Silent Hunter Series: Woeful, Brilliant or Both?

[scott_c2911]

This is going to be a long thread just to warn everyone. It started many years ago when I was a child with a Windows 95 PC and Silent Hunter 1. The game didn't work! I was extremely unhappy and I may have shed a few tears. This is the experience I was to have with all of the future releases of Silent Hunter but maybe without the tears and more profanities as I grew older. Silent Hunter 1 did eventually play on a Windows 98 PC that had a 64mb shared graphics capability and I must say I spent an unbelievable amount of time playing it. It was awesome! I was immediately hooked on the whole Submarine Simulator idea.
Then Silent Hunter 2 came along with its revolutionary graphics and new Windows ME PC. Guess what? It didn't work either. I wasn't that bothered this time as going to war against my own countrymen (I'm from the UK) did go against the grain a little.
While I was studying Marine Biology at university I spent my student loan on a Windows XP Laptop and bought Silent Hunter 3. I regretted that more. The money could have been better spent down the "boozer" but at least I had Silent Hunter 2 to fall back on. Silent Hunter 3 didn't work at all but Silent Hunter 2 did. The bugs made the game practically unplayable though!
Now several years on I have bought Silent Hunter 4 and Silent Hunter 5 (last week!) and wish I hadn't have bothered! I have spent thousands of pounds on PCs, Laptops, Graphics Cards and RAM and the only one out of the FIVE games that works is Silent Hunter 3 on an old Windows XP PC with far too much RAM hanging out of the Motherbaord and a fairly good Graphics Card in the PCI slot.
Why would I bother you may ask me? The small slices of the games I was able to sample between the Blue Screen of Death and the annoying Crash to Desktop errors was so brilliant that I believed time and time again that it was me that was causing the games to stop working by having inferior PCs, parts or software or by not having a degree in IT. I have spent the last 8 years or more trying to get Silent Hunter 3 to play at reasonable standard of stability. I have all the GWX mods, the V1.6 patch , the latest graphics drivers, the latest direct X and the bloody game still crashes. I custom built this PC I'm writing this post on to play it from the recommended specs on the box but it still crashes. BUT I STILL TRY TO PLAY IT because it is quite simply brilliant when it works!
I search through the forums trying to find a fix, I learn't how to edit .cfg files so the game is even more realistic. Everything I know about computing has come from this site and I have learnt it all to play one game. It still hasn't worked! I have no choice but to come to the conclusion that its the games that are at fault.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, UBISOFT can you make a game that actually works without any hard working third party modders having to repair it for you post release. You tease and you tease with your awesome graphics and immersive gameplay then CTD and its all over!
Microsoft can do it for pity's sake (Microsoft Flight Simulator Series) and they can't even build a stable OS since XP!
Does this sound like your experience with Silent Hunter? I'm willing to bet it is!

[Sailor Steve]

I can only answer that with my own experience. In 1986 I played Sid Maier's Silent Service on an Atari 520ST. I loved it, but then of course that has nothing to do with Silent Hunter. I bought my first Windows 95 PC in 1998, and quickly discovered the original Silent Hunter, which was then two years old. I had no complaints about the game or the way it played. I never had a crash. There were a couple of routines I didn't like, but they were minor. I quickly discovered Hawk's Silent Hunter Utilities, which didn't have to fix any game problems, but did change a couple of historical innacuracies.

Bottom line: I had no problems with it whatsoever.

SH2 was a huge disappointment for me because I was expecting SH1 with u-boats, and instead found myself playing a shooter-style game with levels that had to be completed. It also had a couple of annoying bugs that were resolved with the only patch they did. I still hated the gameplay until I found out I could play online. I got Destroyer Command and had a blast playing with other people trying to kill me.

I bought my current eight-year-old rig just so I could play SH3. I did and I had a great time. I had very few problems. I see you say you bought a laptop. While many people play the SH series on laptops, it does say right on the box that laptops are not supported. Maybe you should have read the fine print. I've had minor complaints about the way SH3 works, and there's a lot I would like to see different, but I've been playing it on the same machine since March 2005 and every frustration I've encountered has been my own fault, since I love all the different mods. My biggest complaint right now is that my old computer won't run the mods I really want, so I've been trying to get a new one for several years now.

SH4 had some bugs, and more importantly they didn't fix some of the leftovers from SH3. On the other hand SH4 has some new routines that should have made it better. The problem there was that SH3 was still new and nobody was interested. In some ways SH1 is still better, but I still play the 20-year-old Aces Of The Deep, so what do I know?

Yes, SH5 still has problems. On the other hand a great deal of work has been done on it and most of them are resolved. My complaint is less one of playability than one of style. I wish they had upgraded SH3 to SH5 standards. Actually I wish they had upgraded AOD to SH5 standards.

I still play SH3 and SH4 on my old machine. It won't run SH5. When I get one that does I'll probably still stick with the older versions because of that "style" thing. But my old computer runs all the older ones just fine. It's not the games.

[Rammstein0991]

I just wish SH5 had more than the type VII

[Herr-Berbunch]

Played 2 on a mate's laptop just fine, played 3 on a not-the-best XP desktop, and a half-decent Win7 desktop just fine, 4 & 5 on same Win7 just dandy.

Occasional mod-soup induced CTD, but if I don't fiddle around too much from current list it's stable.

You must be really unlucky!

[VONHARRIS]

I haven't played SH2 at all , but after a long timed efford I managed to create a stable SH3 + GWX + SH3C mod soup on a Win7 PC which I don't intend to mess around with.
I have given SH4 a chance but I didn't like it.

As HB said , your luck seems to be running out.
Hang in there......
If you manage to have a stable installation you will have lots of fun with SH3!

[scott_c2911]

Yeah I agree the laptop thing was a bit silly but why shouldn't a game work on it. It had enough spec to play flight simulator 2002. The game should have been made so that it was stable on a variety of machines. Microsoft built simulators that were able to be used on practically any computer available at the time although I hate singing Microsoft's praises. Silent hunter 3 was nearly a decade before its time that was the problem I believe. The spec it required to play stable was beyond my reach until now. I do have some positive news. I have managed several successful careers without any hangups post mods but I needed to vent some frustration about sh5 not working correctly straight out of the box as per usual. It will probably take another 10 years to get that running nicely. As for bad luck I am man of science and I believe I have covered every variable until Iwas forced to conclude its a deep seated fault with the stock release of the game

[sublynx]

Originally Posted by scott_c2911

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, UBISOFT can you make a game that actually works without any hard working third party modders having to repair it for you post release.

I feel much the same, however I only have experience of SH3. To your question: woeful, brilliant or both? Well, both for me. So brilliant that I have been learning a lot of IT skills to learn how to play this game in different operating systems even with all the problems of CTD's and Starforce problems back in the day.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I wish they had upgraded SH3 to SH5 standards. Actually I wish they had upgraded AOD to SH5 standards.

Right on the nail If Ubisoft was Dynamix I bet the whole SH series would have been absolutely great qualitywise. However the market for games does not help the Dynamixes of this world to survive. It's the Ubisofts and Microsofts that succeed - until along comes a company even worse than them.

But who am I who to blame Ubisoft. If they tried to release finished games they would probably be devoured by the competitors.