Ship Simulator 2008
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Publisher: Lighthouse Interactive Game Publishing Genre(s): Simulation Home Page: http://www.shipsim.com/
Fire in the engine room!Audio is very basic, with no support for advanced acceleration. Stock samples give sound to the waves and engine, but harbors are noticeably silent. A working harbor is generally a cacophony of horn blasts, engines and various dock noises, from cranes to workers. The silence, as they say, is deafening. The same goes for the complete omission of radio functionality. Maritime radio is a crucial aspect of a journey at sea, as verbal communication is critical in busy ports. Without radio chatter, almost all immersion is lost. Even the passengers you ferry or rescue refuse to speak. As my grandmother always said, one "Thank You" can go a long way. 
Frequently, a boat will become stuck in a gravity-defying position.
These shortcomings – lackluster audio, over-simplified controls – could be forgiven if it weren't for the issues with the ships' handling. Or, rather, the lack of believability in handling. Piloting a ship is a nuanced affair, and a vessel's movement on water is a combination of water forces (waves, currents and tides), wind forces (which affect the vessel directly at the hull and indirectly through the water) and engine forces (via the propeller or propellers, which work with or against the wind and water forces). In Ship Simulator, water is simply a plane that the hull cuts through – with some resistance, of course. There is no accurate physics modeling taking place, either above or below the water line. Wind has no direct effect on a ship (which it certainly should), but it does correspond to taller waves. Despite this, a patrol boat will roll over the highest of crests in the roughest of seas without deviating from its course. Even the most powerful engines can't overcome the rolling and pitching seas that gale-force winds generate. But the boats in Ship Simulator 2008 are straight from the Ron Popiel mindset (he of the "Set It and Forget It" line of cooking products); just set the ship's course and pay no attention to the 25-knot winds and 5-meter crests.
The problems don't end there. Despite having a full day-to-night cycle, there are no tides. Even when a ship has forward movement but the engines are in neutral, the rudders don't work (as long as there is water passing over them, they should). Ships will rarely capsize (except when they inexplicably sink due to a bug), even when performing outlandish turns at high speed or taking extreme damage below the water line. Collision detection is a rough approximation, likely done with a bounding box, making way for unrealistic ship-to-ship contact. It was possible for a ship which draws many feet to continue into shallower water without running aground. The list goes on and on, but you get the point – the ship physics is appropriate for Grand Theft Auto, not an authentic ship simulation. 
It's difficult to complete objectives at the bottom of the harbor.
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