Gaming Ship Simulator Extremes Review

Oh, and did you hear about the massive ebola outbreak?

 

On the topic of popular sim games, heres the best horror/romance/comedy/text-sim that I've played in a long time

Don't **** your pants

 

I spent three years on small cruise ships, two of those on deck, and let me tell you, most of the time those are all you need. Actually, realistically, those are all the controls you have. the interesting part of ship handling is being in close quarters, especially docking and un-docking. You're still using the same controls, but there is one other element which is your deck staff. Once you get next to the dock without hitting it, you have to get the lines over in a certain order and then use your controls in conjunction with the lines to get where you want to be. weather and current conditions can make this even more difficult.

For big ships there is also the challenge of working with tugs.

For what it's worth, some interesting scenarios for this game (DLC maybe) would be navigating locks, Running a barge tow (a whole mess of barges pushed from behind by a tugboat) or maybe a pilot boat.

 

I played the 2008 version which got very dull for me very quickly, it seems this is not a massive step forward in terms of missions and playability.

I would have expected more detailed and challengeing scenarios to be honest.

I had a quick look into our local game shop and it is full of games like this, if they didn't sell they would not be stocked, I purchased train simulator a while back when they did our local line ( the joys of ignoring passengers and missing stops the realism was amazing in that respect)

 

Congratulations for completely and spectacularly missing the point.

 

If this game had proper ye olde boats (pirateships ) and looked great, i might have considered purchasing it, but without that, I don't really care

 

What this game really needs is multiplayer compatibility with Silent Hunter IV

 

it would be nice to see the ship sim just off the coast of Somalia , or is pirate ship sim an expantion .the idea anyone would sit at home and do a simulation or wind and rain at sea on a ship is daft . give me a nice hot bath and my battle-ship or rising submarine any day.

 

The idea that people might want a program that doesn't feature guns and chases might seem alien to you, but many people find simulators extremely interesting, and simulators do sell.

 

All about Ship Simulator and this review:
In short, the review hits the nail on the head. I love simulators, I love learning how different vehicles work and situations play out, whether they be for emergency scenarios or just plain old fun. IMHO VSTEP needs to revisit ShipSim 2008 and release a new version.

I'd like to say that I very much want a proper Ship Simulator since FSX takes care of flight. No one should be upset that Ship Sim appeals to people who want the real experiences rather than, for example, GTA-style handling.

However...
The first "Very Easy" cruise ship mission is BORING because you can't hear the engines during the 30 minute trip to the second way-point. In transit, you may notice other ships have no bloody AI... which sent a cargo ship on a collision course with my CRUISE SHIP.... WHICH BLOODY SANK. This sucks. The mission was designed to be very easy and in fact requires the user to jump-ahead and learn to slow your big crappy boat down long before the collision. It requires patience but OK, fine... it's a simulator.

The horn sounded like crap in 2008, you can swing your view inside of things which is crappy because they're even more boring on the inside than the outside.

There's a mooring bug where in order to complete the mission... you moor the front of the boat and .... nothing. It used to work earlier this year but not when I played it today.

About the performance... I assumed that ShipSim 2008 was just so freaking complicated with it's super realistic calculations that I forgave it for running like garbage all the time, especially in rainy, swelling seas. However, the damage report, the way you take on water, the collisions and everything tells me there's not really that much going on. I mean, how much more pain would VSTEP programmers have to go through to add some simple bloody AI to this thing?.. or maybe a little more realism to the damage system... or gosh, if the passengers sat their stupid arses down on my bloody boat instead of putting their hands behind their back like a bunch of D-bags, I'd be grateful.


To conclude this half-assed, ranting reply, I would like to reiterate that I agree with the reviewer on almost everything (excluding the patience requirement, which is a moot point after the rest). As a software marketing company, why invest in VSTEP? Who was ShipSim supposed to be for? Are there any other Ship Simulators from which they could have taken a hint?
Obviously, Ship Simulator Extreme is an even poorer invetment to make than the original given the required spec.