SH3 goes gold is it just me

[freeboy]

SH3 goes gold is it just me or is this thing looking good? Maybe too good? I couldn't get the vids to run correctly on the free dowloads.. but we will see on Thursday when it hits the stores..
and my favorite feature NOT left out.. radar detectors!

[wodin]

Never played a sub sim. I'm sure I'm missing out. This one has my attention however whether my PC is upto it is another matter.

[testarossa]

It's UBI soft. The second most evel game publisher after Atari. SH3 will be buggy and if sales will be low they'll leave customers on the cold and move on.

[Zap]

I will wait to see more reports on this one before I decide if I want it.

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: Zap

I will wait to see more reports on this one before I decide if I want it.

Try Neal's review at subsim.com.
He and Drebbel both know their stuff and are acting like little kids at Christmas.

Short extract;

The specter of SH2 hung over my expectations. With each new SH3 build I was thinking, "Please Lord, don’t let this game let us down". It didn’t. SH3 really impressed me at every phase of its development—it’s been all I could do not to rave. No more. This subsim has everything plus everything else. The final score? What else can you say about a hands-down, across the board superb game? Silent Hunter III is the King of Subsims!

100%

Now I want this so much it hurts, Starforce, or no. I'm afraid even the Caesar beta will be temporarily abandoned this weekend in favour of a little Atlantic cruise. [:D]

[DamoclesX]

Its beyond amazing, with it, direct action act of war, and road to hill 30, i"m done for like... a LONG TIME!

Not to mention panzers phase 2 is comming soon I think also, the first one had to be the best rts/wargame I played in a long time!

[RBWhite]

I totally agree with Zap.

I still feel I got Ripped Off with Silent Hunter II.

Unless Ubisoft has done something really way out too improve Silent Hunter III over Silent Hunter II then all I can say is put Silent Hunter I back in production and quit.

Rick White

[wodin]

ORIGINAL: DamoclesX

Its beyond amazing, with it, direct action act of war, and road to hill 30, i"m done for like... a LONG TIME!

Not to mention panzers phase 2 is comming soon I think also, the first one had to be the best rts/wargame I played in a long time!

SH3 has my attention the other games you've mentioned don't.

[DamoclesX]

I like simpler war games, I ve tryed my hand at pacific war and some of the other "hardcore" wargames and it always ends horribly lol.

I like how you can mess with everything, but the end is always the same lol

[wodin]

Fair enough. WiTP is beyond me aswell.

Try SPWAW or Squad Battles.

RTS games become to hectic for me and infantry always seem like cannon fodder. FPS games are fun but again I have problems with the realism. However if an FPS game ever became realistic it would be unplayable. Red Orchestra looks interesting though.

[KG Erwin]

To UbiSoft's credit, they bowed to the demands of the subsimmers and will give us the much-asked-for dynamic campaign. The downside to SHIII--it will be released as a PC-DVD, so if you don't already have a DVD drive, you need to get one.

To damoclesX in particular--download SPWaW 8.3--it's the only tactical land wargame you will ever need, and the fans will guide through any problems you have. It's free, so you have nothing to lose but HD space. I strongly recommend that you get it--your life will never be the same after playing this game.

[DamoclesX]

Ya, infantry is usless in rts's I have found, except for ground control 2, I could really mess up terran or nsa units with the viron infantry, but generally I view infantry as harrassment, as in I send them in to harras the enemy for the 0.5 seconds they live for lol.


I loved sh2, I dunno why people had issues with it, I Thought it was awsome, then again,
I do remember I could never get destroyer command and silent hunter working together, annoyed me it would run for a few seconds then crash

KG Erwin, I will get it right now and try it, always up for a good wargame:) I did have a lot of fun with war in the pacific, but, I got slaughtered, my carriers were sunk, the yamoto kicked my ass hardcore, and I lost so many fighters on missions I thought were smart lol...

I felt like saddam, mothers of all battle my ass lol

[Charles2222]

Today is the first day that the Dallas area Gamestop has any entries for stocking this game. I would say the average site is predicting having between 15-20 copies with more on the way. They must anticipate some pretty good sales. The original Hearts of Iron by comparison had maybe 5 copies at most with no more on the way.

[testarossa]

I’ve been hanging out lately at SH3 forums and there are some usual UBI-soft QA problems wit this game.

Tremble faithful:

1. Bug with sun and sky for both Nvidia and ATI cards.
2. Bug with particle effects for new Nvidia 6*00 cards. Some report it on older cards too (front and astern use of binoculars and ZUO is crewed).
3. Starforce is present and game doesn’t work with some DVD-RWs.


Good staff:

1. Game is awesome, with excellent damage model.
2. Eye-candy graphics.
3. Highly addictive game play.
4. And of course dynamic campaign.

