The Ship-Review

Some of you may be asking what the hell The Ship is. Well, it's a game for the PC running on the Source engine, the same engine used for Half-Life 2.

The Ship is an all new experience most of us have never seen, where FPS, Hitman, and The Sims combine to create one of the most innovative games. All gameplay takes place on one of the nine cruise ships available. However, with only 9 maps that usually look similar, nothing fresh comes up easily. Although I must admit a ship has perfect isolation to make sense in such a game.

There are quite a few game modes, such as Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and a few others, although the one that actually shines is Hunt. Hunt is basically an endless game of mouse-and-cat where one person has to kill the other, while being aware that someone is also trying to kill you. This is probably what sets the line from other games. There aren't many games that try to make something new out of themselves, and The Ship does it quite well. Not only that, but there are quite a few twists to keep the innovative ball rolling. Like you would in real life (and in The Sims), you'll need to take care of your needs, such as hunger, thirst, entertainment, and a fare amount of others. Eventually, if you don't take care of these needs, you'll suffer horrible consequences, and when we say that, we basically mean death. If even a single need isn't fulfilled within a certain amount of time, you're going to suddenly turn into a corpse. This is simply a distraction to keep you away from killing and leaving you vulnerable to be killed. That's right, once doing an action, you're stuck doing it until it's over. It makes quite a good distraction in the game, and will make a much larger impact than you think.

The object is to have the most cash by the end of the game, and you basically do this by killing the person you're told to kill. If you kill anyone other than them (also known as your quarry) and the person trying to kill you, you'll be fined a hefty sum. It makes it interesting to bluff and have people think you're their hunter, only to have them kill you and get fined. Each weapon actually is worth something with a death, and the more a weapon is used, the less valuable it is to use it, while the more rare a weapon is used, the more valuable it becomes and if you can get good weapons, you can easily win the whole game more shorter than the others have been in the server. This is a way in stopping you from using the same weapon every time to avoid the easily powerful weapons from making you practically invincible.

If you use that gun again, you're probablly going to get only 10% of what you got last time

Quite a few things also make the game innovative. You'll find clothes and hats lying around places on the ships that you can use. They become extremely useful for disguising yourself, since once you meet someone and they change costumes, the game would act like you never even met them. Another important thing is security. As a ship, security is needed. There are guards, security cameras, and passengers. Guards and security cameras will automatically catch you, fine you, and temporarily put you in jail when they find you with a weapon. Passengers work a little different. There is a timer when a passenger sees you with a weapon. If the timer runs out, you'll be caught, fined, and put in jail like you would with guards and cameras. This keeps you from easily killing your quarry, but there's a problem with it. If you're like most players carrying more than one weapon, the fines will be VERY heavy. Sometimes they're so large, it practically stops you from winning the game before someone else does, and on few occasions, literally stops you from advancing at the same pace when you're in debt. The other problem with being put in jail is that when your quarry is in jail, you have to wait until they're let out. This gets a little frustrating, since by the time they're released, they're not your quarry anymore, which makes the game unfair in certain ways.

Fine: 60% of what you just had. Length: Enough time to keep someone from killing you.

This is a multiplayer game, and what shapes multiplayer games is the community. The biggest problem with The Ship is the VERY small community. You'll only see 1 server 75% full at the most, and there's never been more than 100 people on at a time. This is probably due to the VERY affordable price tag of $20 that influences consumers that the "budget-friendly" game isn't so friendly for entertainment. Also, don't bother playing it with bots. Not only is the AI horrible, they just don't give the same experience with playing with actual humans who actually check their surroundings and feel tense moments...not to forget about being paranoid at times. If there was a larger community, this game would be one of the most greatest multiplayer games anyone has ever seen. I hope the community grows faster than it actually decreases. It's well worth the $20, but with the lack of sales, actually rising the price would help promote the true quality of the game.

+ Innovation finally doesn't need a like-jacket anymore...just some sunblock.
+ Moments are funny and tense
- The lack of community is almost daunting
- The affordable price might actually discouraging people to buy the game
- Consequences seem to heavy
- Security guards should have some sort of AI

8.1