I gave a solid effort on SH3 but it bored me to tears eventually. (even with time compression). I will give the demo of this a try when it comes out and see if it gets me interested. Thanks for posting the new information.

Too bad they never implemented wolfpacks in SH3.

If that 3rd screenshot isn't pre-rendered then it appears there will be crew on the decks on the ships atleast. Hopefully they're animated and will move around. Would be even cooler if they react to you being noticed or torps in the water and they start running around.

The only omission remains other submarines, SH4 won't have either AI US subs or Japanese subs. US subs did work in 3 and 4-sub wolfpacks in the last two years of the war, and Japanese subs were a major source of worry for US sub skippers, as well as prime targets of opportunity. I can imagine the thrill of receiving an Ultra transmission directing my sub to intercept a transiting Japanese sub. Will I get there first and be the hunter? Or will he detect me and lay in wait?

The damage control center does not have a sub cutaway with little compartments, fires, and flooding animations. However, the player is given the ability to group several damage teams with experts and more efficiently prioritize the tasks.

There is no dedicated station depicting a radio room, simply a clipboard with the radio traffic. Dan assured me that there will be a lot more radio traffic than in SH3; Fox broadcasts, enemy transmissions, and mission orders. One part I liked, you can pick up music radio broadcasts. Dan says you can even pick up Radio Tokyo, Radio Hawaii, and news broadcasts, but Tokyo Rose will need to be added as a mod. "Unfortunately, we couldn't get them," he said.

Enemy harbors will have dynamically generated ships. Sometimes a harbor will be empty, sometimes you may see a battleship. "Every time the player starts a mission, it's a different world," explains Dan. "It's based on realistic scenarios, but there's no telling what will happen." Sounds good, but will enemy harbors, populated or not, have defensive measures? Nets, mines, and air and DD patrols? If the player surfaces in Tokyo Bay, will he always be detected and enemy patrol units spawned to attack him? Dan assured me that is the intention.

The "rescue downed airman" duty is more stimulating than the version we first saw in SH1. Instead of a tightly scripted single mission where pretty much all you are expected to do is bring your sub up to a pilot in a raft, in SH4, you can be patrolling a strait on a regular patrol and see a dynamic US air strike occurring over the horizon. If some of the planes are hit, the AI pilots will bail out of the smoking plane and parachute into the ocean. Voila! Instant "rescue downed pilot" objective. "A lot of the action takes place close to islands and enemy installations. For example, you may get a mission to drop some commandoes on an enemy island, or recover them, or provide lifeguard duty to American pilots who are shot down. And (being close to the enemy), it's always risky business.

Speaking of risky business, I didn't get to play the game enough to evaluate the weather but I'm told your deck watch may take casualties in monsoons.

One of the novel aspects introduced in SH3, crew management, returns in SH4, but with several key improvements. According to Dan, "When cruising, the crew is running watches, four hours on, four hours off. During their off watch time, they decide when to sleep, as they need it, like a real human. It's like the Sims but they have little needs, you don't have to feed them, they can take care of that and they do their maintenance. When you find an enemy contact, you order battlestations and activate the whole crew. There is opportunity for a little bit of crew management here (in the crew screen) but the key thing to remember is you don't have to come to this screen. It's a real submarine of the United States Navy, it works for you."

The old officer avatars at the bottom of the screen are gone, now the player interacts with the crew directly in the 3D conning tower, control room, and bridge, or with keyboard shortcuts. On those long patrols, an active player may choose to appoint "leaders" with expertise and experience over some of the green crew members, to spur them on and increase the battle-readiness of the sub. The leaders are designated by having a slightly larger avatar. Off duty guys are grayed out and little Z's appear when sleeping. Naturally, the more you interact with your crew, the better they perform. I don't know how much of an impact this has on actual gameplay, but it sounds like a good feature.

March 13th can't get here any faster.

This is sort of old news, but I hadn't heard about it until now. Looks like for SHIV Ubi is doing the same type of packaging like Sega did for MTWII. Instead of having a separate regular and special edition, the first shipment of the game will basically be a "special edition" and then once those are sold out any further version will just be plain regular editions.

The initial packaging will include:

• 100+ page manual including reference material
• Fold out historical map of the Pacific theater
• Fold out ship recognition poster
• Quick Reference Card
• 1-hour of WWII-era documentary footage about U.S. submarines from Periscope Films on a Bonus DVD

With this and STALKER coming out within weeks of each other, March is going to a busy month for me.