I am personally going to wait for the patch.

[Charles2222]

Yay I got mine! First time I've ever got a game on the release date. Gamestop is back in my good graces. I'll have a week's vacation to mull this over.

[testarossa]

Well, man... Enlighten us all than.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: testarossa

Well, man... Enlighten us all than.

Unfortunately I bought it during lunch at work today. Assuming my system will run it I will give a perusal later today.

[wodin]

Ive heard its very immersive. What more can you ask for?

[freeboy]

all I can say is WOW.. this is aces of the deep, plus incredible graphics plus crew managment.. I about pooped my shorts last night when patrolling in my Zone, a lone cargo ship was spotted.. manned the deck gun, and my crew started to pound away.. I mean.. each shot from the gun caused a flash of light that lit up the target.. is that emersive enough for you? I did manage to get the game to hang.. went to the radio room while on fast compression.. or maybe my system just hosed with a late night update.. soo. while there are things the community wants.. resupply etc.. I think the average user will enjoy this and the HARDCORE gamer will get a thrill.. try turning on all the realism... ..

[Charles2222]

Okey-dokey I can give a really cheap review now.

The best subsim I had ever played was Aces of the Deep (never played Silent Hunter II), and this surpasses it by far. Understand I haven't gone too deep into the game yet as I didn't even fire up a non-linear campaign, but I did play a scenario or two (skipped the tutorial of course) hoping I could find an isolated trawler or something and start blasting away.

From what I experienced, overall I'm very happy with the graphics and sound, but the sounds did seem somewhat unrealistic in certain circumstances (and my best comparison is Aces of the Deep). It doesn't appear the screws ever get very loud, but then again maybe I just haven't been close enough to the surface to hear them very well, but I have experienced them dirctly overhead because I was hit by depth charges several times. The depth charge sounds don't pack much sound either, unless they're much louder when a direct hit is scored. It seemed kind of odd that it seemed as though I was realying on somebody telling me the DC's had damaged the ship instead of thinking that the sound of the blast might be an indicator. Somewhat understated sounds in those respects it seems.

There are real good sounds though too, such as the boat creaking every once in a while to remind you just what you're in. I'm not sure what happens at the really deeper depths however.

The graphics are of course very good, but for me anyway there were some surprizes. A lot of the smaller ships will actually have moving men manning the guns, so that is something I didn't expect. I have yet to shell a ship like that, so I don't know if they go flying or get visually killed, or if they're just part of the gun in a way. You can leave your guns unmanned for the sub, so maybe they will actually die seperately.

Speaking of crews, though I'm not sure how it all works yet, there are individually rated men with experience. strength, awards and other such nuances, such at least for the sub getting the deck gun hit is likely to actually kill a crew member. Apparently in the campaign you can recruit men and so forth too.

For what little battle experience I had, keeping in mind I'm not very good at being a submariner, but then again I was just kicking around the screws anyway, it did seem very good to me. It didn't seem like the DD attacking had an uncanny sense of just completely pummeling me and once while getting rammed a bit a lot of the interior lights were flickering and I heard a hissing sound coming out of my left speaker giving an audible indication of some damage there in the command room.

I did have a skirmish with an aircraft too. I believe it was a fighter and I stayed on the surface and decided to get the AA gun manned and see what they could do. Pretty good as the gunner hit the fighter enough to damage it and it never got close enough to attack.

So far one thing I have found that I prefer in the game is to use the German language option for the crewmates. I get to relying on the text, and sometimes that can be a problem since the scroll is only like the last 3 or 4 messages, but since you can manually scroll back further it's not so bad. But I got into using the German and finding it more comfortable, because you can somewhat block it out that way, because there are times they're giving you so many messages, if in English, that you wish they would shut up. At least when I can't indentify the language it's sort of something to prompt me to look at the messages, which for some screwy reason seems less distracting for me in general. One of the little added audible nuances that add to the atmosphere though, is when you're running silent and they speak in a hushed tone. Great! One slight peculiarity of the game is that it doesn't appear I can change any of the options once a scenario starts, such as turning off the music etc.

As for Starforce I don't mind as much as some of you will, simply because I'm already infected so to speak. I got it originally off the SHOWW2 demo, and when I bought SHOWW2 itself I got it then of course, so having another ganme with it shouldn't matter. I do have a program to delete it if for some reason I feel like getting Silent Hunter III and SHOWW2 off of it (not any time soon). I have had some cd drive (though this game is DVD) peculiarities since Starforce has been added (for one game in particular, not SHOWW2 either, strangely enough), but nothing catastrophic yet.

For what I've seen of the game, and for what it appears they're doing what the bits yet unknown to me, I'm thinking 96%. [8D]