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Ship Simulator Extremes
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Graphics & Sound:
Ship Simulator Extremes is a simulator with highly defined ship graphics, complete with particle effects for exhaust and realistic waves and wake effects. The sounds you will hear in-game are limited to what you'd likely hear when piloting a ship. You will hear the sounds of huge engines chugging to push the ship along, the waves lapping back and forth... if you're in first person view (on the ship's bridge), you will hear radio chatter, as well. I've never been able to make out anything specific, but there's a constant drone of radio communication in the background when you're on the bridge. There isn't, however, any background music or a (music) radio or anything.
The graphics can look fairly good... if you can manage them. My gaming rig, built last winter by J.R. Nip as a Christmas gift, was not the top of the line, necessarily, but was intended to allow me to play and review most PC games that would come out for the next year. For most games, it's performed quite well. My graphics card falls slightly short of the minimum requirements for Ship Simulator Extremes, according to a developer who was helping me to troubleshoot an issue, but he said it shouldn't really affect anything. That leaves me in a place where I can't speak to the graphical performance of the game with a more powerful card, but can say, firsthand, that my ATI Radeon HD 2400 (with 256 MB) had some issues attempting this game. The particle effects were the most obvious, especially environmental effects, such as snow storms. Even mousing response seemed sluggish, making it difficult to click and drag on the on-screen control sticks for setting throttle to a certain point and leaving it there.
What? On-screen controls? Good point, I should elaborate. When you control the game, you can use keyboard keys, a DirectX (DirectInput) compatible controller or you can use the mouse to manipulate controls shown as throttle controls, captain's wheels, etc. overlaid over the bottom of the screen. These are visible in any mode, but may be turned off, if desired.
According to the manual, "for missions with fast boats, like the powerboat, you need a frame rate of at least 20-25." For larger ships, they say that you may be able to get by with 13-15 frames per second. I was able to achieve around 14 frames per second in-game by reducing the graphical quality to "low," selecting the smallest resolution (1024x768) and having it load full-screen, rather than windowed. I was getting around 30 fps in the menus, but was dropping down to about 14 fps during gameplay.
Completing missions will earn you rewards. When I completed a Green Peace mission, for example, I was treated to an interview with one of the Green Peace captains, including footage from some of their missions to stop toxic waste dumping in the ocean. It was neat to see this content, but I was surprised to find that the video was playing at only eight frames per second, giving it a feeling akin to the in-game video in original PlayStation titles, a la Wing Commander.
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Gameplay:
Ship Simulator Extremes is, in my opinion, not so much a game, per se, as a simulator. What is the difference, you might ask? The timing is, well, realistic; when you're hurtling across the top of the water at a mind-numbing 17 miles per hour (about 15 Knots), it feels very much like 17 miles per hour. The various missions you will encounter include things such as taking a ship's captain out to his ship, piloting a boat to take tourists on a cruise of the bay or piloting a tugboat to help to guide a ship into port. These are missions that simulate different day-to-day jobs that you could encounter as a captain of a ship. There are, mind you, more exceptional missions, but these typically involve dealing with mechanical failures or strange situations, hence the "Extremes" in the title.
You get to play around with a variety of ships, from tugs to sailboats, from speedboats to cruise ships... there's even a hovercraft. Many of these are slow, but there are a few fast craft for tooling around in. You'll be able to pilot your choice of these in a range of locations from Bora Bora to the Antartic; how's that for extremes? Actually, there is the possibility for user-submitted content, in the form of new missions, new environments and new ships, but the editors aren't available as of this writing. This means there's a lot of potential for additional content, but bear in mind that there's no guarantee on the quantity, quality or even existence of this content.
Ship Simulator Extremes is similar to Microsoft's Flight Simulator, but for ships. Flight Simulator isn't a game, either and can be boring at times, but at least you're traveling at speeds in excess of 300 miles per hours, so there a sense of excitement. By contrast, most of the huge ships in Ship Simulator Extremes travel around 17-20 miles per hour, which is slower than most school zones. This lack of excitement is compounded when you're a great distance from the shore, as things move so slowly that you could actually think you were stationary if it weren't for the slowly changing anti-aliasing of things in the distance. If you're looking for huge thrills, this isn't where you'll find them.
