Ship Simulator 2008

Publisher: Lighthouse Interactive
Developer: VSTEP
Genre: Naval Sim
Release Date: September 2007
ESRB: EVERYONE


I always feel that ships tend to lose out in the transport wars of gaming. I mean, you get great flight-based games and so many excellent car-orientated games, from arcade racers to simulations and driving-based free roaming titles, that there are too many examples to list. In terms of simulations, these days you can find a game that simulates almost anything from managing a zoo or a railroad empire to simulated people, piñatas and spaceships. Of course, when it comes to simulation, the one title that comes to mind is Microsoft Flight Simulator, which has sold millions of copies over the years - but can the same exposure be generated by the simulation of ships? Possibly, as the popularity of pirate scenarios in both gaming and film may well get fans interested in such nautical naughtiness. Don't don your eye patch just yet however, as there are no pirates or looting to be done in Ship Simulator 2008.

When Ship Simulator 2008 rose from the seas and planted itself onto my desk like a jellyfish that has been washed up onto Blackpool beach, I must admit that I wasn't overly excited about the prospect of playing it. It's the second instalment of the series by Lighthouse Interactive, the first being Ship Simulator 2006, so the original must have sold enough copies to warrant this sequel. At installation you need to register a license key, to receive patches and updates such as extra ships and missions, which at least shows that the developers want the game to succeed and not sink without a trace (I wonder how many more nautical themed jokes I can think up!)
Ship Simulator 2008 starts off with a simple yet pleasant main menu accompanied by some atmospheric music, a lot like the CDs that are meant to relax your mood with dolphin and whale sounds. Further investigation showed that I could try my hands at a variety of missions or choose the Free-Roaming approach. You can create your own profile, which saves your progress as you complete the missions, although unless you are a ship enthusiast I can't see many people wanting to complete them all.

There are various missions available, ranging from saving stranded captains to using tugboats to move items from one harbour to another. In general they can be grouped into five distinct mission types, with the first type concerning itself with placing your boat in a particular area. Another mission type is rescuing random people who have fallen from their vessels (the game never states how they ended up there, must be mutiny on a major scale!) The monotonous mooring, towing and anchoring missions are by far the most boring, while the missions that I enjoyed the most tended to be the ones that required me with my speedboat/water taxi to hit some ramps at breakneck speeds. The final mission type is the time-consuming 'Taxi' mode.
The Free-Roaming aspect is pleasant enough; each time I played it, my ship would appear in a different place due to the random generated nature of this feature. However, I suspect that only sea captains and my marine sailor mate Dave will enjoy this beyond the first half an hour of playing. Microsoft Flight Simulator offers a wide variety of places to fly to, which is not the case here, with only a small number of cities or ports on offer. These ports/cities/harbours include New York, Marseille, San Francisco and even the Solent, which separates mainland Britain from the Isle of Wight. There are also several open water environments to try your seafaring hand at.
The graphics in the game are above average; the various weather effects and sunsets are nice to look at, but the ships don't seem very real. The speedboat for example isn't particularly awe-inspiring; it seems to be lacking something when compared to the other vessels in the game, such as the VLCC Latitude or the Vermass. I expected my speedboat to be by far the sexiest vessel on the seas, so it was a little disappointing that it wasn't. The Titanic makes an appearance, but it would have been a fantastic inclusion to have designed a mission where I could have saved it from its meeting with Mr. Iceberg. The various ports do look like some time has been put in to ensure they look lifelike; if you've ever been to New York, which I'm lucky enough to have visited, or any of the other environments depicted in the game, then you will certainly appreciate the little details that have been included.

To be fair, there isn't an awful lot of time spent on ship control as you play, so I found myself gazing at beaches and the other scenery. There are thirteen vessels available, all of which can be viewed in first person as you walk around them. This is a very thoughtful inclusion but again it's really only going to be of the ship-spotters. One aspect I'm unimpressed with are the poorly designed people who you save from Davy Jones' locker; they look stick-like and when you pick them up they just disappear from the water, and you're told they've been brought on board. It wouldn't have taken long to develop a little set-piece where you could throw a life-preserver into the water and the person in distress could have grabbed hold and then climbed aboard.
The sound is nothing special; the engine noises begin to grate after a while, although the ambience of seagulls calling and the splashing of waves is relaxing. I would have loved to hear some of my crew telling me that I was going too fast or that I was going to hit that beach. You can take pictures, which is a bonus, and the pictures do look fairly picturesque. If the developers had modeled the ship systems in a little more depth and simulated other aspects, such as currents, then I would have got a much better idea of what it takes to be a captain on a modern merchant ship and thus would have become more immersed within the game. I know for a fact that working on the sea is a far more demanding occupation than this game suggests, so in this way it fails to truly simulate the experience.

None of the ships seem to sink even if they have 100% damage, and the actual damage on show is poorly represented. The damage characteristics also seem a fair bit out; hitting a mountain at 6 knots gave me 1% damage, whilst the mountain itself still looked the same. There are a few technical issues that need a mention, such as when I was halfway through one mission and suddenly ended up in another. Also, only some parts of a ship are accessible, where others can't be explored. Some missions may take a couple of hours to complete too, although that doesn't mean that they are enjoyable.

A lot needs to be added before the next installment if the developers want Ship Simulator to become a success. More ships and allowing full access within their interiors would be a good idea for starters. The missions could also include real-life scenarios, like fishing for King Crabs in torrential weather on a small fishing boat, whaling, hunting for sharks, entering the speedboat into races or stopping a massive oil carrier from sinking and losing its cargo. There are a fair few options available to the developers that can be added to improve the game. There's no save feature available within missions either, which is definitely needed.

Ship Simulator 2008 will only appeal to ship afficianados, but even they may find the lack of features a turn-off after a while. It's a pleasant enough game to kill a couple of hours on a rainy evening, but there are many more games out there that are either more relaxing or more fun to play. Hopefully the developers will take note of this and have some of these ideas included in the 2009 version, because at the moment you're likely to jump ship and swim for different gaming shores sooner rather than later.


Reviewed by Christopher McNally for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).


Windows XP or Vista
2.4 Ghz Intel Pentium IV or AMD Athlon processor
1 GB RAM
4x CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive
Approx. 500 MB free hard disk space
128 MB 3D accelerated video card with support for Vertex and Pixel shader 1.1
(Nvidia GeForce 5900, ATI Radeon 9800 or comparable)


Screen Shots


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