I appreciate the review, since I haven't bought SH5 yet (and may never buy it, depending on future patch/mod status). It was a good overview, although I would have liked to hear more about the AI. Evasion after an attack is half the fun and challenge in subsim, and there really wasn't much said about it, other than that DD's are more effective later in the war (well, duh!).
Can a DD make you sweat bullets after an attack? That's what I play these games for, and frankly even with SH4 that doesn't happen often enough. The situational awareness in these sims is also lousy during a depth charge attack, compared to real life. Sub commanders would know how close the charges were, on what side of the boat, high or low, etc..... stuff we never get in the game unless you "cheat" and use an external view.
Just my opinion, but all of these Silent Hunter games have done a much better job of modeling the attack phase -- blowing stuff up REAL GOOD -- than they have the evasion phase.
As for the DRM side article, I agree of course, although it's interesting how situational that is. Six months ago I was struggling with a very unreliable cable Internet service that would drop out for literally days at a time. I woudn't even consider buying a game that used this system, back then. Now I'm on a slightly slower, but rock-solid DSL connection, and I'm taking constant connection for granted. It does tend to dampen down the nerd rage about needing it for games, although in the abstract I know how horrible a system that is... and I have a feeling it won't survive this current "experiment" by Ubi and others. I think the future is going to be Steam-like digital distribution where at least some form of offline play is available.
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