Ship Simulator 2006

There are many simulation games on the market currently and many of them deal with one specific genre of things such as airplanes, trains, submarines, and many more. There is a new simulation game that is out on the market and this time it simulates ships in all of their glory. If you ever wondered how it would be to navigate a ship then this game hopes that you will get your wish fulfilled.

There are two different things that you can do in this game which is play missions or create/exchange missions. In play mission mode you will have to reach certain goals as fast as you possibly can. This can range from getting one ship from one location to another or missions where you have to use multiple tug boats to get a huge ship into a harbor. There are over forty missions to partake in to see if you have what it takes to be a ship captain. Ship Simulator includes a pretty decent mission creation mode where you can create missions by dragging playable ships into various environments that are included in the game. You then can exchange these missions with other people who have this game on the official website forum shipsim.com.

There are eight different ships that you will be able to be the captain of and you will realize that they each have their own feel about them. In order to be successful in this game you will have to know the ins and outs of the boats in order to complete your missions. The boats you will be able to navigate are: The Titanic, Container Vessel, Harbor Patrol, Royal Yacht, Water Taxi, Speedboat, Tugboat, and Cargo Ship.

For a game that has, what I would call high PC requirements, I don’t find the graphics really outstanding in any sense. While they get the job done with decent water reflections and the different size wakes that the boats create, there really isn’t too much there. From all of the other simulation games that I have played the graphics are a little bit better or at least there is a lot more details rendered so you get the feeling that you really are in that specific location.

One of my biggest complaints against the graphics department is serious lack of details on the actual boats. It would be nice to see people walking on the decks. Since there is direct action when playing simulation games, such as shooting and sinking other ships, you expect to see the world around you come alive. This keeps players immersed into simulation games for hours on end. Unfortunately the developers didn’t do that with this game and after the newness of the ship wears off you will start to feel bored due to the lack of detail.

A nice bonus is the walkthrough mode for the Titanic ship. As cool as this might sound, don’t get excited too fast since the game is lacking in detail that makes it “come alive” and you will find yourself bored with walking around really quickly.

The sound for this game is seriously lacking, just like everything else in this game. It seems like it was rushed and there wasn’t enough time or money to add music. It would have made this game a lot better if you were steering the ships to something other then just the very generic ambient sounds of the wakes and engines.

Ship Simulator is rated E for Everyone.

The system requirements are as follows:
Windows 2000/XP
1.6 GHz or greater processor
512 MB of RAM
8X or faster CD ROM
600 MB of disk space
64 MB Video Card
Direct X 9.0c

Gameplay: 5.5
You will find yourself getting bored with steering the ships around pretty soon as the mission objectives are not that fun. Also the controls are a bit quirky, I have a very hard time trying to use my mouse to use the throttles, and I had to depend on the arrow keys to get it done properly.

Graphics: 5.2
A lot more work needs to be done in this department. This especially applies in regards to more variety in environments.

Sound: 5.2
Just like everything else in the game the sound department could use more work as well.

Difficulty: Medium
This game is only as hard as you make it out to be.

Concept: 6.5
I really liked that the developers at Dreamcatcher decided to release a new type of simulation game, but I am sad that the execution is not as fleshed out as it could have been.

Overall: 5.7
The serious lack of variety really kills a simulation game and unfortunately Ship Simulator falls under this category. There are only eight different boats to man and just a few locations for you to go to. While this is a good start to what could be a good franchise, this first game has some serious downfalls. Hopefully the next version (if there is one) will correct these faults and give players something much better.