Ship Simulator: Maritime Search and Rescue Reviews

This game is a great one. It is like an adventure-simulator. I think many people misunderstand this fact, and criticize this game not being an all round sim. In reality, the game focuses a lot on narration and credible, based on real emergency cases, missions. It is real that it lacks completely a damage model for the ships, and maybe (I say maybe) the wind and streams effects aren't enough strong (or, better said, they are non perceivable adequately just because they can't do damage to the ship). but, on the other side, the water buoyancy effect, the waves, the weather, the mass of both the water and the vessels, the inertia and the relatives interactions with other vessels and objects are modeled in an incredibly realistic and enjoyable way, I really haven't seen something similar altough being a sim player from when I was a kid. And remember that probably the ship can't be damaged because the developers wants to focus on the narrative effect of the missions, not imposing time limits or game overs damage conditions to it. It can be a questionable choice, but it should be respected, if it is the case. I don't think at all that a team that realistically modeled the effects of an immense water mass in a so credible way would have problems modeling at least a simple damage model. And is this narrative approach that really let the player feel a dramatic and at the same time very enjoyable atmosphere, a thing pure sims often forgot completely, and the lacks of true game over conditions gives the game a relaxing and less punitive sensation relating to many other games. Last but not least, also the modeling of the daughter ships are very good, and the immense difference in mass and buoyancy respect to the main ships is extremely well perceivable both graphically and dinamically. Some missions are a little tricky (like the second of the Heligoland first campaign), but they are designed that way, the player must think before acting. The most annoying thig is that the game lacks a save-game-during-missions option, so if you decide to leave a mission at his half-completion, then you must restart it from the beginning. The game has 2 locations, 4 campaign for location and 4 missions for campaign: a total of 32 missions, not bad! and for each location, there are 3 free cruise missions in different weather conditions, for a total of 6 more. And not to forget the tutorial mission, a very intriguing and dramatic one, where the protagonist ends his course and is promoted as the effective commander of the rescue ship after the completion. I feel I can recommend this game to a large audience of players, fort being more forgiving, for having smart and interesting missions, for the dialogues, narration and the interesting characters, and for having a realism focused at enhanching the fun and enjoyability, instead of frustrating the player. And last but not least it gives a nice depiction of the German Maritime SAR and of Sea SAR Operations in general, and how complex and dangerous these maritime missions must be in real life. EDIT: I was able to actually sink a ship in a mission, obtaining a mission failure.

So its getting a dislike for a couple reasons. Pros -Story is alright not good not bad - Game is easy to learn now i will start will the cons - The game and controls are simplified to a mind numbing simplified extent - The game isnt a true simulator its more a story telling game - Just about nothing in this game feels realistic -They pretty much tried to replicate simultor features with BS time consuming tasks. Not fun at all. I cant recommend this for anyone wanting an actual game... not worth more than $1 just way to simple and small to be anything else.

The playability of this game sucks....... It's very hard to follow what you're meant to do, with the radio being useless for advice. An example is the mobile phone call mission and it talks about transfering the radio coms into the sister ship and people on a cliff waving... I have the name of the cliff, but I have no idea where that is and all it takes me to is a way point no where near a cliff and refering to the game manual is no help in regards to gameplay. Great idea but badly executed

After some issues with the controls I managed to track down the issue. An old joystick driver was giving fake control inputs to the game and making it unplayable. So be aware that you need to get rid of all inputs aside from that which you are using. The game is something different from the normal shooter or horror survival game that seems to be the norm these days. It is fairly enjoyable and simple to get the hang of. Do not skip the tutorial however or you will be completely lost. My final verdict is; Wait for a steam sale. The game isn't worth $25 in my personal opinion. However it is definitely enjoyable.

