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.