SH5 player review thread - post your opinions about the game here

[LiveGoat]

Some have complained about the the stubby torpedo graphics in the load out screens but for me they take me back to the good 'ol days of Aces of the Deep. Also the ping kinda sounds like the one it used as well.

Also, I might as well give a review. I think she's a diamond in the rough. The only real worm in the apple is the drm. Everything else seems moddable. Will it make it a pioneering sub game? Maybe not but with a little work she can be a worthy upgrade.

I owe an apology to the devs. I really didn't like the interiors when I saw the first few screens but now I love em. I love ducking my head through the hatch when I request contact reports and seeing the soundman peer around the corner at me. In fact the forward bulkhead hatch is my favorite place to rest my fat captain's ass while overseeing the lads. With the 3 gauge and shortcut keys mods I can still have a bit of the functinality of the old games. The graphics of course are very nice and run surprisingly well on my 8800gt with 2gigs of ram. The water looks fantastic. Underwater it's a bit like the U.S. Gulf Coast but that can be fixed... or not, there are other more pressing issues.

Things I hate:

-I don't know if this is chronic or just my own isolated issue but if you get flooding and the ship leans heavily to port or starboard then you better make damn sure you are in the command room or it's all over, reload. You will find it impossible to enter through the command hatches forward or aft. I think it has to do with the extreme angle of the 1st person camera.

-Dumb crew. This has already been talked to death

-Morale. I don't use it so I don't know exactly how it works but I modded it out from the get go. It'd be nice for the option to be in the settings.

-The pop ups, tool tips, "helpful" info icons and messages are annoying. I feel like I'm playing the game as broadcasted on MSNBC. I can't believe a NASDAQ report hasn't scrolled along the bottom of the screen yet. Yes I know what a merchant and a warship is. Tell me once and then only show me their ranges andspeeds from then on.

-Scope Views: I don't hate the scope UI nearly as much as I did before I actually bought and played the game. The simplicity is nice, actually,although a more authentic looking torpedo button interface would look good in the upperleft corner instead of the default. The tube selection buttons look like keys ripped off of the Enigma machine. Wait a minute, now I know why our messages are unreadable! Bernard! That said, if any modders wanna put some TDC dials in here I won't kick them out of bed.

-Some of the outlandish explosions are nice and have their place. Others feel like I'm in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. Also the sinking mechanics and... aahhh you know. As to the Street Fighter health bars? I just deleted then from the config. I hope that didn't screw anything up. It seemed to do the trick. Oh well I'll blame any mistakes I made on Ubi and the DRM. Just kidding.

-Oh, the DRM. Utter crap. This game requires more from me than AC2 in terms of shepherding my game along. Progress in this game is pretty slow so when you get to a spot and save and backup save you want to be damn confident that those saves will be there when you log back on to youbeflacid's server. In any other game it may be annoying to have to start from an earlier save. In SH5 it can make you want to walk away from the game for a few days or forever. Even saving every five minutes won't guaratee you will have all those saves. I'm not sure about everybody else but this has happened quite a few times already for me. In short, DRM's more trouble than it's worth.

-No option to just right click the frig down the hatch. I still like running up and down the ladder at this point but sometimes you just wanna get on with it, especially when your replaying your mission for the third time due to Ubifart's server losing your current saves. I just want options is all ahm sayin' aight?

-Wish the boys had more to say. I realize it's a new gameplay thing for SH but it'd be cool to have more to talk about. I kinda like it though.

-One place that could definitely have used those damn "helpful" hints would have been the crew management screen. It wasn't until the second mission of the campaign that I realized I had to distribute skill candy to the lads.

Anyway, I think she has potential. Keep in mind that I have played it with pretty much every new mod installed that didn't conflict, which is to say nearly all the mods, and (by the way, thank you to the modders for such a quick bud nipping to some of the immediate issues) so maybe I would've had a less enjoyable experience had I played vanilla, but the game is not a failure out of the gate so much as an underdog in the making. Of course time will tell. BTW I ain't getting rid of SH3 just yet. I just got a VIIC and still have work to do in that game.