Before actually playing The Ship, I had read the concept behind it and was vaguely interested. Not $20 interested, but it sounded fun to me. So when I heard there was going to be a free multiplayer weekend, I was all over it. I got the game pre-loaded and waited a few days for the free weekend to kick in. I live in Japan so timezones are all backwards for me, I'm actually living in the future. But around mid-saturday or so, I was finally free to play!
With some anticipation, I login to Steam and load up the game. Immediately, I get busy adjusting my controls and the graphical settings. The second I touch the gamma slider the game locks up hard. I lose all the crap I had written to myself in my notepad window and this immediately changes my mood from anticipation to annoyance.
I do a full computer restart, login once more, and begin adjusting the configuration. The second I touch the gamma slider it locks up again. My mood changes from annoyance to subtle anger.
Fine then, I resolve to play the game in the dark then. By the time I'm back into the game, configured, and joining a server, a lot more time has passed than I planned for. Precious minutes of my free weekend have been squandered! I finally get into a server. It's laggy as hell, I walk incredibly slowly, and some random person named Landlubber, the default name, begins attacking me. I have no weapon with which to retaliate, and I am immediately killed. Alright then, I grit my teeth. It is common to deal with some frustration when you're just starting a competitive online game.
I spawn as a new character and immediately get to work securing some weapons. I see a fire axe on the wall, so I grab that. This should do nicely. I go to my inventory and click on it, assuming I have to equip it. I am immediately arrested. Subtle anger has given away to smoldering and undirected rage.
In prison, I walk around, examining cabinets and drawers. For some reason there are books littered all over the place. I equip one, and my character starts reading, while a little indicator shows my desire to read returning to normal. What the hell? I decide not to worry about it for now.
As the game progresses, I am murdered over and over again without the opportunity to retaliate, I die from thirst, I am arrested repeatedly the few times I have actually sighted my quarry and managed to have a weapon in my possession, I get lost on the gigantic ship, I come inches away from killing somebody only to have the round end, I walk so very, very slow and my run bar never ever refills. Battle after battle is lost and the overarcing war, my desperate struggle to enjoy this damn game, is rapidly seeming less and less likely to end in success. My smoldering rage has transformed into a Moby Dick vs Ahab-level lust for carnage.
Some of the many weapons you will either never find or be too busy eating, pissing, and sleeping to get a chance to use
Why? Perhaps it is a function of the server I join, but right after the round starts I'm already receiving warnings that there are only 90 seconds remaining to find my quarry. Each round you have a specific player to hunt, and, likewise, there is a player hunting you. However, even by the time I have mostly learned how to navigate the maps, all too often I am unable to locate a weapon and find my quarry in time. I become better able to survive though. With increased survival, however, a whole new series of obstacles present themselves. Playing The Ship is like playing as your whiny, needy character from The Sims in an fps. You need to eat, sleep, drink, piss, crap, READ, talk to people, and stay clean. What happens if you fail to maintain these needs? Death. That's right, in this game, your desire to read a book is so pressing that you are unable to wait even a couple minutes while you commit murder.
In the game's favor, the graphical style and the ambience of the ship, along with the radio samples and general chatter, are fairly good. But it's unfortunate, by the end of my free multiplayer weekend I was not very entertained. In fact I was barely able to contain my desire to destroy everything around me. Sure, it was technically free, but by my estimation somebody owes me two goddamn days back.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI'm the Operations Director at Outerlight, creators of The Ship, and feel compelled to write re your review as you have obviously not had much fun with our game!
However, on reading your review I feel you've fallen into some traps that new players encounter (not understanding the premise, the rules or the interface). The game has a bit of a learning curve and you do need to get used to it. For example one trick is not to kill your quarry every round: get ahigh paying weapon and kill them when it's most valuable. If the round ends and you haven't killed them, that doesn't neccessarily matter as long as you kill them one round and win a lot of money...
I'd advise reading the instrruction manual which you can find at http://www.theshiponline.com eitehr in "media and download". You may also want to look at the forums or the "about the game section".
If you think you'd like to try again let me know and I can give you access to the game again.
We are a small and independant developer and yes, the game needs more work and more specifically more money spent on it but it's a whole hell of a lot better than this review would make people think.
Hope you have another go.
Yours
Ailsa Bates