The Ship Hands-On - Source Goes Nautical
We take a detailed look at a late beta of the "massively mysterious" multiplayer-focused Half-Life spin-off that uses Valve's Source engine to set you up as a 1930s seafaring assassin.
The Ship, based on the Valve Source engine that ran Half-Life 2, started life as a mod for the original Half-Life, before Outerlight Ltd licensed the software and began to develop it as a release in its own right.
Based around a fleet of 1930s ships, The Ship puts the player into the role of a passenger whose main aim, as you'd expect from a first-person shooter engine, is to kill other passengers. But it's not quite all-out slaughter, as there are various limitations placed on who you can kill, and where you kill them.
The premise for the game revolves around the mysterious Mr. X, who owns a number of cruise ships and has given you a free ticket to ride. There's just one condition--you must kill one of the other passengers. All you'll have to go on at the start of the game is a name of the specific passenger you must kill and the odd clue as to the whereabouts of your quarry, but as you explore the vessel you can examine the other characters to discover their names. To make things more interesting, at the same time you'll be the target of another of the passengers, so it's important to keep a watchful eye on anybody stalking you.
Once you find your target, it's not simply a question of massacring them on the spot--with various members of ship staff, not to mention security cameras, stationed around the place, you'll need to take care. If you draw a weapon in view of either, you'll be caught by the authorities and will have to sit out a term of punishment in the brig, while the action continues around you.
You'll also lose all of the weapons you may have accumulated for the task, and there are quite a few to choose from. They're found in random locations around the vessel you're on, usually in boxes, cupboards, or suitcases. There's quite an alarming variety of weapons to collect, including guns of various kinds, swords, golf clubs, axes, razors...the list goes on, and it even includes traps, giving you plenty of options.
There's also a neat system of "needs" in place that, like in The Sims, means you'll have to take care of other business every so often. As you move around, running and exploring, your character will grow tired over time, so at some point you'll need to rest. Sleeping is the best option here, but sitting in a chair will also give you a short-term boost. Eating and drinking are two more needs you'll have to fulfil, and they're the most serious, as failure to do so will result in death. It's possible to carry snacks and drinks in your inventory, so the worst case is easily avoided with a bit of care.
Embarrassment is readily available in the game if you fail to address your need to visit the bathroom, and springing from that is of course the issue of cleanliness. They're all simple to fix, but you'll need to keep an eye on the meters--if your need hits the red, you'll only have a short time left before something bad happens.
The other issue you'll need to take care of is that of social interaction, which seems a little bizarre given your cold-blooded mission to off a fellow passenger. It's taken care of by simply chatting to a crew member, but you'll find it gets in the way more often than most needs. Overall it's an interesting system that offers a diversion to the action, in that it gives you something else to think about over and above simply killing others.
You'll begin the game with a $2,500 bank account, and $250 in your back pocket. Money plays an interesting role in the game--while you're playing you can use it to buy food and drink, bribe members of the crew to turn a blind eye, and purchase items from the various shops on board. If you die, you'll lose the cash you had on you, but, similarly, you can pick up any money that others may have dropped along the way. Mr. X will give you a certain amount for successful kills, and the idea is to bank as much cash as you can before the game ends.
Visually, the game's not quite as polished as the likes of Half-Life 2, but it does enough to put you firmly in place--the ships themselves are all art deco in style, and there are some quirky music tracks to be heard in the background, complete with gramophone scratches. Some of the passenger animation looked a little jerky on the beta build that we played, but there were no showstoppers that we saw.
The clear emphasis in the game is on multiplayer action, of various speeds, and there are several modes available to accommodate most playing styles. Up to 32 players can be supported on the larger maps, and the main mode, Hunt, splits the game into a number of rounds, over which the players will compete across several different maps. At the end of each round, the winner is the player with the most money in the bank--and this usually equates to the person who successfully kills the most targets.
Elimination is a slightly trickier version of the game, in which you are excluded from further play once you are killed by your hunter. In this mode the winner is the last man standing. If everybody running around is a bit too much, there's the option to Duel, where you take on just one other player. Or, if the rules of engagement are a little too restrictive to satisfy your bloodlust, you can play a Deathmatch mode, which is basically all against all. In this last mode you'll win more money for killing people using certain weapons, and there's a list available that changes regularly, detailing the most lucrative ones. There is also an offline mode in which players can play against the computer artificial intelligence, which takes care of the other passengers in the game.
A boxed version of the game is set to go on sale in the UK, Europe, and Australia in September this year and in the US in January 2007, for around £19.99, 29 euros, or $34.95. The game is available now for digital download from Steam, and will set you back around $19.95.
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