I'm giving this a 'thumbs down' not because it's a complete disaster. It's not. The game is stable, free of obvious bugs, and it is somewhat engaging for the first couple of hours. Let me run through the first challenge as a case study: You get a call that some one is in trouble. You put the pedal to the metal and head toward the arrow which indicates where the people are who need rescuing. You realize very quickly that this is taking a long time. Ten minutes in fact. That's ten minutes of doing nothing but holding down the 'w' key. I discovered later that there's an option that doubles the speed; so reduce the time to five minutes of holding the 'w' key. [Edit] Greanthal pointed out that I could go at 4X speed. I didn't remember that option so I returned to the game and headed out to sea. Under menu there are several speed options one of which is 'fastest'. This is what I had clicked before and got 2X speed. So I clicked it again and got the same result. What I didn't realize was that 'fastest' is not 'fastest'. If you click the option again you get 4X. I guess it means 'fastest acceleration'. [Edit] This does not save the game from my thumbs down rating however. In the third mission under the Baltic senario, it still takes 7 minutes at 4X to reach the rescue destination. Once you arrive on the scene you perform a couple of tasks including pulling three people out of the water. This all takes less time than it took to get there. Now you discover you have to take the rescued people back to port . . . another five minutes of holding the 'w' key. You get back to port and you find out you have to return to the damaged boat . . . another five minutes of holding the 'w' key. Back at the rescue site you attach a rope to the boat (takes about a minute) and you turn around to head back to port . . . another five minutes of holding down the 'w' key. I think you get the picture. Among other issues I have is that you can't turn off the music. It's integrated with the master volume. The music is louder in the menus but still in the background while travelling back and forth holding down the 'w' key. Also, the claim about the wonderful water physics is a gross exaggeration. I spent most of my childhood on the water, including open sea. The water in this game barely resembles anything I've experienced. A passing boat makes a deep furrow which lingers for an unnaturally long time; it looks more like a large furrow left by a tractor and plow ('plough' if you're outside North America). Worse is that your boats do not interact with these 'furrows'. You practically hover as you pass over them; not so much as a slight dip. Some one in a review said it might be a $15 title. I'd say it's barely worth it at $10.

It is impossible to control that stupid little boat, and the main ship's bow thruster is jammed left - if ppl are training on this, expect a lot of failed rescues.10 mins in the game is totally kacked and impossible and boring as flack. What an embarrassment.

How they can call this a SIMULATOR I do not know its an arcade game at best. It started off ok but on the level where you have to keep the fire hoses on the fishing trawler is highly annoying. The Hermann Marwede sounds like a speed boat this is the main rescue ship going backwards takes forever.

Great game Would be nice to see a save game feature. Needs more areas to play in. More updates to

I wanted to like this game, but its terrible. don't be fooled by the videos, theirs a good reason they show so much real world footage. low frame rates on boring missions, this game lacks in every area. its been forgotten by the devs as a lost course. even the links to the website don't work any more. save your money.

First note, that despite the very suggestive title, this is not associated with the game Ship Simulator Extremes that you can also buy on steam, and is developed by a different company. This is both a good and bad thing - it's good because there are many, many fewer graphical bugs and general slowness than you get from the classic ship simulator, but it has problems that I'll get into later. My biggest concern with the game is the ship physics. They just don't feel right - a long endurance rescue vessel seems more like a small boat, and the boat feels terrible at low speeds, because of how it moves in the wrong direction when trying to steer. This might be realistic, but it sure doesn't seem like it. Secondly, there's a distinct lack of content. There are only a few other ship classes, and cargo ships are represented by fishing boats etc. It gets annoying, but not too badly. Given the nature of the ships that they've modelled, a true open ocean scenario would be wonderful. Third, the towing and cable attachment walkaround system is way, way too slow, even in calm seas. I actually rather like this game. Poor ship physics aside, the campaign is at least okay, and there is a fair amount of diversity. However, it isn't quite worth 25$ - if it was 15$, I'd say you should buy it, but not at the current pricing. I hope that the developers continue to expand the content that's avaliable, though I'm not too hopeful. Edit (too long for a comment): I think that the easiest one of my complaints to fix is the walk-around one, I suspect that there's just a constant somewhere that can be changed. The motor launch dynamics also need to be improved, as the sliding action when attempting to turn at low speeds makes it difficult to perform rescues effectively. However, this might be a realisim thing, as I have very little real experience with these boats. The thing that I'd like the most to be added, content-wise, is an open-ocean component, far distant from the shore. The Hermann Marwede in particular was designed for this, and it doesn't show up a lot in the game. This would also go well with the addition of the emergency towing vessel Mellum, also based on Heligoland. Only one real new ship class is needed for freighters, really, and I think that something like a 5,000TEU containerized vessel would be enough. I'm not sure how hard it would be to add, though. With respect to the missions, something that's been bothering me about the ones that exist already is that they're so close to shore and in good enough weather that the majority would seem to be done by helicopter. It would be nice to make you cooperate with a helicopter, possibly even conducting air operations off of the Marwede. Finally, a mod kit would be very nice. VSTEP doesn't have one, for reasons I can't determine, but I know that I would be interested at least in developing new content for the game. I think that implementing any two of my suggestions would make me, at least, reccomend this game. I'm excited to see where the game goes in the future. Edit #2: The ship physics are really the worst thing, though. The ships's weight more or less does not exist (the RHIB pushes a 5000 ton freighter around), and the boyancy model is nonexistent. Floating appears to happen based on a uniform height above the water. Furthermore, the drag model doesn't work: when you have a ship under tow, the top speed does not decrease whatsoever.