EB is still showing Pirates of the Caribbean coming out for the XBox on June 30 and PC on July 1. Reviews of early versions have been non-existent. Are any of you playing it, and what do you think so far? Thanks…Old Rooster
I haven’t heard an announcement that either version has gone gold yet. Perhaps they are holding it back till closer to the movie release.
I’ll definitely be picking this up eventually. Right now I’m playing Port Royale which is a blast.
These games always start slow for me because I refuse to write anything down. So I have to kind of get a feel for the prices of things in different areas before I’m able to take advantage of good deals. :-)
My copy of Port Royale is on the way. Been reading alot about it and it does look like my kind of thing.
I have the XBox version on preorder, but I think the game is supposed to be released with the movie. The movie comes out July 9th, if that helps.
Theres some guy on gamefaqs thats been playing the xbox version and saying it more than fits the bill as a sea dogs 2 sequel. head over there if you want some meaty impressions! im getting the pc version btw!
etc
Heres that thread you referred to
Sounds very tasty. :)
I just read on Blues News that Pirates has begun shipping to stores. Seems like a pretty understated release for this game, I hope it does well.
Thanks for the link to that other thread by the way, good reading for someone looking forward to the game.
I will certainly try both Sea Dogs II (i.e. Marketing in the Caribbean) and the new Pirates when it comes out.
After playing for a while, I’m a little disappointed in Port Royale. The Pirate-era Caribbean is certainly an interesting milieu to choose for an economic simulation, but there isn’t enough sailing in the game to interest me that much, nor is there any real roleplaying to speak of. I realize that in order to balance the game they needed to make crew salaries expensive, but really, my boarders are the scum of the sea, sailing for a chance at a prize and a pint of grog a day, not for a salary. I really don’t give a damn about having a thriving bricks business or how the price of fish on St Kitts relates to the way the townspeople there like me.
As a Hornblower and Aubrey & Maturin fan, I am also disappointed in the extreme lack of realism in any sailing game I’ve seen, but Port Royale is so far if anything the least realistic of any I can remember.
What I want is to see lots of little guys scurrying around my ship to fire the guns and reef the sails and so on, I want to hear my first lieutenant calling out “Mainsail haul!” and “Helm a lee!” and all that jazz. I want to be able to decide between equipping my ship with long guns or heavy carronades, and I want there to be some actual weather from time to time. I want the weather gauge to actually be an advantage in chasing down an enemy ship, and the lee side to get shrouded in smoke.
I realize that there is such a thing as going to far in realism. I was never a hardcore flight sim fan, and going through a preflight checklist or having to trim my rudder manually has never really appealed to me… So I don’t want, as a player, to actually have to issue the complex series of commands needed in order to tack or club-haul or use a spring or any such maneuver… but I still want my ship to behave realistically when I am just sitting there moving my mouse or hitting the arrow keys or whatever.
Thus far the most accurate sailing simulation I’ve seen has been the 25-year-old “sail” game for Unix, and that uses character graphics, so you can guess how detailed that is… kind of like a tabletop WS&IM game without the paper bookkeeping.
Never tried it myself, but have you ever played Age of Sail II: Pirate’s Bounty? Same developer who is doing Pirates of the Carribbean (formerly Sea Dogs 2).
I think (not sure) that I played AoS 1. If so, it didn’t do it for me. I know I didn’t play AoS II.
A BIT OFF TOPIC
pirates’ theme games are coming out left and right (tropicoII, port royale, pirates of the carribbean…) and there is even a movie (starring johnny depp!). wouldnt a pirate mmo be nice ? everyone has their own boat and a guild can sail like a fleet and plunder any boats they come across… more money gets players better boat better sailors better guns etc… it sounds simple and it just pops up… any thoughts ??
There is nothing romantic about historical piracy to speak of. Even the old Hollywood films practically never made a pirate a hero as I recall, though perhaps the hero might be a privateer sailing under a letter of marque (which is romantic because “marque” is a fancy French sort of word :roll: )
I suppose some people are into pretending to be evil, but pirates were really evil as well as being extremely doomed as a rule. At least a few Old West outlaws could pretend to be Robin Hoods, or could pretend to be continuing the Civil War or something, but for total lack of honor, pirates take the prize. Even the couple of historical exceptions to the “extremely doomed” rule came to rather miserable ends eventually, as I recall.
On the other hand, being a dashing frigate captain around 1800 or a rakish 17th century privateer captain seems like it would be more fun – you get to take prizes, get rich, AND get a peerage for your efforts…
Yes, it could be a good game if done right.
It would be kind of cool to have a sort of BF 1942-like sailing game in which one player on a team could be the marine officer in charge of boarding and repelling boarding, another could be the gunner in charge of controlling gun crews, and a third could be the sailing master in charge of sails, rudder, etc. The captain could assume any of these roles, and could also transfer men from one of these functions to another, e.g. to raise sail or to repair damage or to fight both sides or to board in the smoke or whatever.
In each case, the player would issue orders to their “section” of AI men who would be doing realistic-appearing tasks on the ship according to their orders, and the player would also be present as an avatar able to aim a bow chaser or to steer at the helm or cut loose debris or to leap across to the enemy ship and fight with pistol and cutlass.
I think the game would best be a privateering game in which players select one of a few sides, say English, French, Spanish, and Dutch during some unspecified mysterious 18th century period during which various pairs of these nations were at war. Players would get points and cash by taking enemy prizes or a lesser amount (as was historical) for destroying enemy warships. Most prizes would be wholly AI controlled, e.g. for all mechantmen, and also as convoy escorts when there aren’t enough players available to act as escorts. Players could sail their ships to protect their own convoys or to cruise against enemy convoys.
I heard Sid Meier might be working on a modern update to his Pirates!
Seems like what everyone really wants although to me, PotC sounds pretty good.
Well, pirates HAVE been romanticized, though this may be a new event. For some reason lots of villain roles are suddenly becoming romanticized. People seem to ignore the murdering aspects, though there were some pirates that did less of that than others. You could say that as long as they were just looting from some other nation’s ships they weren’t exactly evil. The English kings (and queen) practically waged wars using state-sponsored “pirates.” They were doing the same sorts of things other, independent pirates were doing, but they weren’t considered evil by everyone. Whether they WERE evil or not is a philosophical question.
As for the privateer style game, I had fun with Uncharted Waters when it first came out, though it wasn’t really even meant to be a simulation. KOEI has brought me many fond memories (and still does).
I can hardly tell a difference between Port Royale and Patrician II. I haven’t played incredibly deeply into either one, but PR seems just like Pat2 in a difference era. Do more differences pop up later, or is that a fair assessment? (This isn’t exactly a bad thing…I loved Patrician II.)
Then you’ll love Patrician III from what I hear.
[size=2]Hiya Murph.[/size]
There is almost no such thing as “state sponsored piracy” (one exception I can think of did not involve the English.)
Privateers are private ships licensed only to raid ships belonging to an enemy with whom their nation is currently at war. They raid only enemy ships (for profit of course, but so did military warships at the time for that matter.) Many privateers were quite respectable ships operated in a military fashion, often with ex-military officers and crew. In contrast, pirates raid anyone who is weaker that they can catch; they are effectively at war with the entire world, outlaws in the purest sense.
Privateers had to operate under strict rules of war. If they didn’t they were liable to lose their letters of marque, and could then be regarded as pirates by their own side, so there was a pretty strong motivation for them to obey the rules. They may have played a bit fast and loose with those rules at times, as did regular warships for that matter, but they were nothing like pirates.
Pirates would routinely kill crews of surrendered ships whereas warships and privateers would recognize an enemy striking their colors. Pirates were kill-on-sight targets for all nations for just this reason. The black pirate flag means “no quarter.”
So was Drake a pirate? No way. He might have overstepped his bounds a bit, but he was under Elizabeth’s orders and probably the special orders of her secret service, so any crimes he committed were official in character; at worst he was a “war criminal” not a pirate. Was he a rogue? Sure. Did he piss off the Spanish enough for them to call him a pirate? Yeah, but he was a lot different from a corsair, the only real “state sponsored pirates” I can think of, who sailed from the Barbary states or similar little Mediterranean quasi-nations.
pirates’ theme games are coming out left and right (tropicoII, port royale, pirates of the carribbean…) and there is even a movie (starring johnny depp!). wouldnt a pirate mmo be nice ? everyone has their own boat and a guild can sail like a fleet and plunder any boats they come across… more money gets players better boat better sailors better guns etc… it sounds simple and it just pops up… any thoughts ??
Still a bit off topic ;)
There are a number of MM pirate games in development, but the one Im keeping my peepers on is called “Pirates of the Burning Sea”.
You can check it out here: