The last thread I found about pirate games was from back in 2007, so I thought I’d start a new one:
I bought Pirates! during the Steam sale, having lost my CD copy quite a while ago. It’s fun, but certainly there have been updated games in this genre since Pirates! came out! I tried a google search, but you could imagine how a search of “pirate games” might turn out.
So? Anything out from the past three-four years? And on a related note, what are these games called beyond “pirate games”? How do I find them?
I don’t think there are many though. I know there is age of booty on psn/xbl but i didn’t really care for that personally and it is a completely different type of game from what i saw of the demo.
Probably the closest you’re going to get is pirates of the burning sea, a mmorpg that features quite well done naval combat in a pirate setting. It went freemium a while back and allows you to play a pirate as well. Has sort of similar naval combat, boarding and then so-so on land combat (although it is cool having your crew behind you in all of these).
If you don’t care about the setting, Mount & Blade is inspired by Meier’s classic, albeit in a medieval setting.
If you only care for the setting, and want to talk about pirates as a theme, then you could try Jolly Rover which is a quite charming point & click. Of course, it’s reminiscent of Monkey Island, but the main character is pretty funny : He’s a kind of metrosexual puppy who drinks tea rather than grog. I haven’t finished it or anything (it came with an indie pack on Steam), but what I played was pretty good, somewhat better than Telltale’s Monkey (which imho is rather weak, weaker than their mostly great Sam & Max).
I was really looking forward to that cancelled Pirates of the Caribbean game, it looked like a pretty fun open-world pirate adventure. Otherwise yeah, guess I have to fall back on Pirates! or Monkey Island games.
I keep coming back to PotBS. The gameplay is pretty mediocre, but the piratey atmosphere is fantastic. Just sailing around and looting some NPCs is more fun than it should be.
The ship combat in PotBS is also better than the combat in almost any other mmo.
Navigation is important, different ship types play very differently, skills are useful but only make up a part of the battle, combats are longer than “1-2 skill combos-next mob” fights, yet generally not too long.
Its a standard level grind MMO with a too small player population for its design, but it has some fun parts.