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Silent Hunter 4 Good or Bad?
hardcase
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
From what I have seen, it looks great.
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First, the game looks great. Absolutely stunning, the graphics are amazing.
However there is a great deal of confusion for me, that temporarily wrecks the game until someone better explains it to me. They all boil down to the fact that I have no clue how to aim.
First of all, there is major confusion about measurements and your dials and such. (At least for me.) The game is defaulted to the Metric system of measurement, which is of course not what the Americans used. However, I have absolutely no idea whether all my dials are in metric or not. I tried switching the measurements to imperial, and the dials all still look the same, so I really have no idea how my torpedoes are running. (Especially in regards to depth.)
Second, I have no idea how to properly line up a shot when not using Manual Targeting. I've played SH3 like a junkie for years, so you'd think this would come easy to me, but it isn't. Yes, there is the "Green, yellow, red' arrow on top of the target while you are in persicope or UZO that tells you if a shot is great, good or bad, but I have no way of figuring out exactly HOW good the shot will be. In Silent Hunter 3, it clearly displayed your gyroangle, so essentially, the closer you were to 0 degrees off that angle, the better your shot would be. There's no real display of that information in this.
I am finding many of the interface features really clunky. They all rely on these sort of pull out menus that open up, but they are all necessary to properly judge a shot, so they all crowd up the screen. What's worse is the horrid monstrosity of a stopwatch that pops up, and likes to position itself right over your periscope view.
There is also absolutely no way to open multiple torpedo bay doors at the same time. This effectively prevents you from firing multiple torpedoes within a reasonable amount of time, as you have to open the doors of one tube, fire it, then switch to the next, open the doors and fire etc. This whole process wastes at least 7 seconds, and those seven seconds could mean the difference between life and death.
There also seems to be the lack of several fairly essential options, the lack of a weather report button being one of my biggest complaints.
However, the big set piece battles are simply stunning. I know I've said a lot of bad things about the game, but when decent sized fleets clash, it's amazing. Zeroes dive bombing american Destroyers, explosions going off everywhere, Destroyers desperately trying to keep tabs on you and the enemy boats... It's a rush, that's for sure. It's also nice to have so much more mission variety, as you now don't always have the mission objective "Patrol grid A22 for 24 hours", and you have to engage in a number of activities such as sneaking special forces onto enemy land, photographing enemy ports or transporting supplies to the front line.
All in all, it's a typical Ubisoft game, very great potential, but very flawed release.
Pictures, for those of you who keep thinking it's Silent Hill.
Worst game OP ever.
Anyway Silent Hill 4 is from what I heard not as good as the first 3. In fact it was originally going to be a different game but decided to throw the Silent Hill name to it just so it would sell better.
You are confusing two VERY different games here. Perhaps read the Title?
Yeah I know. I was just making light of it.
nothing like calling the wrath of the royal japanese navy onto you though, and feeling dread once they start pinging.
"Depth charges in the water sir...."
My complaint with the game, however, is that while you can select high resolutions like 1680 x 1050, the game world's resolution is locked at 1024x768. Changing your resolution only changes the size of the UI and menus. So while the game still looks really pretty, it's unfortunately locked at that low resolution.
The game is worth picking up. You can play it in a very arcade-like style. There are a number of realism options you can choose, too, so you can make it fit your playing style. If you just want to cruise around and fuck up some ships without worrying too much about fuel or long reloading times and what have you, you can do so. It's like the Grand Theft Auto of submarine games.
Nevermind, maybe it isn't locked at 1024x768. I'm hearing a lot of complaints that it is, though. I'm not entirely sure, but things look too blurry and aliased. At 1680x1050, that shouldn't be a problem. The official forums are plagued with complaints about the resolution being locked at 1024x768, though. The UI is supposedly the only thing that changes resolution.
That's odd, mine seems to work.
I just edited my above post. I got the event camera to work, I believe, in the career by going to the options menu inside it. I mean, you can't change the gameplay/realism options from within the game exactly, only at your desk. There's a book you select and it opens up the real menu. Once you're into the game world moving your submarine, you can't bring up that menu.
System requirements are 2Ghz processor P4/AMD/equivalent (3Ghz recommended), 1GB memory (2Gb recommended), and 128MB DX9 video card (256MB video card recommended). So it doesn't seem so bad. Oh, by the way, the box is sexy. It's all shiny! We need to give this game more love on this forum. The game is amazing. I can't begin to describe the thrill of sneaking up on an enemy convoy, launching torpedoes, and watching the beautiful effects and holes are blown into the hull, water rushing in, and smoke and fire rising upwards and reflected on the water. The music adds to the thrill, as it's very cinematic.
I find that there are about 6 seconds of pure bliss after you land most of your torpedoes on a heavy cruiser or battleship, sinking. After those six seconds, when about eight destroyers all turn on their searchlights and start pinging the floor for you... Oh, how I live for those moments.
It's really not cool though, how you have to re fill all your torpedoes manually when you get back to base. I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten, and had to go a whole patrol without. That's never fun.
I'm new to this entire series, so can you give me any tips? What should I do when they start patrolling for me? Go into silent mode? Dive deep? Deploy some decoys and hit the gas pedal? I really don't know much about the mechanics of the game. I just got the basic arcade controls not too long ago.
Well, basically, what you want to do is to get as far away as you can, as fast as you can. There are a lot of things you can do to help this. First of all, the deeper you are, the harder you are to find, so if you've just fired off your torpedoes, and the enemy destroyers seem to have a pretty good idea where you are, it never hurts to hit that "C" button and go deep quickly. Once you actually reach a low depth, the pace of the game changes completely.
