The sea state conditions are nicely rendered and the fog, lighting, and environmental conditions (rain/snow) are very well done. Perhaps VSTEP is anticipating that likely purchasers of Ship Simulator Extremes are ship enthusiasts that have a good background knowledge of ship operations, but the lack of any tutorial missions or a ship handling addendum would make learning this sim frustrating for an inexperienced prospective ship captain. If you had no basic knowledge of ship handling, you would be lost on how to actually utilize the controls to control the ships in the manner needed to do precision maneuvers. There is no discussion of how to use differential engine thrust, bow thrusters, or mooring lines to pivot the ship around a point.

The 43-page PDF manual does a good job of describing the simulator menus, options, and overlays, but it is overwhelmingly inadequate since it doesn’t discuss the physics or normal operating procedures for doing things like tugging boats, mooring or anchoring them. The three campaign selections are full of individual missions that are somewhat linked together to give a feeling of a continuous job path, but calling it a campaign is a bit of a stretch.

That’s right - there are no single missions with the game even though that is one of the choices. The single mission folder, oddly enough, is empty. In free roam you can choose any port area or open ocean location, choose a type of ship, set the weather and just go out exploring on your own. Upon firing up the game you can choose to play multiple modes including single missions, campaigns, free roam, or multiplayer.

The product is available from multiple sources including a boxed version, via direct download from the VSTEP web site, or downloadable by Steam. The obvious changes are improved graphics, expanded areas of operation, and a huge list of playable ships. Having reviewed the original Ship Simulator 2006, I was interested to see how the series had evolved since I had skipped the Ship Simulator 2008 release.

For naval simulation fans the next iteration of the Ship Simulator series was released in late August.

Ship simulator extremes controller