I know you're not playing The Ship. I know your reasons, and it's understandable, but I'm here to change your ways. To do that, however, we need to talk.

You need to stop playing Counter-Strike. I know this intervention is potentially fruitless, and I know your headshot count gets you really hot in the biscuit, but you really need to stop. At least just long enough to give The Ship a chance. I'm not going to tell you that The Ship is better, but I will tell you that it's different, and isn't that why you started playing Counter-Strike in the first place?

The Ship doesn't reward you for your accuracy in clicking on small pixels as they creep out from behind far-away walls. You know those guys that only use the M4 and AK47? The Ship rewards you for your ingenuity, so those guys would be lost at sea here. You're given more money per round when you kill your enemy with a unique weapon. You might find a nice knife in a suitcase, an axe in the fire safety glass, or maybe you just want to get nasty and just pick up a heavy hammer from the utility room. You can even find flare guns to set your quarry on fire and poison syringes that cause your victim to vomit to death.

As you can guess, this game is about ever-evolving strategy. You go online with Steam, and you get placed on a cruise ship full of other murderers. You're all given specific quarries to kill, and you have to do it in secret. You'll have to stop to inspect everyone, and your target can change his appearance to throw you off his trail. If you're caught by a security guard or camera, or if you kill the wrong target, you're fined and placed in jail for a short period of time.

I know it seems like this would just turn into an awkward first-person shooter version of tag where everyone just takes random stabs at each other in one room, but the developers were smarter than that. In this game, you can't just camp in the same spot all round. You have needs. I know you didn't play The Sims either, but it's just like that. Your character needs to void himself. He needs to shower, eat, read, sleep, and mingle. You have to keep moving, and you have to keep yourself happy. You're always going to have to adjust and explore new places on every map, and it keeps the gameplay fluid and varied.

However, I'll be straight with you: The Ship doesn't look that good, even if it does have flashy cartoon styling. The accuracy of your weapon swings can be frustrating. The variation between the different ships is sad. The walking speed is more sluggish than necessary, and you might even have to wait longer between rounds than you've been doing in Counter-Strike. But every game has its flaws, and do you really need a bump-mapped wallet bomb to enjoy the use of it?

I had a great moment in The Ship recently where the round was ending. My character really had to take a leak, and there was only one other player alive. He was hunting me, and I was hunting him, but that piss meter was red and blinking and making horrible noises at me. I had to find a bathroom immediately. I went into the nearest stall, first confirming on my map that my hunter was far away. Ten seconds later, as I finished my squatting animation, I noticed the map was warning me my hunter was nearby. Two seconds after that, I was trounced in the face with a golf club while I was on the john.

It was embarrassing, but it was entertaining. It was exactly what video games are supposed to be. Are you even having fun anymore getting caught up in the virtual penis-measuring contest of Counter-Strike's ranking system? I don't think you're playing for fun anymore. Really, try The Ship. It's fun, and I promise you won't get cheaply killed because of a lucky spray-and-pray headshot.

· · · Eric Williams