3322

Yeah, no idea what the fuck Giaddon’s talking about. Pirates is absolutely fantastic.

3323

I have to agree with Giaddon. It got old fast. It’s fun for a couple hours but then I wondered why I would keep playing. It was the same for his Railroad game (not Railroad Tycoon).

3324

I also agree with Giaddon. Somehow the magic of the old Pirates! games was replaced with weird dancing mini-games in the new version.

3325

Groupees bundle, ends in an hour:

Train Simulator 2013 is in it. It’ll be automatically upgraded to 2014 next week.

3326

Yeah, sailing to Veracruz can take forever :) Different ships have different rigs, and some are punitively slow sailing against the wind. IIRC, the larger sloops have a good balance of guns, crew, cargo capacity, and speed in various winds. (You’ll probably run across a royal sloop after exploring for a while, but it’s pretty tough to convince the captain to give her up. Yarr.)

3327

Royal Sloops are awesome but rare (and later game, iirc). Sloops of War are also quite good (all sloops are small, so you’ll have a crew disadvantage that can sting if you have to board early). Frigates are fast but not agile, while Brigs are agile but not as fast. War Galleons and Ships of the Line are neither fast nor nimble, but they have broadsides to die for (or rather, die from) and I believe do half decently against the wind. Do NOT fight with trade galleons, merchantmen, or other ships of that ilk unless they’re your last choice.

As a silly aside, you can also get War Canoe if you intercept a raiding party, and they are by far and away the most nimble. However, they’re incredibly weak. I enjoyed watching my son slowly take down a Ship of the Line with one, sweating bullets every time a cannon belched in his direction.

3328

I am not a min-maxer or a particularly savvy player, but in both the old and new Pirates, I seemed to always gather a lot of Merchantmen for my pirate fleet, selling almost anything else at least until I got a war frigate or something rare.

3329

In both versions of Pirates I would use a Sloop or Frigate as my flagship, with Merchantmen as required to carry booty. Then replace all your Merchantmen with Sloops and Frigates over time to improve your speed on the overhead map.

I also downloaded a cheat to autopass the dance sequences. I just don’t like rhythm games.

3330

Amazon has a good deal on the Metro games right now, $20 for everything.

3331

Love Pirates but I sure wish there was a way to cheat through the dancing mini-game.

3332

Gameholds.com is selling region-free keys to Total War:Rome II for $35. Everyone is wary of third-party key vendors, with good reason, but research shows these guys can be trusted.

3333

I’ve used Gameholds twice, and everything went smoothly. But I think they’d have to pay me to play TW Rome.

3334

Amazon has a Metro pack for $19.99 that includes both Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light (plus a couple DLC). The games unlock on Steam and the sale ends Monday.

3335

Already mentioned above. Pay attention Brad!

3336

It can’t be mentioned enough! :)

3337

Splinter Cell: Blacklist is $45(down from $60) on the Uplay store this weekend.

3338

Amazon has Saints Row IV for 37% off as their deal of the day on 360, PS3 and PC. That should be $37.49 on consoles, $29.99 on PC and the collector’s editions are discounted as well. One day only.

3339

It’s so much better than GTAV.

3340

I was going to wait for the winter sales, but I can’t imagine it will go any lower than 50% off at most. I know what I’m playing this weekend!

3341

Well… I love me some Saints Row, but I wouldn’t even directly compare the two these days.

It’d be like comparing Police Squad with Hill Street Blues or something. They’re doing distinctly different things, and I love that I just naturally don’t lump the two together anymore after the last two Saints games.