Sail Simulation 2010 Review

Sail Simulation 2010 does exactly as it says on the tin: it’s a sailing simulation game. The game box quotes it as being the ‘ultimate realistic Sailing Simulator’. Read what I have to say, and then make your own decision.

I’ll admit that I was intrigued about this game. I am a keen sailor myself, so would it be able to live up to its tagline? Playing the game, I found many points of discussion, not all of them good. The main point I found on the game was how good the graphics are. You can really grasp what it’s trying to do, which is make you feel like you’re really sailing this boat. The way that everything is positioned on the boat is accurate to, because most boats will be set up the way that the examples in the game are.

As well as this, the boats movement is scarily accurate. For anyone who’s seen a boat on the water, you’ve probably seen how the boats ride the waves. The game has this movement down to a fine art. The boat can go up and down the waves as if they were real.

The sails, reacting to the wind is also very accurate. On any point, you can only sail at certain points to the wind, and it’s the same on this game. I’ve played sailing games where I can sail straight into the wind and still be moving, but you can’t do that on this game. So far, so good.

Now, I approach my favourite feature of the game: the automatic mode. Every feature of this boat can be control manually, from the tension on the sail to the position of the keel. But what I love is that you can set anything to be automatic. On a sail boat if you try to do everything at once it will inevitably end in tears. So, you can set your spare crew members to set sails at the click of a button. This leaves you to concentrate on whatever you want. I had a lot of fun managing the main sail and the steering. This wasn’t particular arduous, because I could steer with 1 hand and control the sail with the other, like many hardened sailors would.

But now, unfortunately, I feel the need to mention the little things that I think are wrong with the game. Firstly, the toolbar that holds all the icons is in COMPLETELY the wrong place. To anything vaguely useful, you need to click an icon, hold the mouse button down and move the mouse down. But the toolbar is at the bottom of the screen. If you needed to move the mouse up to pull the sail tighter, for example, then it would a lot easier, because you have a lot of room to work with. What’s more, I can’t find a way to move the toolbar, so it is always in the wrong place.

Another fault I found was with the steerage. I have had a situation that I went to turn quickly to one side, and the boat didn’t do anything. Looking at the speedometer that you can get, I was doing nearly 10 knots (11mph), which is more than enough speed for a boat to turn. Admittedly, it doesn’t happen all the time, which could actually add to the problem, because an intermittent problem is harder to sort out.

The main problem I found was getting the hang of the game. Apparently there is a tutorial, which I haven’t yet managed to find. I might not be looking hard enough, so I’ll excuse that as a problem, but even then, it took me about an hour to figure out a way of using the game without constantly moving a mouse.

[starreview tpl=16]

My conclusion: great game. Every game has its problems, and this is no exception. But overall, the tagline is the best way to describe the game. It is the ultimate sail simulator, and I doubt there’s a better product on the market for the wannabe sailor.

Short URL: http://thegamershub.net/?p=4673

Posted by Ryan.p on Mar 4 2010. Filed under PC, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry