Starship Titanic

Released in 1998, Starship Titanic (ST) is the creation of British author Douglas Adams who was also the creator of the cult book and TV series, "The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Before continuing we'll get the technical stuff out of the way first :-

Minimum and recommended system requirements:-

1) Windows 95 (higher is fine).
2) 100 MHz Pentium processor (133 or higher recommended).
3) 16 Mb RAM (higher recommended)
4) 160 Mb disk space.
5) 16 bit (high colour) capable video card and monitor.
6) Video and sound cards 100% DirectX 5.0 compatible.
7) 4x speed CDROM or faster.

ST is a humourous, slightly tongue-in-cheek, sci-fi, point and click, puzzle-solving adventure. Douglas Adam's' slightly nonsensical and quirky humour is complimented by the voice acting of the Monty Python team.

Having said this, don't let it put you off if you take your Sc-fi a little more seriously, as the story and features are original, innovative and interesting.

The ST is a large, luxury passenger spaceship created by an alien civilisation and on it's maiden voyage. Unfortunately things go awry and it crashes into your living room. You, by the way, are a mere earthling enjoying a quiet evening in front of the TV before your house is completely destroyed and, to all intents and purposes, you are seconded to fix things.

The ship is bereft of any inteligent life forms and is run and maintained by a variety of robots ('bots') with whom you can communicate to try and find out what is going on. Your mission brief is to try and determine what has happened, what precisely has gone wrong and then to fix it. If this all sounds a bit simple and unoriginal, fear not, I am restricted in what I can write as I do not want to give away too much of the plot, as discovering this forms the basis for the adventure.

The game has you wandering about the ship collecting items, solving problems/puzzles and putting various wrongs to right.

To begin with you are placed in the lowest class of billet, which seems a little ungenerous seeing as you are trying to help out and repair the problems. However, you do receive upgrades as you solve puzzles and this gives you more access to the various parts of the ship. This is all I will say about the general plot.

The graphics are excellent and the interior of the ship is quite beautiful and impresive. There is no panning and movement is from one scene to the next, however, movement is slick and the transition is quick and smooth and you never lose your bearings. Sound is also excellent and enhances the gameplay.

The game envirnment is relatively small compared to some games and you spend your time searching through the ship, in some instances visitng locations frequently in order to solve puzzles and progress.

There are a variety of puzzzles ranging in difficulty from easy to downright difficult and seemingly illogical. This gane is a real brain-strainer and you will certainly need to have your lateral thinking hat on. In solving the puzzles (and the general theme of the game) I was very much reminded of 'Zork: The Grand Inquisitor'.

One interesting feature of the game is that conversation with the bots is not through a predetermined list of options/narrative, you have to actually type in your questions and responses. The AI is reasonable,though the bots respond to keywords and it can be a bit frustrating trying to find the right way to put things and precisely what to say/ask, though this is one of the puzzle elements of the game.

I have a few suggestions which I feel would enhance the enjoyment of the game without mentioning any spoilers :-

1) Apply bags of lateral thinking.
2) This is the ideal game for collaboration between two or more gamers who can bounce around ideas and suggestions.
3) Take meticulous notes and be very observant!!! There are plenty of clues around (both verbal and visual) but they can be very well camouflaged. When you get stuck (and you most certainly will!) refering to your notes is esential to see if there is anything that you could not do at the time but could revisit with new knowledge, information and/or inventory items. Or maybe a previously recorded fact or detail might offer a clue to a curent puzzle.
4) Make use of the bots, they have a lot of info and provide a lot of clues.
5) Get very familiar with your PET (Personal Electronic Thing) which has a variety of modes and functions you need (inventory, communications, room ID etc.). It also displays vital info throughout the game.
6) Have a good look around everywhere you can and get familiar with your suroundings before starting the game in earnest. This also applies to when you are upgraded and gain more access to the ship's rooms.

In conclusion I would highly recommend this game, it is fun, interesting and gives the old grey matter plenty of exercise. Basically this is a must for any point and click adventure gaming purist.

