I miss Silent Hunter 1

[MarkShot]

I just installed SH3/SH4 on new PC. I also have SHCE and AOD running on the same system with DOSBOX.

Side note: You don't need a slowdown utility with DOSBOX, since you can arbitrarily control how many CPU cycles you allocate to your game.

I have yet to form an opinion on SH3, but certainly AOD has been my favorite subsim despite the crisper graphics in SHCE.

Now, here is the interesting thing. If you want to play SH3 totally realistic, then you need to give up the external and event camera. Doing that, you give up much of the eye candy which the game provides. The 3D crew gets old after a while as time passes by submerged. Thus, the two games are much less disimilar when played like that. You look at AOD (or SHCE for that matter) and you'll find all the major features there for a sub simulation. {A flight sim can have a wonderful 3D world and enhanced realism due to the graphics. However, a sub sim with a wonderful 3D world and realistic play are at odds with each other.}

So, for me the jury is still out on the more modern SH3/SH4. All with all come down to game play. How good is the hunt and how good is disengaging and evading the enemy? There is no reason to immediately assume that SH3/4 will be superior in this department. I have quite a few older games that blow away anything in the same category over the last few years in terms of quality game play.

The basic realities of the industry and hardware are:

(1) 10-15 years ago you could easily code very sophisticated game play with the number of CPU cycles available, but little could be done with graphics.

(2) As a result of #1, a much larger portion of projects focused on game play as opposed to art work.

(3) Increased CPU and GPU hardware often meant less time devoted on future projects to basics of game play.

(4) 2D is much simpler to code than 3D. Thus, as games went 3D, development became much more expensive and labor intensive. So, even less time was invested game play basics.

Thus, I will not be suprised to find after perhaps spending three months with SH3 that I may end up back in DOSBOX with AOD.