Silent Hunter 5

That the crew receive zero attention here is especially odd since they've gotten some new features. As well as having to manage their morale as usual, your crew now have stats and even special powers you upgrade with "promotion points".

You can even upgrade your ship's mess officer to unlock his ability to make morale-boosting Special Food, or chat to your men about their about their wives, children, the boat, the war, even their novel. Throughout the campaign your men receive new (if brief) lines of dialogue, and their continued growth as characters is a nice reward for your continued survival.

Yes, that's right, there's a campaign now. Rather than picking a submarine and a year and floating off to create your own story, the game now features a single sub and has you commanding it through a branching path of missions, each made up of many patrols.

Sadly though it's very limited. You command a team of fixed personalities, which means that nobody on your ship can get injured or die, and this is hardly ideal for a simulation, or any game which sells itself on being dramatic. Console fans and Silent Hunter fans probably don't overlap too much, but the example set by Valkyria Chronicles on PS3 was better, proving that when characters with names, histories, traits and voice actors die due to your actions, you feel it.

A bigger issue is that Silent Hunter 5 players can look forward to a spectacular first mission set in 1939, which takes some five tired hours to complete and sees you sinking dozens of merchant vessels around a poorly defended England before you can proceed to the more hostile waters of 1940 onwards.

The final serious new feature is what Ubisoft describe as your u-boat becoming a "Living Space", wherein more of your ship than ever is available to wander around (not the entire thing, still), and lots of your orders are issued directly to crew members by clicking on them and then selecting various options.

It's pretty and atmospheric, but between this new need for you to go pottering around your boat, that grubby frame-rate and the revised UI being hugely clunky, running your ship can become very trying indeed. Imagine controlling a Captain with two peglegs who's trying to maintain his dignity while an important part of his job is still climbing ladders. Imagine him squinting at his cramped ship through tear-glossed eyes. That's Silent Hunter 5.

But all of these missteps pale in comparison to how unfinished this game is. Any notes I take while reviewing a game tend to be of the angry variety; when I'm having fun I don't often stop to jot things down. Thanks to Silent Hunter 5 the room I'm writing in now looks like Russell Crowe's shed from A Beautiful Mind. I'm just going to go ahead and read some of what I've written on the wall, floor and ceiling: