Docked Review — Port in a Storm

Docked is an immersive management sim all about running your own industrial dockyard. Opening right after a devastating hurricane, players are presented with a ruined dockyard to repair, which eventually opens up into full-on management and the day-to-day operations of one of the most important logistical centers in our modern society. Full of heavy machinery, Docked falls into the genre of immersive and realistic construction simulators, but fans of said genre might find this particular title to be different from their familiar favorites.

Normally, I’m not a major fan of this genre, which can be loosely defined as digital translations of real-world labor, especially that which is done with heavy machinery. Still, I think I have a pretty good idea of what fans of the genre look for in these games. First and foremost, they want accurate depictions of the tools, the heavy machinery, and the procedures under which they operate on an industrial worksite. The fantasy fulfilled in these kinds of games is getting to operate the kind of rigs and work on the kind of sites that take years of trade school and apprenticeships to gain access to, all from the comfort of your home and on your day off.

In this regard, I would say that Docked appeals to its genre’s audience pretty well. Particularly, players drawn to this game are likely interested in the operation of heavy cranes, with other smaller dockyard machines being more of a welcome afterthought. Docked, in my opinion, does a pretty good job of simulating these machines, with fairly realistic and complicated operating procedures that surely would fulfill that heavy equipment operator fantasy. There is even an optional difficulty increase that makes the systems even more intricate and attention-demanding, in case you want to simulate an expensive workplace disaster.

Something else fans of the genre want is immersion. Players want to show up to the job site, have free rein to move around it, and work the job to its completion. Games like Roadwork are prime examples of what I’m talking about here, perfectly simulating not only a day’s shift but an entire contract and leaving it up to the player, or players, to complete.

In this way, however, I don’t think fans of the genre are going to be very happy with Docked, which rather than being a full contract simulation, instead limits players to short, “video game mission-like” jobs where you move a few crates at a time before completing the task and returning to another screen. It is not an immersive worksite simulation but instead a series of what feels almost like linear levels, where players are not given access to the kind of depth or freedom that they’ve come to expect in this genre.

It’s easy to understand why players who have picked up Docked feel misled over this fact, especially when the promotional material of the game shows the unloading of entire ships, the kind of activity fans of this genre want to engage in but something that is instead reserved for background tasks completed by NPCs. Given some of the player response to the game, I would not be surprised if this is the point of the review where you stop reading. Docked is not an open worksite simulation and is instead a series of small, almost linearly designed missions where you only move a few crates at a time. The rest of the game is played as a management sim that some players have described as “spreadsheet-like.”

I personally enjoy those types of management games, but in my opinion, the draw to Docked is definitely the time you get to spend actually doing the work, and in that way the game can feel unnecessarily limited. Still, fans who don’t mind how the game handles its jobs will likely also very much enjoy the management side of things. I just don’t see those players being most of the audience this game was marketed towards.

One aspect of Docked I really couldn’t seem to enjoy was the story and characters. As another aspect that is weird for this genre, which usually presents us with little to no dialogue in favor of, again, being a more open and immersive experience, Docked is full of voiced characters and a story about returning to and restoring the family business. Besides the fact that I don’t believe industrial work in logistical chains on the scale presented in Docked is often a “family business,” I just found the story and characters of the game to be kind of cookie-cutter and overly safe. They were generic and forgettable to the point where the game would be just as fine, if not better off, without any story or voice work at all.

That isn’t to say the hurricane aspect of the story wasn’t interesting, just that I didn’t vibe with what the rest of the story the game was going for. That’s subjective, though, and maybe other players will enjoy their presence more than I did. Personally, I would have preferred to be a faceless, nameless dock operator, with the roleplaying left to my own imagination.

To cap off this review of Docked, I will say that the game looks gorgeous. Pairing the excellent graphics, which also ran incredibly well for me personally, with the complex crane simulation and management elements, I can definitely see this game having its audience. Still, some of the game’s choices feel strange for the genre it’s in, and I don’t blame the audience the game was advertised towards for feeling as if they didn’t get what they were promised, or at least what they expected, in what the game has to offer.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of Docked. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Docked is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.