I love SH4, whats the fuss all about?
 

Not trying to be a fanboi here, but Im loving SH4! It's beautiful to behold. Running at higher resolutions is beautiful. There is a bit of a blur, but that is due to the HDR effects in post processing. Looks the same as Oblivion when I have HDR on.

I won't bother rehashing what has been apparently fixed with the patch, those issues have all been dealt with.

After 8 hours of play, I never saw the buggy eyes, 2D crew or heard the counting crew thing.

The only time I CTD'd was because I started tweaking some files, so it was my own fault.

What I Like:
- the way you use map tools, much more fun than a menu. was one of the first things I noticed when Neal made his video.
- Crew watch assignment! Crew is actually usefull, rather than a burden.
- intuitive GUI, took a bit to get used to, but I find it better than SH3's
- Save and Replay system. Leaps and bounds ahead of SH3.
- Docking without having to hit ESC!
- Patrol Briefing, showing you the area you will be patroling
- Radio Traffic

Things I'd like to see improved:
- separate in-game music controls from gramaphone/radio
- Captains Cabin! Let me chill out here.

Overall, its a VAST improvement over Vanilla SH3. And no matter how many bugs it was released with, it will never be as bad as the fiasco that was SH2. Hell, SH4 was patched before most locations even have it in stock! THats excellent! Kudos to the Dev team!

Thats just my initial impressions over the last few hours. These are my opinions, your mileage may vary.

Thanks. I agree with all your points Skweetis.

I don't know, something about it reminds me of the (g)olden times of PC sims, when there were atmospheric menues and you were drawn into the world. SHIII already achieved that to some extent, but was still limited (loved the NYGM menue screen though!). Looking down your office when in port like you were hanging suspended from the ceiling was weird, so I actually prefer the SHIV office and find the idea of it being 3D interesting. With that hot coffee in the lower right corner, like the smoke in some hangar screens of European Air War - excellent. :-)
Then the pretty cool idea how they implemented the map tools, as you already said.
And the campaign with the intro, briefing which is being typed and radio messages is all like it was done in the old times where sims still had atmosphere.


We can't click on people to give orders, and some users think this distracts from the immersion - well, it doesn't bother me personally (in the heat of battle, I used the icons exclusively anyway), but I'm sure it can be implemented in a patch.

I never was a fanboi of any sim in the past few -hm- 10 years or something, and I hate them, but SHIV might make me become one lol! The points above, and putting the spread into that merchant on a cloudy, moon-shy night and then seeing those morse code lights, revealing that destroyer not too far abeam might have set one or two screws loose with me. :up:

For the not being able to click on people, doesnt bother me... voice command aliasing of key strokes! Thats Immersion!

CRASH DIVE!!!!

I've only played for a few hours myself. That said and initial issues aside, I'm enjoying the game too. The recent patch appears to have succeeded in making the experience even better. Granted, I need to play a lot more to form an objective opinion, though the game is definitely a lot of fun thus far!

Voice command would be fantastic. I remember playing a sub sim called Engmia (probably bastardizing the spelling). It was on ok sim but the voice command function was really fun.

Not Rising Tide? I've been using voice command in the SubCommand/Dangerous Waters games for about 6 years, so it's not like it's unknown in the genre.

I have an old Voice Commander, works fine, emulates keystrokes well. Drives my wife nuts too. Especially when i'd yell "ALLLAARRRMMM!!!!" when she's trying to watch tv.

Sub Command and, I think, Dangerous Waters has it. I used it in Sub Command a good amount. Good stuff unless someone overhears you and thinks you've lost it.

Only played the game about 10-15 minutes. Thought the graphics were cool, but I don't like the game at all, and I LOVE SH3!!! maybe I need to get used to it, but I LOVED SH3 right away!!

This game is for sure very arcady, and there is ZERO immersion with the game, I don't close my windows in my man room and feel like I am actually in the sub, I just need some compartments. The way it feels inside is like a complete stradegy game..

I do agree with the lack of compartments. But i haven't felt this to be Arcady at all.

Arcady? Based on what? It looks like the TDC is a whole mini sim in itself.