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Difficulty:
If you're looking for spills, on the other hand, look no further. There is a certain finesse and careful accuracy (and quite a bit of patience) required to successfully use a pair of tugs to dock a ship with an engine failure. I found this out the hard way and managed to get the ship within spitting distance of the dock, only to roll it over on its starboard side and capsize it. It was at this moment that my mind went scrambling backwards through my actions to determine the last time I had saved my game. The short answer? Far back enough that I wasn't giving it another shot.
So, the first suggestion I would have for anyone playing Ship Simulator Extremes is to be patient. You might want to have something else to do while you're playing. Perhaps a good book, or a casual game on the DS or PSP... I'm sure there are probably several sea captains out there with something to occupy their time while they wait to have to do something... simulate that.
My second suggestion would be to save often. At the very least, save your game when you achieve a goal; you'll know you've done this, because a prompt will pop up and inform you of such. I would also suggest saving your game just before trying anything that you feel might be a bit tricky. Yes, you may be piloting huge machinery with extremely powerful engines, but even barring engine failure, you're on the water, dealing with currents and fluid dynamics, so it's quite easy to find yourself giving it all she's got to head to your left (port) side, while your ship defiantly lumbers ahead toward a dock. You've been warned.
My third piece of advice goes back to the long wait times when moving from point A to point B. You can go into the navigation computer view (the map) and set up way points and turn the auto-pilot on and even use the slider to speed up time in order to get from A to B faster. Be careful with this feature, however, as the controls don't necessarily return to full stop upon exiting auto-pilot. I typically have to manually hit the keyboard commands to accelerate and to turn, so that those controls will return to their default, center position afterward. I have also accidentally turned on auto-pilot while anchored, dredging a river, so remember to check all of your moorings and such when going into - and coming out of - auto-pilot or saved games. There are some glitches in there somewhere. |
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Game Mechanics:
Simulator enthusiasts who have DirectX compatible specialized simulation controllers, such as a wheel and throttles, would probably want to turn off the graphical control overlay. You can use certain keypresses to give you more detailed control, but not to the level of control you can get with controllers. If you need more control and don't have specialty controllers, the U.I. overlay gives you a bit more analog control.
I find myself pondering the target audience of this game, um, well, simulator. The high-end system requirements, long waits (both loading and travel time) and difficulty excludes casual gamers, while the lack of support for multiple monitors and the inclusion of frequent missions that have you swapping between multiple ships while controlling all of them seems like it would make the game less appealing to simulator gamers. (Well, that and the fact that a "simulator cockpit" for a ship would, basically, be an average sized room with a chair, table, controls and large displays on the walls.)
In addition to needing a major gaming rig behind you to run the game, Ship Simulator Extremes also suffers from several bugs and I've only seen one follow-up version to address issues. I took that last screen shot myself. This was some error I got when the game crashed after I tried to select a single mission from within a campaign. Nothing led me to believe that I couldn't do that until the game simply crashed. I could try to reproduce the error and send the developers information captured from the data dump so they could fix it, but that's what a quality assurance team is supposed to do. I'm, quite frankly, not interested enough to bother with it. |
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-Geck0, GameVortex Communications AKA Robert Perkins |
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows XP (Min. service pack 2), Windows Vista or Windows 7,
32 and 64 bit OS supported, 2GB RAM (Windows XP) or 3GB RAM (Vista or Windows 7), 3 Ghz P4 Intel or AMD equivalent processor, Geforce 8800GT or ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 256MB ram (Shader model 3.0), 3.5GB Free Hard Drive Space, 4x PC DVD-ROM, Mouse with scroll wheel, DirectX 9.0c compatible Sound Card, DirectX 9.0c, Optional controller support DirectX 9.0c compatible, Broadband Internet connection required for Multiplayer |
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Test System:
MS Windows XP Home Edition, AMD Dual-Core, 3.11 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG, Gateway HD2201 21" HDMI Monitor, Sony SDM-HS73 Monitor, ATI Radeon HD 2400 (256 MB), USB MixAmp, A30 Gaming Headset, Realtek HD Audio, Creative SB X-Fi, 1.5 TB Western Digital Caviar Green SATA Hard Drive, Sony DVD RW, Cable Modem, Logitech Wireless Gaming Mouse G700 |
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