First impressions...two years too late

[finchOU]

Alright, first off this is another what SH5 means to me and how I like/dislike parts of it piece. Some back ground. Being a child of the 80's/90's I grew up playing flights sims and got addicted from a very young age (AOP, AOE, 1942). These games planted a long desire to fly for a living (which I am very very lucky to have a job doing today). Around the time I was in 7th grade I decided my obsession with flight sims was a bit narrow minded..so I decided to run down to the store and see what "other" sims the world had to offer (pre house hold internet.....yes there was a time!!). Low and behold I find three games to fit the bill..... Task Force 1942, Across the Rhine, and AOTD. All three games were unique in their own way, fun and immersive with impressive manual's etc. But AOTD really really sucked me in. The whole build up to sinking a ship by getting to the right position....keeping your stealth...then having the tables turn on you having to evade to live to tell about it really really kept me coming back for more. And then I uped the realism...and found a completly different and challenging sim. Well life happened...I grew up.....chased women...got my dream job. Well after College I learned of the SH series and figured with some down time I'd give SH2 a shot...... I wasnt impressed! Graphicaly wise...it was much better than AOD....but something was lost in the Simulation and Gameplay aspect that AOD seemed to bring. AOD just SIMed better.....from AI to other aspects...it just seemed like AOD was a better Sim than SH2. This shocked me considering I'd litterally been out of the game for 8-10 years.

Long story shorter: I joined SubSim seeing links from the SH3 prerelease forum at UBI. I was really looking forward to SH3 as, I thought, SH3 should be better than AOD out of the box. But that just didnt happen......sure they added a campaign (which I would assume would be "standard" since AOD)...but still it was very untested and buggy with so so AI which was still behind AOD (but it looked pretty)....modded extensively...and is now a very fun sim/game to play. I sat out for SH4...and sat out SH5 till I thought it would be ready to play. .......So....after alll that....my SH5 experiance.

Bought it for $7.00 or so at Amazon. Just installed last week on my min spec Laptop (as I wait for the super machine in the mail). Win 7, i3 2.27 Ghz proc, 4.00 GB RAM, 64 bit, ATI Radeon HD 5470. I was actually shocked that my Laptop would play it.....but I have it super turned down on the graphic specs.

My goal (right now) is to play patched stock for at least a patrol or two to gather some first impressions.

Like the opening video and main screen. Fired off the Campaign to jump right in. I love the whole sub idea...but thinking some things just look bad (again stock...dont jump on me for not MODing it ...)..things that stood out was the lack of blankets on the racks and the lack of "homey" things around the sub to make it seem more like a home away from home (Ive done two deployments on ships).

Lack of a "crowded" Sub....its not cramped with dudes...like I would expect.... but the FPS aspect is kind of cool.

Speaking of FPS aspect.......I wish I had options of animations to different rooms with hot keys. like hit a button and it auto walks the captain to the attack scope. I can just see me losing SA and valuable time while I dick around trying to get up and down the stairs and such.

Bridge is a great view, and in ways more realistic than say SH3, Like
no scolling Bearing in the Bino view but do have it in the UZO. But the lack of a steer to bearing sucks.

BUUUUUT I hate not being able to shout orders down the pipe when I need to......it is not realistic to have to go all the way down to order something like battlestations or whatever.

The basic UI in Stock is shocking and appalling to me as past Uboat simer. SH5 just looks feels and plays Gamey. Like...trying to try to hard to appeal to FPS 12 year old types who dont really want to work that hard at controlling a full sim (no offense to said 12 year old). There is way way too much going on ..on most action screens and is my number one immersion killer. The hide-a-way command menus of SH3 were the best thing since sliced bread IMHO. Speaking of Command buttons...Why?...Just Why? Stupid compas, speed, dive interface. Very very sad and gamey....why not let the player learn how it actually was instead of a dumbing down to cater to the idiot?

No TDC fuctionality...say what?? YHGTBSM....its like they watched Das Boat and since the Captain shouded all the imputs...you should have to need to touch the dials in SH5....but you can adjust other things he would shout too like Torp Speed...etc. This just does not make sense if one was to have played SH3 (tho I never used the notepad method in SH3). Options are always always better in a SIM as long as its realistic.

No writable Captains log..boooo....Gramaphone...really??..or ability to code decode messages (still waiting on this one) via the cypher machine.

Rudder amidships? Maybe i missed this one.

Clock?? Sure it's realistic in the command room...but if we time compress from the nav map...we need a clock on the nav map....right?? Oh ...what about contact reports that appear without a time stamp? kind of hard to plot an intercept course if you dont know when it was put on your map.

Lots more to write about ...but thats it for now...much to busy to be writting this as is....will get back to filling this out for my first patrol. (AGAIN.....THIS is a FIRST impression of Stock...please dont spam me to MOD...it will happen)