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Silent Hunter 4 - Wolves of the Pacific

The Engine Room

SH4 makes all attempts to deliver an immersive experience. As part of the promised "Hollywood" experience, Ubisoft has done a fine job of designing and interface which fits with the theme of the game. The main menu is easy to navigate, and the in-game controls are accessible and mesh well with the overall design. It's clear that attention to detail was paid to presenting a unified user experience. Radio chatter and radio dispatches add to the atmosphere, and overall audio quality is good but not exceptional. There simply aren't many sounds to be had in a submarine when the intent is to be as quiet as possible. But the audio works - that is, it serves to add to the experience as a whole. Game audio often receives the fewest resources during development, and it's nice to have voiceover and sound effects which don't pull you out of the experience. The only complaint to be had with audio is the occasional "stuck" sound - an effect which loops like a skipping CD for no real reason. Thankfully, the errant effect always stopped without the need for a restart.

The detailed world surroundings are notable when in port and near land. Birds fly overhead when near land, and the sea bed is more than just a flat surface - a fact which I noticed when skirting the shore a bit too closely. When using the External View, however, I did notice that my crew at watch on the deck failed to leave the deck when the dive order was issued. I can only assume they entered the hatch instantly via translocation (secret WWII technology, perhaps?). It's a minor glitch, but one which should have been caught during testing. The movement of convoys and accurate portrayal of busy shipping lanes rounds out a detailed representation of the Pacific Theater. SH4 has the potential to be a very good-looking game; ships and submarines are rendered and textured extremely well, and with great attention to detail.

Water effects are superb - waves height varies with the movement of vessels, for example.	Depth and refraction are nicely modelled too.
Reflections are naturally part of the effect package.	Ahoy there, me mateys! Ship detail is equally as sharp.

Turning on Ship Normal Maps and Ship Caustic Effects in the Graphics Settings is recommended for the best looking craft. However, standing out as graphically exceptional in SH4 is the water. Fully half of the graphics options are dedicated to tuning visuals related to the ocean and effects. The sea has a natural ebb and flow, and when the waves are heavy the water churns. Turning on Detailed Wave Ripples enhances this effect. Ships' wakes are depicted with realism, particularly when the 3D option is turned on. The detail continues even beneath the waves with the Light Shafts option set to on, dispersing sunlight under water. Tying the visuals together is the Post-Process Filters option, which produces a film reel-style filter on the entire scene.

The graphics are to be praised and these effects are available on even systems sporting hardware below the minimum recommended requirements - as long as the graphics card supports DirectX 9 and Pixel Shader 2.0. The reason SH4 runs well on even low-end hardware, however, is inexcusable: out of the box, the game engine will only render at a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768. Selecting a higher resolution in the Graphics Settings will change the resolution of the UI, but not the game engine. While an argument can be made that this doesn't hamper the gameplay, it's simply not acceptable for a game released in 2007 to be locked at a year 2000 resolution.

SH4 how it actually looks vs...

...how Ubisoft have marketed it.

To add insult to injury, antialiasing isn't available as an in-game option, and forcing AA on through the graphics driver does not work. The fact that Ubisoft's own promotional screenshots are high-resolution, antialiased widescreen in-game shots is misleading. Is it any surprise that the Ubisoft-supplied screenshots look as though they've been artificially enhanced as well?

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