From here I would recommend switching into run silent mode, as the enemy will be using their Hydrophones (Big underwater sound amplification device) to try and locate you. This sets your speed really really low, but if they don't have a good idea where you are, it keeps them from finding you. I like to take out the compass, (found in the nav map) and draw a big 2 kilometer circle around where I've dived, with the eventual goal of getting out of that circle to safety.
If the enemy starts to ping you however, the jig is up, and you want to start turning as if they seem to be pinging you for a prolonged period of time, (Longer than 10 seconds) they've probably picked you up. If multiple ships are pinging you, it's even worse, as they'll use their pings and track you down using trigonometry or some such. This is not the worst thing that can happen, but it does mean you should start panicking a little bit.
Once you hear those wonderful words, "Depth charges in the water", it's time to vamoose. If you think the enemy ship is way off, you could test it by hanging tight, and letting the charges drop. If they missed, you'll hear the explosions off in the distance... if they don't, your in for a rough ride. If you do the smart thing and run, switch to ahead flank, and turn hard. Once the explosions start, the enemy won't be able to hear you so this is an opportune time try and maneuver a bit a full speed to try and set a new course.
Those are pretty much the basics, but there are a lot of fun things you can try. Something interesting that works fairly well is to fire off your torpedoes, and then get right underneath one of the other convoy ships. (Not a destroyer, obviously.) Your sound will be masked by the sound of the other ship on top of you, and you can wait for the enemy destroyers to go searching in the wrong direction for you to make your move. Plus, at this point, since the destroyers could all be off who knows where, it's an excellent time to empty your aft torpedoes into remaining convoy ships
The one big thing I'm having trouble with so far, (I'm using the auto aim feature, but it can hardly be considered effective.) is that the auto aim has a tendency to not fire your torpedoes far enough to the front of the ship, meaning an ungodly amount of torpedoes pass behind the ship. So I have to fiddle with the spread angle dial, and I have no idea how much or little I should be applying to the shot. I've figured that at about 1 kilometer away, a 3 degree angle will put the torpedo around the center, but that's about it. The torpedo depth values also make next to no sense, as the torpedos seem to drop a lot after you shoot them for some reason. I'm really hoping the experienced guys on the official forums and at the Subsim forums figure out how everything works fairly soon. They usually have really good guides.
What is pinging? Also, I don't seem to have a problem using the lock-on. I always manage to hit a ship. I don't deal with the angles or the distances because I have no idea how to do any of that. I would like to know how far a ship is from me. How do I do that? As for the lock-on, I just hit the button twice. Hovering over it it says poor. I hit it once it changes to good. I hit it again and it changes to good locked. I then fire my torpedo and I seem to hit every time if I'm in range.
I haven't played one since Gato. I'm interested since most sub sims seem to be either modern or german.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
But yes, pinging is when the enemy starts to send out sonar pulses to try and find you. And it makes a loud pinging sound. Trust me, when you hear it, you'll realise it.
There are two types of sonar, Passive and Active. Passive waits for the target to activate it (The dude listening for your engine sound). Active is the ship sending out sound waves, if they hit you they bounce back and the ship knows exactly where you are. The problem with Active is that it's a very narrow beam, whilst passive has more range. Think of it as passive having a 180 degree arc of coverage, and active having a 20 degree arc. If the active ship doesn't hit you quickly you can react to the pinging through counter measures or changing position. You can't guard against passive sonar other than being quiet.
caffron said: "and cat pee is not a laughing matter"
You can also pass beneath the thermal layer, which helps mask sound. It's somewhere around 250 feet I think.
Can someone confirm--does it run at widescreen resolutions, or is it locked at 1024?
I'm 99% sure that it does, after some quick searching through the official forums, but I can't find anyone stating explicitly whether it does or not. The lack of people complaining about it would suggest it does however.
It has 1680x1050. And the screenshots shown in the opening post are horrendous compared to when you see it in game, in motion, and with effects all the way up. It is simply amazing. Seriously, buy this game now. It has realism options for everyone. Oh, and the online looks fun. Players can be submarines or destroyer ships and have at thee. We should get that action going.
Also, how do I re-supply? I forgot to lock-on a ship and spent too many torpedoes. Now I need to re-supply but I don't know how.
Or the really, really freaking ancient one that comes on two floppy disks and lets you play as a russian Alfa class o_O
Edit: As well, I wish they were coming out with another Destroyer Command they could link up with in Multi. Battlestations Midway is fun, but doesn't quite fulfill my need to lay out torpedo runs under fire.
Go to a port, when you get close enough it will give you the option to refit, or dock.
Is that a port with the anchor icon on it?
Yup.
Seriously, if you haven't seen it, go watch it... Even if you own the game. And then tell me what that poem is!
That's On Time by John Milton.
I hadn't paid any attention to this, but it's neat to see them return to the Pacific side of things. Guess I'll have to pick this up, even though I'm utterly tired of WW2. Someday I hope we see another modern sub sim.
I don't have the game yet, but here is my understanding of the problem.
Silent Hunter 4 doesn't actually support resolutions higher than 1024x768. What it does support, however, is upscaling. When set to a higher resolution the game takes the backbuffer (which is at 1024x768) and upscales it to your preferred resolution. Unfortunately, since the game doesn't support Anti-Aliasing (due to a conflict with their HDR coding), this means that at higher resolutions the aliasing / jaggies become horrifyingly visible.
There have been a LOT of complaints about it on the official game forums, but it's probably not going to be fixed any time soon.
It has Securom, which isn't anywhere near as invasive or awful. But yeah, I think Ubisoft dropped starforce all together.
What? Did they code their own engine for this?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)