Virtual Skipper 3

Nautical but nice?

More Images

Fortunately, first impressions don't always count. Otherwise I'm sure some of my drunken introductions to members of the opposite sex would have proved frustratingly less fruitful. Ditto this latest incarnation of the longest running, nee only, sailing-sim series. You see, Virtual Skipper 3 snubs its jib at things like intro movies, looks down its yardarm at attractive presentation and empties its gunwales on the idea of tutorials. At first I thought I had clicked on the wrong icon and loaded up Trackmania. The menu screens for VS3 are identical to those of Nadeo's addictive racer in everything but colour. And as those menus were barely functional, well, at the most my very first impressions were not all that favourable.

But it's not my job to dismiss a game in 45 seconds, (even if that's what I felt like doing when reviewing Blade & Sword). I was really quite looking forward to dipping my toes into something completely different. What could be more of change from commanding armies of tanks and blasting the minions of doom then boarding a sleek racing craft and cutting the waves as me and my crew of hardy sea-dogs pitted ourselves against the might of mother nature? The closest I have ever come to actual competitive sailing was years ago when I was on holiday with my folks and cousins in Cartagena, Colombia, back when I lived in that country. My mum and Uncle used to race all the time, so they hired a couple of Sunfish two-man sailing boats and decided to race across the bay. Great fun it was too, if a little scary due to my recollection from those little nature cards in primary school that nearly every shark in the world was represented in the red zone that included this stretch of coast.

You may have seen screenshots yet trust me, until you watch the movement of the waves on your own monitor you can't appreciate the extent to which these are the best water effects yet coded for a personal computer. The movement of your boat over the waves is spot on to the point of queasiness, the reflections of the sky and the shore are evocative to say the least and the variety of different conditions is bordering on Baskin & Robbins territory. If there's one element that can convince a landlubber that they are on the seas then it is convincing water, and here Nadeo have more than delivered the goods. The rest of the graphics, from that of your vessel and its crew to any land-based objects are splendid as well. When combined with a friendly rotatable and zoomable camera your visual needs are well catered for. I spent a good while just bobbing about in appreciation and even went as far as getting a glass of water to dip my fingers so as to complete the sensation.

So it's a shame that the game has been shoved into such an ungainly front-end. While it worked okay for Trackmania this time I really felt that the way the game's challenges were presented weakened Virtual Skipper 3's prospects. The lack of any notable kind of tutorial is all the more painful when you realise that the only way you are going to suss the game is to plunge in, without knowing if you're going to crack your head open on the bottom. Which - if your knowledge of sailing is on a par with your ken of the art of tying knots - it will do with painful consequences. I spent my first few hours getting increasingly frustrated with the game. Trying to learn the large number of variables the game simulates and how these all translate into you coaxing some movement from your boat is a formidable task. And tasks are something I associate with being a crew on a real ship, not sitting on my arse in a warm living room while enjoying a good computer game. The learning curve on display here is nuts, like trying to paddle up a four story swell with a wooden ice cream spoon in an over-sized caramel donut. To progress you must complete each challenge, and the time limits you will face are dogmatic in their determination to force you into getting it right. A total lack of any indication of what keys to press and what the interface is trying to tell you all serve to compound the problem.