 1 that hackers fix this problem for pirates before Ubi fixes this problem for those experiencing it with a legitimate copy. I totally understand trying to protect your game from mass piracy, however not when it only makes things harder for paying customers.

The other thing I have to get off my chest is this. Dont release a game until it is finished. I am the first to look the other way on bugs that are due to specific hardware incompatibility. For instance "ships turn green on Nvidia 6800 cards". That is fine, no way the devs can test every video card in existence. I'm talking about bugs that are obvious and happen to EVERYONE. "Planes dont attack your sub", "sonar doesnt work at PD", or whatever. I've always felt this is where computer gamers got screwed and console players dont. There are no "patches" for a console system. You release a game for PS2 and it either works or it doesnt period. On PC, just release a game before its done, dont tell anyone until after they buy it, and then release a patch later to fix it. Thats just not good business, and it will lessen sales over time.

Sorry everyone, I dont mean to whine and complain, I just try to give a reality check every now and then. As PC users we are all so used to "patches" and "bugs" that we tend to forget they arent necessary. I dont remember buying a guitar without pickups because the company had to meet the release date, so they mailed me some pickups later. The concept is rediculous, yet in the PC gaming world its pretty common. The worst disadvantage is that most places wont return a game due to bugs. You opened the package and there isnt anything "wrong" with the game per say, so they wont take it back.

In closing is SH4 a good game, short answer is yes. Should you buy it: YES, at least eventually. Its a ferrari of a game, once they put some wheels on it it'll be a lot of fun to drive.

[Sharkfood]

I have been reading the SH4 forum since the day of official release.From what i read,the situation is maybe worse than the launch of SH3 and this is unacceptable,since SH4 is mostly based on SH3 ,so they didn't have to make a game from scratch.

My experience with SH3 was: First enthusiasm.Then frustration waiting for patches.By the time patch 1.4b came out,i was so tired and bored that i wouldn't play the game anymore.The REAL SH3 that would worth been played is the one that can be played now with the GWX and other mods ,so that each can have his own.

I think the same goes for SH4.Only this time,they should have started with a much better release,much more bug free,because after all,it is a modification of SH3.Instead,many bugs and very high hardware requirements.Which is another reason why i don't think i will buy it.My nvidia 6600 would probably come to its kneed trying to play SH4.I don't think i could reach 30 fps judging from what i read from users with much better VGA than mine.

William described very well and from first hand the situation.Especially the absense of weapons officer helping the solution is a game-breaker for me.I use him in SH3 to give me speed.Then i manouver in firing position and find range and AOB on my own (i m bored to mark things on the map).

I think that SH3+GWX will be easily beating SH4 for many months,before a good supermod comes out and all patches are put in place.

And let's not forget that the atlantic theatre,has more "charm" than the pacific one.

[Sharkfood]

P.S: Ubi should really pay a small fee to those modders.Seriously.Can you immagine what SH3 would be if there was no mod?I find it very cheap counting on modders to bring the game to the level that should be in the first place.I also noticed some in the SH4 forum that aren't upset at all with the game,because "modders will fix it". I find this attitude very strange.You pay for something,it doesn't perform as expected but you 're not angry ,because your buddie can "fix" it?

A BIG THANK YOU to all the modders!If it wasn't for them,i doubt SH4 would ever come out,because nobody would be playing SH3 6 months after its release.

[Keelbuster]

bastards...i knew it. It's a damn graphics mod. They're trying to squeeze us for some money while putting in the least amount of work possible. They do some graphics tweaks on the SH3 engine, add a new visual effect or two - like waves/transparency, shift the script layer from the atlantic to the pacific, swap the british flag for the japanese flag and call it SH4. Then they ship the fcking thing without testing it, and rely on the mod community to do all the bug testing/fixing, and to add all the interesting features in the game. Pathetic. I'm not buying it. Did they listen to _any_ of the advice that the subsim community gave them on how to improve the _gameplay_ in silent Hunter? Why do we rely on Ubi for our subsim? ARe they the only people who know how to program in DirectX? Why don't we have an open source community sub simulation? Why are we slave to this compiled crap?!?

[Sharkfood]

The worst part that shows the complete lack of interest and hasty work is that some of the problems that people complain about,have been fixed in SH3 mods.For example,damage.They could even "borrow" some SH3 mods and use them.Or is it so difficult to make new sounds?Or the crew counting bug i read about.This isn't a bug!It's not possible that you "test" the game and don't notice that crewmen call numbers all the time or that if you hit a ship the sound goes into loop.There aren't BUGS.These are INDIFFERENCE and lack of respect towards the final customer.

Even the game controls seem worse than SH3.I noticed a thread about the event log in SH4 and it's awful.Haven't they learnt anything from the mods about controls?Heck,GWX has even integrated controls mod in it ,to concentrate all things in one place.

[STEED]

I never ever rush out and buy a new game. I shall wait until Ubi release there second or third patch, better still wait for the mod guys to turn it in to something better.

[GoldenRivet]

I think the graphics are quite a step up from SH3, character modeling is awesome, the sub looks great, the water looks great, they captured the interior pretty well...

all that being said

the graphics can appear grainy as if you are viewing an old film... similar to the grainy look of the opening SH3 movie.

You are right in pretty much every respect

all of the sounds or... almost all of the sounds... are borrowed from stock SH3!!!

the background graphic to every one of the pages to the manual fro SH4 was even borrowed from SH3 - nothing new there either. the manual has several typos and errors that are not consistant with game play. My manual says that u can access the american version of the UZO by clicking on it or pushing the U key on the key board - of course nothing on the sub is interactive at all.

This would be the perfect sub sim if they would have included better sounds, and modeled several compartments of the sub IF NOT ALL of the compartments of the sub. now you only have access to the command room and the conning tower but thats it.

the learning curve for SH3 to SH4 is pretty easy in some areas and horrible in others.

for example all of the SH4 key commands are the same as SH3... BUT all of the on screen interfaces are different.

Ubi has all but eliminated the need for the player to manage the crew, and damage control. it all seems automated to me and im not even sure how to use it as there is no real explaination.

there is no verbal warning that you are approaching crush depth... your just suddenly dead or taking damage and you wouldnt know it unless you were in the command room view!!! no verbal warning "we are closing to critical depth sir" - no color coded band on the depth guage, not even any reliable technical data on the subs other than lenght height width tonnage and speed and a picture of it. LAME

on a scale of 1 to 10 i give sh4 a....

GRAPHICS.....8 (do away with the grainy look and we will talk higher nubers here)

GAME PLAY.....6 (poor interface)

CUSTOM SETTINGS..... 5 (you either play in historical accuracy or arcade easy)

total is about a 7

SH3 wins the day - the modders have their work cut out for them as far as SH4 goes. good luck.
i think the attitude from a lot of these game producers like ubi is "well lets turn out a mediocre game that we know will sell... the mod community will make it a great game"

[Hitman]

I'm afraid this post belongs in the Sh4 forum, so I will move it there. The discussion can continue, but note that there are already some topics open about the same.

@Williams156: Your post, despite some acid irony is well founded and above all, clearly states that this is your personal impression, which I think is very fair. Obviously, SH4 can't please everybody, and it hasn't pleased you completely, but such is life.

[Nightmare]

Originally Posted by William516

Looks decent but NOTHING AT ALL like the box, videos or pictures, eventhough they stated "screenshots" What a joke there! The first thing i noticed and hated was the fact that rather then add sections of the submarine they subtracted them. What were they thinking many people wanted to see EXTRA areas of the ship at least one, instead they took away the captains area as found on the other sim SH3. How could they detract from what they made before. Horrible idea and bad move.

Over all I see your point and I agree with you in many areas. However, from what I played last night everything was spot on as far screenshots, box art, and movies. Granted, I am running everything maxed out, but I'm dumb founded that what you're seeing is completely different from what I see.

As far as lack of compartments, I do agree, it would have been nice to see more of the boat modeled (love to have seen the officer's wardroom and quarters). But again, this was annouced as far back as January that really only the control room and the conning tower was going to be modeled.

[Rykaird]

Originally Posted by Keelbuster

Why do we rely on Ubi for our subsim? ARe they the only people who know how to program in DirectX? Why don't we have an open source community sub simulation? Why are we slave to this compiled crap?!?

There is actually an open source effort underway, and the graphics look pretty amazing, particularly for the controls:

http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/gallery.html

[Gray Lensman]

Originally Posted by STEED

I never ever rush out and buy a new game. I shall wait until Ubi release there second or third patch, better still wait for the mod guys to turn it in to something better.

Since there is still plenty of mileage to be had playing SH3, I'll hold off on this one until I read mostly positive comments on these forums concerning SH4. I'm definitely not interested in just a "graphics" upgrade of SH3.

[Keelbuster]

Originally Posted by Rykaird

There is actually an open source effort underway, and the graphics look pretty amazing, particularly for the controls:

http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/gallery.html

OMG. Yes! Amen.

[AJ!]

William516 I couldnt agree with you more on some of those points... Like i said before the Intro was terrible and really off putting. The screenshots thing is appauling. I agree some of them have been modified so much that its almost a different game.

One major problem i find is the sounds from the submarine are far too quiet. I had the music down to 10% and i could still hear it better then the subs engine

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Hitman

I'm afraid this post belongs in the Sh4 forum, so I will move it there. The discussion can continue, but note that there are already some topics open about the same.

@Williams156: Your post, despite some acid irony is well founded and above all, clearly states that this is your personal impression, which I think is very fair. Obviously, SH4 can't please everybody, and it hasn't pleased you completely, but such is life.

I agree, he's not happy but he expressed his displeasure with good taste.

Williams, you touched on a lot of things, there wasn't anything you liked? The music, perhaps? They spelled "Galveston" correctly, this time.