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The Ship Outerlight's unusual multiplayer title has recently come in for a lot of flak from the mainstream games media, with accusations of incompleteness, poor balancing and incoherence. In trying to define a new genre, have the developers lost the essence of fun?
The core game, which is based on a 2004 fan-made mod for Half-Life, is about assassination. Each player is assigned a character with a unique name and appearance, and then given the name of their quarry. The goal is to hunt down and kill the quarry using weapons found around the level. Each weapon has a monetary value that changes according to the frequency of its use in recent murders. In the Hunt game mode, the game is divided into rounds. Once a player kills their quarry, a timer counts down to the end of the round and everyone is assigned a new quarry for the next. The winner is the one with the most money in their bank account at the end of the game. In Elimination, you are knocked out if your hunter kills you. If you kill your quarry, you get a new quarry and the winner is the last one left alive.
A further level of complexity is added by both the presence of security forces and the “needs” system. Static guards and cameras prevent killing in the open, sending a player to jail if they get caught; and needs involve time-sensitive requirements that the player is forced to fulfil. Eating, drinking, sleeping, urinating and washing all involve going to a specific type of location and spending time there. While needs are presented comically, (you need to visit a psychiatrist if you kill too many people; a colostomy bag can prevent trips to the toilet but at the expense of your hygiene...) their function is clear: to direct traffic and compel players to move around the map for reasons other than stalking their prey or simply hiding.
For a game that defies concise explanation, The Ship is relatively simple to get into at a basic level, with a context-sensitive interface coupled with standard FPS controls allowing players to engage in relatively complex activities.
Everything is presented in a cartoon aesthetic with art-deco overtones – something like Pixar meets Agatha Christie in a speakeasy. While it's clear that this isn't a big-budget production – Edinburgh-based Outerlight is the newly commercial company front for the team behind the original mod – the graphics are functional and pleasant. Sound design is similarly workmanlike, although one of the most common complaints is about the interminable loops of The Blue Danube Waltz, which can be found issuing from most in-game radios.
Outerlight has attempted the Herculean task of taking a bevvy of unusual features and crafting them into a polished experience, and while the game has something of a usability curve it can become enjoyable fairly early on. That said, systems like weapon values and needs only really come into play if you manage to successfully evade your hunters for several rounds, and the old FPS reliance on knowing each map better than everyone else is exacerbated by the need to access specific areas to tend your needs and know weapon locations.
The Ship is a highly distinctive game and so it won't be everyone's cup of poison-laced tea, but there's some unique fun to be had. Wandering down a corridor in search of a knife and witnessing someone creep up behind another player and hit them over the head with a fire extinguisher before running madly around their corpse is a striking experience – as is the claustrophobia that comes with knowing your hunter is close by.
It's a real pity, then, that Outerlight's dream of combining needs and assassinations to create subtlety and depth to the gameplay hasn't really been realised. The problem is that everything is far too constrained: the need to worry about your hunter and your quarry, your needs, money and even appearance means that the experience ends up feeling fiddly and unsatisfying. Essentially, there's too much stick and not enough carrot.
This, coupled with navigating the maps, can hurt the fun-level early on, and has been the direct cause of most of The Ship’s negative press: the real joy of the game can only come when certain things have been learnt fully and all the players are at high levels of competence – and most reviewers have little time to get there. Additionally, the presence of a single griefer on a server can ruin the game: killing someone who isn't your target can sink the entire venture.
Its genesis as a clever Half-Life mod isn't quite as close as some have suggested, though, and there is a real (and complete) game in there for those willing to persevere with learning the systems. Good players express a real love of the game and enthuse about strategies, and that's the mark of a strong niche title. There is some mainstream appeal to be had, but this is game for fans of a specific kind of weirdly cerebral, organisational action. If that sounds like you then give it a try and support something genuinely progressive.
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