The Ship Mod for Half-Life The Ship review review

[page=The Dangerous Game]
The Roaring Twenties was a time of flappers, jazz, Prohibition, and art deco. This was a time just after the first World War, when a guise of peace had fallen across the land, when people felt that humanity could overcome just about any obstacle. It was, in short, a time of joy and innocence.

The perfect time, in fact, to have some people killed.

Welcome to The Ship, a 1920's cruise liner filled with all the fun and romance that murder on the high seas has to offer. Players take on the roles of passengers onboard this ship, carrying out the secret whims of millionaire Mr. X, who has paid your passage on this bloody trip to provide him with some modest entertainment.

Kill the passenger whose name you've been given and you'll get some cash.

Keep it up and the stakes will get higher.

But, there is a catch.

Imagine a cruise liner full of vacationers, dancing the night away to jazz music while doffing their fedoras to one another.

Imagine the people coming and going, chatting amongst themselves, enjoying the languid atmosphere that calm ocean waves provide them.

Imagine stalking through all of this, hiding a weapon in your pocket, waiting for a chance to strike someone in the back and get away with it.

Now imagine someone trying to kill you as well.

Think you can hunt someone down and kill them while watching your own back against every other passenger on this boat?

Then read on...

[page=Dr. Joe, In the Lobby, with the Explosive Crossbow]
A round of The Ship plays like a game of Clue in reverse, where the object of the game is to get the weapon, find the place, and commit the murder without anyone else finding out. The more people you hunt down, the more money you will accumulate, and the better your chances are of surviving this whole mess.

When you begin the game, you start in a modest stateroom with a unique name automatically given to you. Every player on The Ship has one, as well as a custom avatar. You also begin with the name of your target, who will be among the dozens of other characters roaming around and living it up.

The first order of business is to seek out a weapon to defend yourself with. Weapons can be found lying all over the place, in some obvious places (like syringes in a doctor’s office) and some...rather odd places (like an M-16 sitting in a storage closet). If you look around hard enough, you can find anything from an umbrella to a blunderbuss to carry around with you.

Once that is settled, the hunt must begin. Here is where the subtle game play starts to take over. First, you can't roam the ship openly with a weapon in your hands. If you are spotted by a few witnesses while holding a gun, you'll get arrested and shipped away to the Brig to sit a good time-out. Did I mention time-outs also cost money?

Next, you need to do a little schmoozing in order to find the person you are after. This involves activating people you find walking around, which makes you chat with them briefly and get their names.

The Ship is filled with both non-playable characters and with other gamers like yourself. Some of the NPC's will just mill around and not do much, while others will run too-and-fro, much like many new players to the game tend to, throwing you off and keeping you on your toes. Once you have gotten a person's name, your radar will start to indicate them as a Black "Known" Dot, rather than a White "Unknown". If, however, you chat with your target, then they start showing up as a fat red mark, guiding you always ever closer to them.

Staying alive ends up becoming one of the best ways to be successful in the game, and not just because you're still breathing. Each time you die, you start as a new character and must reintroduce yourself to everyone else on the ship. However, a player that has stayed alive the past few rounds will have most people's names already down in their radar system. That way, when a new round starts, your target might automatically show up on your radar for you to begin hunting, giving you a definite advantage.

But, as lofty as this position might be, it sure isn’t easy to keep a hold of. Assassinating other players is complicated, as you need to do it without being spotted by those around you. My personal favorite mode of murder is milling around with the NPC's, attempting to blend in as much as possible, while waiting for my target to wander into a nearby bathroom. Then I duck in right behind them, shoot 'em twice in the back, and deftly dodge back out to join the party.

Swift, subtle, and satisfying.

As I said before, being spotted with a weapon in hand is grounds for an immediate arrest. Logically, then, you start to ask yourself, "Well why not just kill everyone?!"

First of all, settle down.

Second of all, you can't.

So there.

Mr. X does not condone mass murder, as he prefers to watch the hunt unfold before him. The only people you are allowed to kill are your target for cash, and your own assassin, to prevent your own death. Killing an innocent will get you fined quite a lot of money, leaving you in poor and sad.

The need for money rears its head through the "Needs" system the game implements to keep people moving and on their toes, in an effort annoy the hell out of campers.

As normal human beings, you need food, water, sleep, social interaction (har har), good hygiene, bathroom breaks, and good mental health to keep yourself sane and happy. To portray this in the game, then, each character has something akin to RPG stats that are constantly changing as the game goes on. Run around too much? Then you will get tired and need to take a nap somewhere. Kill too many people? Then you need to see the psychiatrist before you loose it. Afterwards, you can go back to killing people, perfectly sane. Drink a lot of water? Then you better to take a leak, quick!

This adds another dimension to the game play, as your personal needs must constantly be kept in check to prevent you from dying. In the full version of the game, not tending to these needs will lead to several different outcomes that change game play in a significant way. Here, not tending to them will kill you. This is why your Mom and Dad always told you not to hold it for too long.

Wait, full version, you say? Yes, see: This is just a demo.

[page=A demo? I'm alarmed, Sam!]
With a unique premise in a community full of repetition, what could possibly go wrong? This sounds like a sure win to me.

However, it definitely has its share of shortcomings, most of which can be attributed to the fact that this game is merely a test demo made by the guys and gals over at Outerlight Games to see how people like the game play.

In the future, we can look forward to a full-scale, purchasable release to appease our inner desires to hunt one another down in cold blood. But in the meantime, this demo needs to be weighed on its own merits alone, and that gives me a fair bit of pause.

The main problem that keeps bugging me as I play this is the presentation.

Simply put: Not once, in this entire game, did I feel like I was onboard a ship.

Sure, a few levels are vaguely ship-shaped (get it?), but that is about the extent of it. Can you walk around on the deck? Why yes, but there are high walls all around, preventing you from looking out over the ocean.

Very convenient, that.

Does the boat rock gently, or play some appropriately ocean-esque sounds when you venture outside? Well, a little, if you have the ambient volume cranked and you've been injured enough to limp while walking around out there, but otherwise, not so much.

In a game called The Ship, I want to feel like I am on a freakin' boat. And that just simply isn't the case here.

The environments in the game look decent enough on the inside, but expect to see a lot of drab and boring corridors without much to spice them up, unless you count the occasional chair or shelf with a gun on it. Whoopee. Some of the weapons are even pulled straight over from Half-Life itself, so don't be too surprised when you run into the M-16, the grenade, and the crowbar, to name a few. Sounds have also been ripped across here, giving way to non-playable characters who will sound exactly like the scientists of Black Mesa when you speak to them.

I guess it is nice to know they lived it up before they died in the 90's, eh?

The presentation in this game works the best when they are trying to give you an entirely new, stylish experience. The music in this game is fantastic, with a few catchy jazz tunes that will get you into the mood and mindset of this game from the minute you go into the main menu. Character models have also been done up in this same vein, with a pseudo-cartoony look that lends a lighthearted feel to the carnage going on within this jazzy game world.

And while the game play is good, it still needs to be refined a bit. The majority of people you play with online will simply ignore the Needs system until they die from it, choosing to just start over from scratch repeatedly as opposed to playing the way the developers clearly intended. Hopefully this will be addressed when the newer version comes out, but at the moment, it is a bit iffy.

However, all this does not mean that the game is bad or not worth your time. The Ship is innovative, exciting, and fresh, which is not something we often see in the gaming community lately. But, on that same coin, we have to take this mod as what it is, not what it will be. Because of that, The Ship remains a flawed showcase of a very unique game in the works.

Below are some screens of the upcoming Source version of The Ship, which looks absolutely fantastic.

---Score Box---

Design: 3 out of 5

This game oozes style, but the presentation here is lacking. This is a bit forgivable due to the demo nature of the game, but at the same time, we can't give out ratings based on how things "will be", now can we?

Graphics: 2 out of 5

Some rather good models and texture work can occasionally be bumped into while walking around this ultimately drab environment. Despite the title, I definitely did not feel like I was on a ship once when playing this.

Sound: 3 out of 5

A majority of the sounds seem to have been ripped right out of Half-Life, most notably the voices of the scientists. Again, something skimmed over in light of making a small demo, but definitely a let down. However, the music employed in this game, especially on the main menu screen, is fantastic in that it sets a great mood for the game and is also just nice to listen to. Ambient noses, when you notice them, are pretty decent, but often times feel too peripheral and go unnoticed during play.

Game play: 4 out of 5

And this is where the game redeems itself. The Ship is not a game for everyone. Fans of typical death match will probably be bored by the often slow game play, whereas Counter-Strike fans will agonize over repeatedly being caught with their weapons out. While some work needs to be done on improving the Needs system to make it less burdensome, the joy of stalking your prey silently up until the point of a flawless, backdoor kill, simply cannot be ignored, and must be experienced first hand.

The Ship demo is a great showcase of what is to come from this unique game, but taken on its own merits alone, the demo is merely a cheap prelude to a hopefully much better production ahead.

Final Score: 60% (or 12 out of 20 pts)

All images provided are official screenshots taken from The Ship's website.