Silent Hunter 4 is simply put THE best subsim ever. A graphical masterpiece and the new missions are a welcome addition.
Okey, so I've talked a bit about graphics, let's continue with that. The graphics are truly amazing, when it comes to flightsimulators or subsimulators this is unlike anything I've ever seen. Better than Battlestations:Midway and 100% accurate at the same time. The water distortion effects, the transparency, the huge hollywood-like explosions (based on real footage btw.) are jaw dropping!
The minimum specs demand quite modern hardware already, but it's worth having mid to high-end hardware and run this game, anything less will be able to run it, but with toned down settings, Silent Hunter III will probably beat it on your very low-end PC. For comparison I'm running this game on a Intel Core 2 Duo 3Ghz, 1Gb Ram and a ATI X1600XT 256mb and it's running all smooth and great great graphics.
Like any game, what's a game that looks good, but doesn't play well. This game scores on it's gameplay too, most of the time the action gets pretty intense and the almost 'empty' seas of Silent Hunter III are filled with much more enemy vessels. Something I really really appreciate. Figuring out how to control the submarines will take some time, but is not really that different from Silent Hunter III. You'll get the hang of it before you know it and the micromanagement was actually toned down a bit, and this is a good thing. The game difficulty is flexible, you can play it as a real sim up to a slightly easier arcade like way. It stays a sim though, you won't get 'homing torpedoes' hehehe.
The soundeffects, voices and music are topnotch, it totally fits this game and you can tell they have done everything to make it close to perfect. If you remember Silent Hunter III, well this time it's even better.
(btw. low quality sounds are the effect of a copy protection system, just like 2D crew and weird eyes -> remember this when people complain about sound or 2D crew 'bugs', those guys simply have a warez version..)
Missions are sweet, they've actually added missions like 'save a pilot', 'deliver cargo' and some more of those random generated missions. Really cool addition to the game. All in all this, together with the very good campaign give you plenty value for money and it'll take a while before you've got tired of playing this game, that's for sure.
As for actually playing, again like it's predecessor this game really delivers intense and exciting moments and it really gives a kick sinking destroyers, shooting down aircraft and accomplish difficult missions. It's simply put the best looking and best playable subsim at the moment.