Seriously. Not to say that the US’s broadband situation doesn’t pathetically suck compared to the civilized world, but I just checked my parents’ location in rural North Carolina, 20 minutes from the nearest “town” – where it was big news when they got their second stoplight – and even they can get 10Mbps cable.
But, anyway, I parsed the original complaint as “modern gaming is so degraded that a demo’s size is a key factor in trying it” rather than “a demo that size should not be acceptable”. Perhaps the error is in my understanding, though.
Even with cable, i don’t want to download an 8gb demo unless i am already sure it is the best game ever. Especially with the reality of capped internet.
I am much more likely to download a number of 1gb demos so i can try out various games and see what i like.
Finally got around to trying the Pirates of Black Cove Demo. It wasn’t bad, but also wasn’t great.
Good
[ul]
[li]The game looks nice graphically. [/li][li]The ability to upgrade your stronghold seems like it would be nice (although not present in the demo).[/li][li]You can find blueprints that let you upgrade various parts of your ship and also give you access to new ships.[/li][li]Ships have special weapons which seem kind of cool. The demo ship fires out some homing rockets (i know, homing rockets on a pirate ship…)[/li][/ul]
Bad
[ul]
[li]No ammo types. Your cannons seem stuck with normal cannonballs.[/li][li]Land combat is NOT good. It plays like a rts minigame in a low budget game.[/li][li]Character customization doesn’t seem so great (but you cant do much of it in demo, so i am only guessing by what i saw).[/li][li]NO WIND. I could be wrong here, but there is no wind indicator and from the way your ship acts, i’m guessing the game doesn’t take wind in to account at all. This removes a ton of depth in combat and will likely severely affect ship choice in the full version.[/li][li]Quests are bad and uninteresting. Yes, pirates! didn’t have a stellar quest, but it kept you going and doing fun stuff. After a while i started skipping the dialog in this game and this is only the demo![/li][li]No boarding? Come on! is this a pirate game or is it not?[/li][/ul]
It just makes me want to reinstall Pirates! or play Pirates of the burning sea. I don’t need 100% realistic combat where my ship will sink if i don’t tie a knot perfectly, but this is just too arcade’y for me. Some day i will have to check out the pirates of the Caribbean game which is my last hope for a single player PotBS.
Definately do it, or maybe look for the old 2D ‘Cutthroats’ by Eidos(a sort of remake of Sid’s original Pirates with some nice additions, but also some big drawbacks). But yeah the old PotC(Bethesda/akella) game with the Build Mod is imo, the best pirate themed game around, even with the current bugs in the build 14 beta version.
Wow, Cutthroats. That reminds me of the slightly more obscure Corsairs, which was basically a large scale RTS, plus do the Pacific as well as the Carib.
There’s also the Tortuga games from Ascaron, but those were bad. You’d be better off playing the Port Royales in a pirate mindset instead, which is awesome.
Pirates of the Black Cove (as talked above) has crappy controls when compared to this 1997 jewel in the same genre:
I loved Overboard!, why can’t the arcade-ish pirate games be more like it? Just add simple wind effect/influence, different shot types, a very large variety of ships and go crazy.
Edit: inspired by this thread I gave PotBS a try this weekend; the land bits are atrocious, even if it’s fun dressing your captain, and progress seems grindy (as befits an MMO) but the sea battles are pretty good, someone needs to make a single player version of this.
‘Sea Dogs 2’ became ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’(bethesda), after Disney bought it for the film tie-in. From that same stable you also have the ‘Age of Pirates’ games, which improve the graphics(over PotC) in some ways, but also suffer from not having the Build Mod’s wide range of improvements. One of those later ‘Sea Dogs’ games has had the source code and various dev tools released, but it’s still quite an undertaking for small mod-teams! PotC+Build Mod seems the most developed of this series so far.
Wow, Pirates of the Black Cove demo was super disappointing. Game feels like it still needs 6+ months of polish.
Super weird mouse lag/delay.
Lack of wind was mentioned, but also the fact that sails never change, and just remain open at all times.
Land parts are horrible, (as you have to control them with the laggy cursor).
Sorta bummed, as I was hoping this would be good. :(
Having been in and out of the build mod since version 12, i’d say build 14 is the culmination of years of awesome modding work, BUT it is also a less stable than build 12 Full was. Build 14 is also still called beta, but in that repsect it is playable if you want a sandbox rpg pirate game. Patch 6 was the last official patch but a Patch 7 wip is being worked on and the talk is of Beta 2 being released in a few months, which will resolve a number of big bugs currently in the Build 14 beta.
I find it the best pirate game around, it just does so much that others don’t. It also has a strong history of improving all the time, which can also be a frustration. I figure when Beta 2 is out that will be a good base to really get into the game in, and keep you happy until the Full release is worked on.
Age of Pirates is the later game, and had the source code released but it is also quite a way behind the detail and depth of the PotC build mod 14, and probably there is less work going on in that mod effort. Keep in mind the DRM issues with AoP as well, but it does use a newer engine and has ‘better’ graphics(i’d argue more garish maybe?).
But your best bet is to go to the forums and ask around there, they seem a friendly bunch on the whole:
Is anyone playing “Sid Meier’s Pirates!” for the iPad? I have it, and I’m having a great time with it – maybe more fun than I had on the PC version that came out a few years ago. If nothing else, the touchscreen suits my aging hands more than mousing does.
But I have a question about it. Was there a “Hall of Fame” in the original game – a screen listing all the pirates you’d played, their finishing acreage/wealth/marital status, etc? I can’t find such a screen in this version. I do see a Leaderboard, but that’s simply a list of worldwide GameCenter players ranked by Maximum Plunder (whatever that is). There’s also a Top 10 Pirates list, but that seems to be limited to the pirates in my current game.
I haven’t played the iPad version, but the Wii version is actually better than the original imho (and I say that as an avid PC gamer). There were just some nice touches that got added in, even though the resolution is a considerable bit lower.
I’m in Israel. On ADSL. Supposedly a several mega-bit connection.
GamersHell sponsored server
West Coast USA
Line: 2000Mbit/s
Users: 681/1500
Downloading the black cove demo (just for sake of argument, since people say the game is shite not gonna bother with it) getting ~20 kb/sec with expectancy of 10 hours.
This is during evening-night hours when I’m usually back from work, alongside the other several billions of the Middle-East and central Europe, all humping the 'net like rabbid hares.
During early morning (like 5 AM sunrise hours) the connection to virtually anywhere is magically pumped like a regular Internet at my alleged pipeline is supposed to be.
ISPs over-selling, overloaded routers in the UK bridge/stream-dam and what not faulty shit.
Also, screw you kindly.
Addendum metrics:
Germany
Line: 1000Mbit/s
Users: 56/400
~50-100 kb/sec, 2-4 hours.
(erratic mofo shit, can’t decide which side of the planet it is)
Netherlands
Line: 3000Mbit/s
Users: 365/1550
~ 200 kb/sec, 1 hour.
(bless them dutchmen and their internal high-bandwidth network)
