Tom "WKLINK" Cofield Previews Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic, the latest version of the popular naval combat sim series due out in March.

http://www.simhq.com/_naval/naval_035a.html

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Please discuss Silent Hunter 5 in this thread and not the topic of DRM and Ubisoft's UPlay.
A dedicated thread has been started for that purpose:

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2960204.html

Good job Tom, an entertaining and informative read.

I bought and played the Silent Hunter I, but could not really get into it. I found the control interface clumsy, never really knew what these messages that popped up where supposed to mean, and long boring patrols with no enemy contact did not score points either.

Hopefully these things have improved. I certainly agree the graphics look great.

A very good and fair review.

Thank you for showing me the sim I will not be buying due to the DRM.

Did you manualy plot a torpedo attack? Thats the guts of the game, forget the eye candy. How is the TDC, and the plotting instruments, compared to a modded SH3?

THX Tom,

very interesting. I`ll have a closer look at the game when it comes out. I hope it is good enough to replace SH3 + GWX.

Greets

Karsten

Two words:

The. Water.

Nice job, Tom Let's hope the devs made some serious progress in the last month of testing.

Neal

It certainly looks good, but the campaign has got to be a LOT better for me to sack SHIV for this. Also, I can't stand ze German-Enklish accentz, I do hope there will be a German voice pack, all preview vids I've seen so far feature ze war film accentz. And then there's the DRM. I'm waiting for some reviews by SimHQers/Subsimmers before buying this.

Jealous of you, Tom!

I've been trying to figure it out. It isn't like SHIII, there is no key command that I can bring up (well there may be but I haven't found it) so that I can punch in the data. There was absolutely no documentation with this build, no key command listing, no manual, no readme, nothing I could find so I was somewhat groping in the dark. I tried several times to figure it out but I am not a submariner by nature (although I have played a fair amount of SHIV).

I can sorta do it on the map but it isn't the same as SHIII or IV. I would check Subsim, maybe Neal over there has a trick that I don't know. I should chat with him more about it. I did a manual attack on a convoy (one of the single missions and couldn't seem to figure out how to get it to completely work). I'd done it in SHIII but it had been a long time ago and SHIV is different (and easier).

I am planning on this being the absolute first thing I do when SHV is released and I can get the manual for the game.

You have the option of German voices or English voices in the install menu. I went with English, I know there was text under the voices but I have no idea if those were in english or german.

My view was the opposite - the American-accent English voicepack in SH3 really jarred for me, as I'm British - "Why are my crew all Americans?". When your crew speak German-accented English you recognise they're German, and can also understand what they're saying.

I haven't been following the videos (I've stopped playing all computer games - not sure why I came back to SimHQ today really) so I haven't heard the accentz you don't like - are the voiceactors Germans speaking English, or some other nationality speaking with a bad German accent??

I might buy the game if there are German voices and english subtitles like in SH3.

dtague, it is possible to do some file swapping and replace the in-game English speech files with the in-game German speech files while retaining the English subtitles. If you installed the game using the English speech option, the German files are stored here:
C:\Ubisoft\Silent Hunter 5\data\LngGameData\Voices\German\Data\Sound\Speech

You need to copy the folders in there and put them into this folder:
C:\Ubisoft\Silent Hunter 5\data\Sound\Speech

However, beware the automatic updating system. If the next patch includes changes to those same speech files, you might end up with mixed-up English and German speech. I tend to keep a close eye on the Subsim message boards to see if there is any announcement of a patch. If there is one coming up I will revert to the old English speech files until after the patch is deployed, then I will put the German speech back into use.

By the way, I also recommend the Review of Silent Hunter 5 at the Subsim site. You will find it as fair and unbiased as Tom's preview here. Between SimHQ and Subsim, you will be hard-pressed to find more usefull info on what we simmers look for.