Customer Reviews

Starship Titanic (DVD)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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....

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.

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.

I love adventure games and I must admit it's been a few years since I tried this one, but I just really didn't understand it. Maybe I'm just not good enough for it or something, but I just couldn't get into it. I found that I wasn't really progressing in many ways, so I couldn't really get into it. Try one of the Monkey Island games by Lucas Arts instead. Or, if you really like Titanic adventure games, try that one by Cyberflix- Titanic: Adventure Out of Time. Now THAT'S a good Titanic game.

Starship Titanic is one of the more surreal adventure games I've played. It has a lot of great qualities that really make it stand out from the crowd. The graphics and sound quality is absolutely superb, and the developers have really worked hard to make it the graphically stunning adventure that it is. The puzzles are quite simple to work out, but it is still enjoyable. The text recognition engine used to talk to the characters is a pleasing change from having a limited set of phrases. I really enjoyed this game, worth buying

An absolutely fantasic game - the graphics, the speech, the immensity of the ship.

Once the opening bit is over, you can then talk to robots, with all their different personalities, and just enjoy the game. You don't really have to do anything, you can just explore the ship, and talk about a range of things - from cannabis to EastEnders. But if you want to do something you can.

Highly reccemonded - buy it (unless you are a violence obsessed weirdo)

I had lost interest in this game after a few trys. I found it difficult to move around the ship, and the instructions don't provide much help. The gameplay is confusing and difficult. There were some funny scenes, but not many. Beautifully rendered graphics is about the only plus to the game. So much graphics that it takes alot of hard disk space, and you have to keep swapping the CD's. The game needs a better interface, as the one they provide just makes it that much more difficult to understand what exactly you are supposed to do to solve the game. I give it a thumbs down.

Man, I wanted to like this game. I've enjoyed everythingDouglas Adams has done, and I was thrilled to hear he was working on alarge graphic adventure.

But the game designers spent too much time making the individual rooms look pretty and too little time working out the mechanics of gameplay. Transitions from one room to the next are clunky and confusing. There are surprisingly few locations to visit for such a gigantic ship. (My best guess puts the total number of explorable areas at about 18.) The puzzles are often totally illogical or inexplicable (why would you need a smashed t.v. set to mix a drink?). And the touted "SpookiTalk" system that was supposed to let you converse with the ship's robots is totally overrated-- the only way I was finally able to communicate with the robots was to shout keywords at them: "parrot," "engine room," etc.

None of this would matter much if the game showed off Adams' sense of humor, but it doesn't. Apart from the robot conversations, there are practically no humorous elements in the game. And the robots do occasionally toss off a wry joke here and there (which will inevitably be repeated several more times each time you talk to that robot), but more often than not, the robots respond with a pointless non-sequitur.

What's good with the game? The graphics are pretty good in most of the rooms, and there are some nice touches-- reflections in the polished brass sometimes show things happening behind you. The robots can occasionally have amusing things to say. And there are periodically some interesting game elements, such as the ability to adjust the robot personalities, and the chevron room puzzle. These high points only make me think of how much more could have been put into this game. Instead of focusing so much on the useless dialogue parser, the designers could have fleshed out some of the better ideas and made this a really entertaining game.

I just finished playing LucasArts' Grim Fandango before starting up on S.T., and it humbles S.T. in just about every category. If only LucasArts could have gotten ahold of Adams, Starship Tiantic could have been the game that Grim Fandango is. But they didn't. And it isn't. END

A brilliant game that shows off the contrary and quirky genius of the late lamented Douglas Adams to a nicety. Graphics, music, acting, and plot are all topnotch, with some uncredited voice work by some of the Python crowd. Watch for patented Adams touches, such as terrible warning signs that cover nothing at all, or the bomb that keeps losing its place in the ominous countdown when it stops to heckle you (voiced by an uncredited John Cleese).

Be aware that this game won't play on Windows XP; it's happy with 95, 98, or ME, though.

This game is one of the best i've ever played. from the rich graphics to the wonderful storyline, it has all the elements to make it one of the best games of all time. Even though the "chats" with the robots can get a little drawn out, it is still a wondreful game.