Starship Titanic

• Platform: IBM PC Compatible
• Release Date: 1998
• Genre: Action
• Style: Action Adventure
• Similar Games: Blade Runner (IBM PC Compatible), Outcast (IBM PC Compatible), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial: Interplanetary Mission (IBM PC Compatible)

Game Description

Radioheads and readers smitten with Douglas Adams' merry sci-fi universe of galactic hitchhikers and holistic sleuths need very little explanation. But, for the benefit of newcomers and long-lost friends, Starship Titanic can be described as an interactive adventure, wherein humor -- or rather the Adamsian sense of the absurd -- is not a feature but the intended approach, the essence and the solution.

Consider the premise: a luxury starliner crashes into "Your Lovely Home," rather destructively bestowing the ship's salvage rights to you the player. Homeless and possibly rich beyond one's wildest dreams, you must then climb aboard the starship before it takes off again on a quest for answers to some very grave matters. Questions such as how the "Ship That Cannot Possibly Go Wrong" came to be wildly careening through the galaxy, where its control components are and whether the ship's robotic crew is malfunctioning or merely programmed with the customer service initiative of a typical utilities company.

The sizeable interior of the starship is a limited 3D space that players move through by walking and taking elevators and pellerators (a horizontal transport). The sole occupants of the cruise ship are bots who appear to have a screw or two loose each, from the bellboy who acts more like a frat boy to the disconsolately amnesiac doorbot. The game proceeds as a series of puzzles that must be solved before you can move on and, like several other interactive adventures, there are no missteps that result in death, nor is there a time limit.

In addition to investigative roaming and toggling, you interact with the game through the acquisition and use of items and "spoken" exchange with the bots. This spoken (typed on the player's part) conversation capability is the title's most touted element aside from Douglas Adams' participation. Christened SpookiTalk, the feature is something of a departure from the conventional dialogue selection method and allows you to pose your own questions.

The controls for all of the actions available to the player are consolidated into a single interface at the bottom of the screen called the PET (Personal Electronic Thing). The PET is organized into five modes: Personal Baggage, Chat-O-Mat, Remote Thingummy, Designer Room Numbers and Real Life. Aside from the self-explanatory Personal Baggage (i.e., inventory), the PET's various modes provide an interface for spoken interaction with game characters, remote-controlled devices such as elevators, TVs and the item transport system in a given location, room cataloguing (to be used with item transport system), game saving and other practical operations.

In one possible sequence of events, you may use a Chat-O-Mat to summon and speak to bots via SpookiTalk either to make inquiries or requests. Having ascertained a likely place to visit through their grudging replies, a jaunt to one of many significant locations such as the Top of the Well, Bar and Art Gallery may follow, where a particularly cumbersome item may be discovered and picked up. You would then use the Remote Thingummy to activate the Succ-U-Bus item transport system (which vaguely resembles a dyspeptic and dim-witted monkey), select the destination with the Designer Room Numbers and send the item to another location. Having arrived at that location at some later time, the player may then retrieve that object and drag it over another item in the room to make them interact.

Unlike other walkabout-intensive adventure titles such as Riven, all movement in Starship Titanic must be executed in full as there are no shortcuts to well-frequented locations. In addition, not all of the ship is initially open to you -- a consequence of your ignoble Third Class status -- and all in all, the puzzle component of the game is heavy on gumshoe work.

The solutions to the actual puzzles consist of hunting down and combining items to achieve a series of major discrete goals such as gaining access to a new area, finding a component of the ship's controls and, ultimately, going home. A given puzzle will likely require the player to use all four in-game modes of the PET and plot-line mysteries are cleared up as the technical issues faced by the errant starship are corrected via your actions.

Roots & Influences

Adventure games have evolved from simple text-based experiences to high quality, full-motion-video-packed, interactive multimedia excursions into fantasy. The higher speed of processing in the mid-1990s gave opportunities for high-quality 3D graphics to be an integral part of the game rather than just a novelty; games like Westwood's Blade Runner started this genre and Starship Titanic takes the quality one level higher.

Review: Overall

Imagine this: You're making your breakfast when suddenly a spaceship crashes through your roof and into your living room. A strange being invites you aboard and, being curious, you wander into the craft. You enter a plush, hotel-like lobby inside the vessel, which then takes off into space with you inside.

This interactive adventure offers everything you'd expect from a state-of-the-art computer game. The sounds and music are stunning and even mesmerizing at times. The graphics have depth and are almost hypnotic. The interior of the spaceship is based on the Ritz-Carlton (rather than the USS Enterprise), with flowing water, acres of polished marble, grand staircases, and massive restaurants. In all, there are 26 different rooms to explore.

The player moves around the ship by moving the mouse from left to right. When the cursor is over a point of interest, it changes to offer a close-up view, allow access to a different room, or begin a puzzle game. There are a number of bizarre puzzles to complete throughout the adventure, such as recording "musak" tracks to be played in the starship's first-class restaurant.

It should be mentioned that the Starship Titanic is populated by a fleet of dysfunctional robots, known as 'Bots', as well as a deranged parrot. Part of your mission is to restore the ship's 'sanity' by piecing together the ship's intelligence, "Titania," which has been deliberately sabotaged.

A big part of the enjoyment in this game comes in conversing with the 'Bots.' They understand an amazing array of concepts and phrases, which the player enters in text form. In fact, over 16 hours of vocal clips were recorded for the robots. This diligence allows for believable conversations and makes the game an extremely satisfying experience.

Starship Titanic is an intelligent game that forces the player to think laterally. It can be very a challenging, but it's always user-friendly, visually impressive, and very, very funny.

Review: Enjoyment

Memorable and mesmerising

Review: Graphics

Deep, excellent use of colors

Review: Sound

Wide range of special effects and speech

Review: Replay Value

There are several different course that can be followed next time the game is played

Review: Documentation

Color desciptive playing guide, enjoyable reference manual/story book !

Production Credits

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

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