Rick36,

Good choice of games to review. This is an interesting game. I loved the opening sequence much.

Although the puzzles were not always my favorite - I loved the humor in the conversations and the graphics were amazing for it's time. Well done

laura

Hi.

Excellent review

This is one of the few games I didn't get on with very well, myself

I wanted to - but the "typing bits" drove me mad and I was ALWAYS getting lost in the ship.
So in the end I threw in the towel and traded the game on.

[A really dreadful confession I know ]

Cheers.

Mad

Douglas Adams is on of my all time favorites, I guess his quirky humor is just up my tree. Your review is excellent and I agree with you on all points. The graphics are very good, the movement is smooth and it is easy to travel to all parts of the ship. I adored the robots and recognized some of my acquaintances in them. This is a very entertaining game and full of gentle satire and quirky fun.
There is only one thing you forget to mention. This is not a game for you if you are very impatient, if you are dead set on logic, if you are annoyed by the irrelevance and get mad when your realize that you just have been had. I also think that the ending is just perfect for this game. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Razz]" src="tongue.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Razz]" src="tongue.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Razz]" src="tongue.gif" />

Two additional points of interest:-

1) the game can be loaded fully on your hard drive and thus can be played without the CD's.

2) KEEP THE BOX!! There is a picture on the box that will help considerably for one of the puzzles.

EDIT:

Iasanidine - you are absolutely right, this is not a game for those of an impatient or intolerant disposition. Plenty of composure required, this is why I thought it a good game to go 'partners' with and bounce around ideas, no matter how daft they may appear. Given the games quirky character, the more daft and illogical the idea, the more likely it is to be right.

I played this game a couple of years ago. It was very difficult and tended to be boring. I used a walkthrough to get through it. The humor wasn't really to my taste. A lot of the things that were meant to be humorous were simply annoying to me. Or gross - as in the case of the pureed starlings. How come I couldn't puree the parrot? It was the parrot that really annoyed me. Why couldn't I puree him just for funsies?

I had some game bugs that required me to go back to previous saves. The chicken machine stopped producing chickens when according to the walkthrough it should have been giving me unlimited chickens. And at the end of the game in the star map area, something wasn't triggered that should have been (probably because I'd been experimenting so much and the game got confused).

I suppose the ending was meant to be humorous and may be sort of a signature for Douglas Adams productions. But it still seemed sort of an "up yours" as a reward for finishing the game. I've seen that sort of ending before (hence the joke is stale).

Just finished playing this game myself.

I have a logical mind, but also enjoy the irreverent humour of Douglas Adams. I do, however, find that the surrealistic nature of some of the puzzles in this game made them extremely difficult, and I did resort to a walkthrough frequently.

It didn't help that I think there are several story-related glitches in the game. There are a couple of places where you can find yourself stuck - that is, if you do a certain thing before taking adequate notes, or solve puzzle A before puzzle B, you can find yourself unable to solve a puzzle. This was extremely annoying because sometimes I would know what I needed to do but be unable to do it. In a couple of places this required me to restart the game from a very early save. There were also several puzzles where there were several obvious possible ways of obtaining an item but the game required you to find only one, much more obscure way - always an annoyance of mine in adventure games.

The system whereby you pick what you say to the various 'bots harks back to the old text-based adventures, rather than the more usual dialogue trees that we see nowadays. It will also remind you of how annoying these can be - you can be saying the right thing but in the wrong way and the game will not respond. Also, to obtain several key items you have to call in one of the 'bots to get it for you, even though the 'bot isn't normally seen in that area.

The puzzle mentioned above with the clues on the box - this is a puzzle where you need to set a complex array of controls. The copy of the game I got came in a jewel case and the puzzle solution wasn't anywhere to be seen on the jewel case, so if you have a jewel case copy this hint is not available to you. However, the same information is avaliable from a location in the game, so you are not required to solve the puzzle the hard way by trial and error.