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Ship Simulator requires a fascination and obsession with ships in able to thoroughly enjoy the game. You can control ships, walk through ships, create your own missions with ships, use many ships at once, crash your ships, be a big ship or a small ship, impress other people with the size of your ship, use a tiny ship to pull big ships… okay have you gotten the point yet? The game involves ships and other things involving only ships! Do you fit the fan mold? If so, then you will be wildly impressed with Ship Simulator. If not, you will be wishing you had invested your hard earned cash elsewhere. I see Ship Simulator for what it is: a game about ships. Ship Simulator certainly fulfills the expectations about what a sim should be like, but unfortunately it lacks in several other categories.
There are two main things that players can do in SS, they can play missions or can create and exchange missions. Playing missions involves guiding a boat (or later, several boats) and successfully completing specified objectives. There can be five different types of mission goals, and any number of them may be added together during a mission.
The first is always present; the player ship. In some missions, you control two or more different ships independently of each other. This icon helps you keep track of your ships. The second kind is a buoy, which you just need to approach to complete. Third is a mooring point, where you need to stop your ship, and as the name suggests, park it. Fourth is a taxi point, where you need to stop and let people get on or off, and fifth is saving drowning people. Later missions can get more complicated with the addition of more of these objectives. In the create and exchange missions option, players can bring playable ships and objectives into other environments. More on this later.
When beginning the game, only ten of the missions are unlocked. More missions become unlocked as players complete the missions that are already open. The missions start out easy and progressively become more complex, but players can re-play missions to get a better score or win more money. Money, of course, is the reward players obtain after completing missions, providing they do not damage their ships or the environment.
In a few cases, if you bash your ship into a person or a reef, the mission is immediately over. The more difficult the mission is, the more money you get! Unfortunately there really isn’t anything you can do with the money you earn, it is simply there to attest to your achievements. It would really be more interesting if players could purchase boats or environments based on the money they accrued… but I suppose dreamcatcher is trying to make us all extremely frugal millionaires.
There are several types of ships and boats that are playable in the game. They include a container vessel, cargo ship, harbot patrol boat, tugboat, speedboat, water taxi, royal yacht, and the RMS Titanic. SS claims that these boats are very realistic in their handling, but as I have never guided the Titanic across the Atlantic, I wouldn’t really be able to judge the handling. The detail on these boats is very good, and on the Titanic it is even possible to take a walkthrough of the ship.
The importance of the scroll wheel on the mouse is so that players can guide their ships using different views; from third person to first person in a few scrolls. Ships are easier to navigate in third person, especially when making sure not to run over drowning people or smash into a rocky outcrop. Another aspect of the ship realism is the speed at which they travel. Driving a speedboat over ramps and around buoys can be really exciting. On the other hand, waiting two minutes to get a container ship to move forward left me twiddling my thumbs or reading the newspaper during missions. The immense amount of time it takes to complete larger ship missions can be really boring during the early missions. Later when a few ships are added the monotony is broken by micro-management, but the first few missions were like watching sloths race. Ugh.
On screen during the missions there is a lot going on. Players can use either the mouse or the keyboard individually to control their ships, but I found it easiest when using both. Several reports are also available for use during the mission. There is a weather report option, and suprisingly wind speed does play a part in how fast or slow your ship travels. There is a mission panel, explaining your remaining objectives and the ones you have completed.
Also, there is a compass, GPS, and chart panel as well. The compass panel shows the direction you are heading, course over ground (cog), course to waypoint (ctw), true wind direction (twd), and apparent wind direction (awd) (no…not all wheel drive car junkies…!). The GPS panel shows your latitude, longitude, speed over ground, distance remaining to the waypoint, and the time that you have spent on the mission since the beginning. Time is important, because many players like to compete by showing their highscores on the website. There is no time limit, but the better times you have, the more your ship manuevering ego can inflate. Although there is a wealth of information in just these two panels alone, none of the information is necessary to complete the mission. Again, they are provided for ship junkies. However, the last panel, the chart panel, is the most important for completing the mission. The chart shows different sea depths, outlines of obstacles, where the wayward points are, and the direction you are and should be heading on the course. Paying special attention to this chart can be essential to finishing the mission safely and in a timely manner.
Okay now for the creating missions part of the game. As true to the name of the section, this feature allows you to create your own missions. You get to choose things like the type of environment (harbor, open sea, etc.), wind speed, weather conditions, objectives, ships used, and so on. This is largely acheived by use of “drag-and-drop”, which makes creating your own missions rediculously easy. You place objectives where ever you would like, and then race to complete your own course. Obviously, creating your own mission is a lot more in-depth and creative than this, but going into detail would surely bore you, as I’m sure finding out for yourself is much more interesting. On the shipsim.com website, you can post your mission in the forum and challenge other players to compete with you during the mission or for the highest score.
The ship models in SS are gorgeous to look at. However, the environment is not. Pop-ups and blocky buildings are really the only surroundings, and the islands look like big green blobs in the middle of the screen. The water is unrealistically flat and calm in every scenario. The ships look good as they’re moving and produce decent wake while they’re doing it (this is the best technology demo of your video card’s pixel shader if I ever saw it). However, the graphics look like a child’s paper model of a harbor. Come on guys, my Nintendo 64 can do better than this!
The sound in SS is negligable. Basically it involves the sound of a ship engine, and that’s about it. As far as accuracy goes, I’m really not familiar with the different sounds of ship engines, so you’ll have to judge for yourself.
The creators of Ship Simulator have accomplished what they intended to do; create a successful and realistic ship simulator. In this way, the game is interesting, involving, and the replay value is increased due to the accompanying online forums. However, many other aspects of the game in general are only mediocre, leaving players with moderate ship interest with a bland taste in their mouths. You really have to be a big ship buff to stay interested in Ship Simulator. But for the inexpensive sticker price, I have to admit this game is worth it.
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