Starship Titanic (DVD)

by Pearson Software

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00002SAO1
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #62,501 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

GameSpot Review

For years now the adventure genre has been a stagnant place, overwhelmingly dominated by two styles. At one end you have the descendants of Myst, tours through rendered locales filled with mysterious gadgets and artifacts that you must learn to operate. At the other end you have the heirs of King's Quest, defined by sprite-based animation and inventory-based puzzles. It's a rare occasion when something innovative comes along, and games that do break from the formula - The Last Express, Bioforge - are all but overlooked by the general public. In this environment, Starship Titanic occupies a unique place. It isn't particularly innovative, but neither is it a Myst or a King's Quest clone. Instead, it draws upon storytelling and puzzle-solving styles that originated in the text adventures of old, and is a somewhat refreshing game as a result.

The text-adventure feeling makes logical sense. One of the creative forces behind Starship Titanic (science fiction humorist Douglas Adams) developed two such games for Infocom. Those who have played Adams' text adventures (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Bureaucracy) will feel right at home on the Starship Titanic. The puzzles involve the same type of overly complex logic, requiring you to go through mind-wrenching ordeals to accomplish the simplest of tasks. While there's nothing on par with the classic Babel Fish puzzle from Hitchhiker's, the majority of the puzzles keep with the same absurd spirit - such as when you must deal with a complex mechanism simply to turn on the television in your cabin.

The text-adventure references don't end with the puzzles. The game actually includes a text parser that is used for conversing with the many robots aboard the Titanic. It's not perfect (your statements will often be misunderstood in unfathomable ways), but it's a nice nod to the days of old. The use of the text parser adds an element of discovery as well: The solutions to otherwise obtuse puzzles will often become apparent through conversation.

But Starship Titanic lacks the one major element that elevated so many text adventures to classic status: a story. There's a slight skeleton of a plot (you must repair a derelict starship), but apart from discovering why the Titanic is in the shape it's in, there's nothing to it. The game does borrow a bit from older adventures (the moody robots bit is almost a direct lift from Steve Meretzky's Stationfall), but it doesn't create enough of a backbone to lend much purpose to your actions.

That's not to say it isn't fun. It is certainly funny - and it's the kind of funny you'd expect from such contributors. The voice acting brings the humor to life (two Monty Python veterans make appearances - Terry Jones brings his talents to the annoying parrot, and John Cleese makes a particularly funny appearance as a bomb), and the graphics are good-looking, Myst-esque fare. All in all, Starship Titanic is an enjoyable tribute to an older era of adventure gaming. It feels a bit empty at times, but Douglas Adams fans and text-adventurers will undoubtedly be able to look past its shortcomings. --Ron Dulin

--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lovely game, but...kinda slow, November 10, 1999

By 

Ed Matuskey "game player" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Starship Titanic (DVD) (CD-ROM)

I like adventure games. I like them a lot. I don't mind the slow pacing, and the puzzles, as a rule. But Starship Titanic seems to be missing some crucial ingredient, making it seem plodding and illogical. It's a beautiful-looking game, with a cool premise (wander a luxury starship, trying to find out what went wrong and fix it). But a lot of the puzzle solutions are completely illogical, and a lot of the hinted-at depth seems to be just window-dressing for a restrictive environment. I wanted more freedom, more things to do than just re-assemble a computer brain. It's still a good game, but I was expecting so much more....

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clever strategy Game, June 24, 2000

By 

Turnaround365 "http://turnaround365.blogspot.com" (CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Starship Titanic (DVD) (CD-ROM)

Okay, in the game of the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy you had to FIGURE OUT that the babel fish went in your ear, or you'd never get past the Vogons. Sound tough?

Well, I'll grant that nothing in this game is that tough, but there's still some very challenging puzzles. And that's what it is--a puzzle game. It's not a stand-up comedy machine, it's not a shoot-em-up, it's a puzzle game. If that sounds appealing to you, then you'll probably enjoy this game as much as I did. If not, it will probably dissapoint you, as it did some who didn't know what it was going to be.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A hilarous romp, August 29, 2000

By 

Genesis Whitmore (Goldenrod, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Starship Titanic (DVD) (CD-ROM)

Usually when people play adventure games they do it partially because they enjoy solving puzzles. In this game the puzzles seemed to only be a small part of the enjoyment. It was more fun to play with the message delivery system, tease the parrot, and vandalize the ship... the puzzles were simply a means to do more of this.

If you are a fan of both Douglas Adams and Monty Python you will love this game, otherwise some of the jokes might be lost upon you, but not all of them! You'll still get quite a few belly-laughs out of this game.

Game play wise the interface is clean and has a unique feature that allows you to actually type in dialogue that you'd like to 'say' to the other characters instead of selecting phrases like to many other adventure games. There were times when it was somewhat tedious to run from one end of the ship to another, but that tends to be a given for any adventure game these days.

If I were to voice any great complaint, it was that in the end I didn't feel as though I'd accomplished all that much and kept wondering where the rest of the game had gone. I think more time was spent on making the game LOOK neat instead of making it a deep and interesting adventure. It has some really hilarious moments (the parrot is great!) but not all that much more.