Should I buy SH5 or stick with SH4 for now?

[Phantom Mark]

I am really regretting having picked up a copy from the shops......

I am finding it a constant frustration with this game, SH4 and the way it worked was much more my cup of tea, especially with some of the excellent mods out there.

Will shelve my copy and wait a year or so and see if it becomes worth playing in the future.

Quite gutted, I should have trusted my instincts on this one, dont even get me started on the DRM

[subsimlee]

Got my refund from GameStop yesterday. I think SH5 could be a great sim in the future after 47 patches and 683 mods or so.... Seriously I returned it because even after I had paid for it, Ubisoft wouldn't let me play it most of the time, especially Saturdays, Sundays and yesterday. That should be a deal breaker but most seem to be hanging in living in hopes of better days.

[Phantom Mark]

Got me wondering if there is any possible way I could justify a refund at the store I got mine from now.....I don't see how I could present reasonable justification tho ??

Anybody else managed a refund from "GAME" in the UK ??

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

If you spend money for SH5 you are telling Ubi:

Go ahead and deny members of the military the ability to play your game, which you falsely claim honors those who served. They on their ships, in their tents with their laptops can't play SH5. Let them play Pong. They deserve no better.

Go ahead and require all the owners of laptops with metered Internet connections that they must unnecessarily pay additional charges to play Silent Hunter 5. They need to just get over it and work a second job. Either that or play Dig Dug. They deserve no better.

Go ahead and take away others' fair use rights for copyrighted material. With any other similar property, books, recorded music, video, you have the right to resell, lend, give away your copy when you are done with it. But you're never going to want to do that so screw them! They aren't important anyway. Let them play checkers if they can't afford a real game.

Can a game be so "cool" that it doesn't matter if you actually pay money to be battered about the head with a spiked 2x4? Or would you actually pay money so your friends would be bashed with the thing?

I'm afraid this interesting little social experiment shows that people have no regard whatever to the societal damage they cause by making irresponsible and reprehensible economic decisions. I'm afraid the results show that Ubi is right. We are quite willing to pay to be abused. At least we are willing to subsidize the cost of abusing our friends and family. What a sad state of affairs.

The fact is that when you buy SH5 you are paying to promote the destruction of my rights. As such you become just as slimy as Ubi. I, for one, refuse to pay to destroy your rights. Silent Hunter 5 will see my computer only after it is thoroughly defanged. I urge everyone to refuse to buy this trojan horse. You should also refuse to steal and play it.

Sometimes a company is so evil it deserves to die. Ubi qualifies.

give me a break, RR, we are talking about a $50 video game. Well, I guess I will burn in hell then!

[thyro]

I personally don't buy games that either don't work when I want to play, is incomplete and worst... surrender my rights as customer so that my data and a game (product) that I purchase only can be played when someone decides.

So its really up to you to blindly surrender your rights and get into the dark side of the matter. But please don't come here posting my SH5 ****y doesn't work, has bugged or incomplete.

Buy a half game that you cannot control when you want to play is not our fault but the only to blame is you. Cheers

SH5 will be good in 5 years time if it will get finished and if online DRM rubish is dropped or hacked beyond believe.

Buy Sh2, SH3 or even SH4 and you will be better served with a proper game.

[msxyz]

Stick to Sh4 and enjoy its mods.

SH5 graphics are marginally better but they come at the cost of increased hardware requirements. Considering what it's effectively put onscreen I'd say the 3D engine of SH5 is poorly optimized.

The novelty or running back and forth in a 3D environment wears out pretty soon, particulary because there's only one sub modelled. I'm not even sure they modelled correctly the differences between revision A-B-C. They look all the same to me (except the missing stern tube in type VIIA).

It's really just some eyecandy thrown with no real purpose. You cannot turn the various knobs and handles by yourself. Most dials are static.

The crew is composed of puppets staying in the same spot all the time and repeating the same animations over and over.

The interface is a huge step back from SH4 and SH3.

Crew management is a joke

The bugs in this software are as numerous as ants feasting over a decoposing carrion.

Last, there's the wonderful DRM scheme which is entirely dependant on staying connected to a remote server all the time.

[Phantom Mark]

Re-Installing SH4 as we speak, say no more

[Gilbou]

Reinstall SH4 and/or SH3 for now.

You do know how SH3 and SH4 were when they did came out.

You have to wait monthes if not one year minimum before you even
consider trying it...

And I seriously suggest not buying it until the DRM and onlne requirement
is removed.

[subsimlee]

Originally Posted by Phantom Mark

Got me wondering if there is any possible way I could justify a refund at the store I got mine from now.....I don't see how I could present reasonable justification tho ??

