When it comes down to it, the problem with Ship Simulator isn’t really rooted in excitement, though. Take civilian flight sims as a comparison. In those games, you take a front seat in the cockpit and face some pretty big challenges. Landing, stalling, runway length…even without the Red Baron taking shots at you, flying a plane is inherently interesting. In Ship Simulator, you can take the cockpit seat, but the game is best played from a rear-overhead position. So it becomes less about sailing the ship than it is about pushing it around, more akin to playing with bathtub toys than being a real captain. Whereas you would never conceive of playing most of a flight sim from an outside view, that’s the only view that makes Ship Simulator even passably playable. The ability to walk the deck of your vessels isn’t that big a deal considering how small most of the ships are. You can see clear from one end to the other, so why bother? Even exploring the Titanic is dull since you are limited to the deck and one carpeted stair case to nowhere. You don’t get to see the engine room or the great hall. But you can walk by the lifeboats.
Of course, there remains the possibility that this is a game, like many out there, which targets a market to which this writer does not belong. Maybe some people enjoy not-hideous looking repetitive gameplay so long as they get to play pretend sea captain. People tinker with model trains, after all; even model train simulators. And maybe there is a Zen moment in some of these activities where you become one with the object, when you can look at the endless horizon of the ocean and imagine what great things are on the other side. But when all you really have to do is move from Point A to Point B, Zen is almost indistinguishable from somnolence.
Can such a niche franchise ever be appealing to a larger audience? Greater variety in ship types and missions would be nice. A greater sense of threat and better damage modeling (especially rips below the waterline or actual sinking instead of simply stopping) would help a lot. The custom mission editor is a good step that can be taken further with more locations and ships. More locations, more variety, more challenge. Until then, count me out.
