Simulation games often create a realistic experience for the player, allowing them to immerse themselves in a particular occupation without leaving the comfort of their desk chair. This can include piloting a plane, driving a train or … riding a tractor. Many have attempted to develop dynamic elements for simulation gameplay without breaking the format. There aren’t many people out there who feel the urge to play Tractor Simulator 2015, but it seems as though one developer has taken a drastic step to entice people in. Coast Guard might be the ultimate simulator; it blends First Person action and Coast-Guarding simulation, with various mechanics and game-play features that embody different genres and play styles.
Players will indulge in a gripping adventure filled with murder, mystery, and plenty of sailors. You take on the role of Coast Guard Captain Finn, commanding a rescue ship across the high seas as you save drowning refugees, take on pirates, and tackle various tasks in FPS style exploration. This is a strange, yet admirable concept and a refreshing take for a First Person adventure.
We join Captain Finn on board the good ship, Daniel Defoe (sadly no relation to Willem Defoe as it’s a boat), as we see him chasing an infamous human trafficker in a high speed pursuit. Soon after boarding the vessel, we cut to Finn awakening on a disused ship with no means of escape and little memory of what has recently happened. The player’s task from here is to piece together Finn’s broken memory and figure out a way to find his crew and escape his prison. While exploring, Finn will come across photos and other mementos that help him remember, with each of these objects acting as a method to entering a new mission. This is, again, an interesting concept, much like Halo ODST where you learn of past events through analyzing objects of importance.
But even with a solid story, the pacing in Coast Guard is all over the place. You’ll find that many of the missions don’t flow together. You’ll suddenly be interrupted when things start becoming interesting, only to be thrown back onto the deserted ship to start a new mission which takes place six months prior to the previous one. It’s odd how layered this story is; There should be natural flow to the plot, but the structure here is damaging to the decent storyline. It isn’t anything special, but it does a good job at being mysterious and suspenseful. Unfortunately, the plot is broken up and mashed together into a jumbled mess.
Gameplay is divided into piloting your boat and exploring in First Person mode. Controlling the Daniel Defoe, you’ll partake in various assignments from search and rescue to chasing down human traffickers. Missions have an engrossing nature to them, and they usually entail diverse objectives from putting out fires on board ships to using the daughter ship to rescue people in the water. First Person mode is implemented well for exploring, interacting with various crew members, and even interrogating suspected criminals. There is an interesting mixture of gameplay elements which forms an engaging concept. However, while the game’s design sounds good in theory, its execution is far from a perfect catch (fishing pun!).
Sadly, the game itself is pretty underwhelming and, for the most part, tedious. Often enough, you’re sent on overly long missions either to collect samples or save people (same mission just in different packaging), while also playing a variation of Nintendo DS style mini games or checking out people’s fishing licences. No excitement for the best part, and when the game does introduce something dangerous and exciting, it ends the mission. I understand this game is trying to simulate work as a coast guard, but it’s also trying to bring us a sea based action adventure experience. Choose one or the other, guys. Don’t tease us with a big, exciting premise only to dull it down with extremely slow paced, overly long collect and grab missions for a majority of the game.
The checkpoint system didn’t help out with this as they’re pretty absent here. It’s a problem if you don’t enjoy playing the overly long levels, and don’t fancy redoing them if you take a break half way through a level. Thankfully however, the game is fairly short.
What is Coast Guard’s greatest flaw, however, is how disorientating it can be. Not just for the pacing, but navigating through the game world isn’t particularly easy or enjoyable. The difficult and sluggish controls can ruin the immersion, and soon enough you’ll become angry from simply parking your boat. The heavy handed simulation controls don’t do any favours for new comers and the FPS controls feel floaty, not matching well with the insanely wild physics of the oceans. This isn’t helped by the lack of visual feedback or help on the hub. Locating small seaweed samples on the ocean surface will become an infuriating task to complete, along with fighting against the physics and the precise collision boxes to pick up objects.
Coast Guard does boast some high production value with its visually impressive graphics for a game that is 90% water. The sound design is exhilarating and perfectly adds to the dramatic tone of the game — Even if the musical scores do sound a little over the top when the boat is simply cursing across the ocean. Not to mention the goofy voice acting and questionable dialogue which caused me to laugh, but not for the right reasons. The dialogue is just the kind you’d see in a terrible early 2000’s action game.
What I can say is that Coast Guard could be one of the better simulation games out there, introducing sim elements with FPS action and open world exploration. But with its interesting concepts come some bad design choices including its annoying controls, terrible voice acting, tedious mission objectives, and off the wall pacing. It had a great purpose: To satisfy both simulation and FPS fans. Sadly, Coast Guard just didn’t do the concept any justice in the final product and is sadly not worth the asking price.
A PC review code for Coast Guard was provided by astragon for the purpose of this review