Anybody else managed a refund from "GAME" in the UK ??

It's easy to justify return based on the fact you can't play it a lot of the time on the weekend as has been the case the last couple. Couldn't play yesterday afternoon either for a while. It's akin to having a defective dvd ! Besides which, all retailers are painfully aware of the DRM mess and are NOT in favor of it. They see it as a step towards "Pay to Play Online " which cuts out the need for retailers like themselves. The worst they'll do is offer an in store credit. In my case I got a full refund. This was from a large North American chain who is bombarding Ubi with complaints from what they told me....

[Pappy55]

Originally Posted by peteuplink

Oh for the days of Microprose!

Frak me I miss them days on the Amiga and early PC (DOS/WIN 95) days.
Used to love it when I was 8 sitting with my Dad playing Silent Service II. The game soley responsable for me getting into sub sims.

[quietguy52]

Originally Posted by ParaB

Your single-core CPU might be a problem with SH5, memory and gfx card are OK. As a rule of thumb I'd say if you can run SH4 maxed out with good FPS then SH5 will most probably be playable on your system, too.

SH5 has two main problems right now:

1.) the online DRM system that has in the past couple of days repeatedly made it impossible for customers to actually play the game because the UBI servers encountered technical problems and you have to be connected to those servers all the time, even for singleplayer mode.

2.) the unfinished state of SH5 that involves a rather large number of minor and major bugs and missing/unfinished features.

On the plus side: with the help of a fast-growing number of mods already released SH5 can actually be quite a lot of fun.

It basically depends on how much you're interested in the atlantic theater and how willing you are to put up with the DRM and SH5's state.

Nicely written reply... clear and to the point.

After all the buildup to SHV it's pretty obvious the game's flopped right outta the box. Seeing companies struggling to survive the global recession by greatly improving their product quality, one would think UBI would be of the same mindset...

Seems instead they're sitting on their laurels... relying on the customer base to tolerate a shoddy product. Double hit when the end users are forced to mod/correct playability issues.

Y'all better wake up over there, UBI...

[Faamecanic]

Originally Posted by msxyz

The novelty or running back and forth in a 3D environment wears out pretty soon, particulary because there's only one sub modelled. I'm not even sure they modelled correctly the differences between revision A-B-C. They look all the same to me (except the missing stern tube in type VIIA).

Its not missing the rear tube.... the rear tube in the Type VIIA was EXTERNAL with one torpedo only (no reload).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Type_VII_submarine

[msxyz]

Originally Posted by Gilbou

Reinstall SH4 and/or SH3 for now.

You do know how SH3 and SH4 were when they did came out.

You have to wait monthes if not one year minimum before you even
consider trying it...

SH3 wasn't in such poor state. I was a day 1 customer and, despite some flaws, it was truly enjoyable from the start. No serious or game breaking bugs and the campaign was fun. The interface was actually good (the best so far imho) and progressing through the various types of subs was fun.

I didn't buy SH4 untill the addon came out (I wasn't interested in US boats) and it seems I did the right thing. It wasn't until the add on and patch 1.5 that things got resolved.

SH5 is a real mess, it almost seem they didn't bother to beta test it. And even if it were perfect, it still lacks a lot of content in comparison to SH3. The idea of concetrating only on one sub seems a convenient excuse for budget cuts and schedule problems.

SH5 has less ship variety than its predecessors, only one uboat and the campaign ends in 1943.

Considering the quality of mods such as GWX or OM, there's no excuse to buy a much inferior product unless some people were curious to see how the diesel room of a type VII uboot looks.

[msxyz]

Originally Posted by Faamecanic

Its not missing the rear tube.... the rear tube in the Type VIIA was EXTERNAL with one torpedo only (no reload).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Type_VII_submarine

I know, I meant to say that the launch tube was not visible from the inside.

The stern room is the only clear difference. It seems to be Ubisoft just modelled the interior after the only surviving uboat (a type C/41), the U995. But that is a late war boat.

Type A, B interiors were quite different in terms of machinery installed. There's a good deal of photos and books on the subjet. Even if it means little from the game point of view, at least it would have been one aspect done right.

[Safe-Keeper]

To the OP: it depends on how tolerant you are of bugs.

If they don't mean much to you and you're willing to spend some time in the Mods Workshop finding mini-mods that fix most of the issues, go for it. It's a highly enjoyable game, and the mods fix much of the issues and make it slightly less arcadeish.

If it's very important for you that your product works right out of the box, wait for up to three months. We'll probably have at least one more patch and several mod packages by then.

Wait, what? Missions? I thought the game was a dynamic campaign like SH3/SH4. How much replay will there be if there are scripted missions?

More about the campaign here.