SUBSIM
Review |
|
 Pirates
of the
Caribbean
Review 07/12/03 by Neal Stevens
|
Developer:
Akella
Producer: Bethesda
What
began as a sequel to the popular and critically-acclaimed pirate role
playing game/action sim
Sea Dogs
hitched a ride along the way with Disney's blockbuster summer
film, Pirates of the Caribbean. It was certainly a smart
marketing move but was it a smart gaming move? Is there enough Sea
Dogs ingenuity in the game Pirates of the Caribbean to reward
gaming buccaneers? Did Bethesda uncover new booty or fail to keep to
the Code? Read on, matey.
To top
the original Sea Dogs, Akella developed a new
engine, Storm II, and it is a mighty impressive piece of code for
serving up eye-blasting graphics on low spec machines. You've heard
that this game looks great, let me add to that: wow! The lighting,
coloring, character renderings, ships, animations, and ocean and
weather effects are stunning. Pirates OTC is simply the most beautiful
naval game ever. The detail is crisp and sharp, the colors are
blended well. And no one tops Akella for
great looking ships. Set these ships in the Storm II ocean with
fabulous, shimmering waves and saintly haloes of light filtering
through the puffy Cumulus clouds--you have a game that begs to be
played for the visual experience if nothing else.
But there is more to Pirates of the
Caribbean than terrific graphics. Following the same successful
pattern established by Sea Dogs, POTC is at heart a role playing
adventure game with some combat and sailing simulation elements. You
begin your adventures as a low rank captain and your exploits help you
build rank and experience. You can distribute the increased rank and
experience among several attributes; leadership, fighting skills,
sailing skills, luck, etc. As you continue to evade mightier enemies,
dispatch equal and lesser enemies, survive storms, succeed
commercially, and solve quests, you can qualify for better ships
(which you need gold to buy). If you are willing to take on superior
forces and win, you will gain an increased measure of skill and
experience. Of course, if you fail you end up as ant food.
POTC allows you to sail as a merchant or
ply your luck as a warship, attacking any ship at will. Sea travel is
depicted on a large map. Ships in your vicinity will be spied out by
your crew and noted. Some ships will avoid you and others (mostly
pirates) will pursue and try to give battle. When you close on a ship,
the map switches over to the third-person combat mode. You view your
ship from above and your crew scurries about busily (an improvement
over Sea Dogs, where no crews were visible). We appreciate the crew
members being visible on the ship but their animations are rather poorly
diagrammed. Instead of doing appreciable work such as pulling on the
jack block, manning the braces, etc., they are milling about mindlessly.
Granted, some are kneeling by cannons. This would be okay if they would just
stop in one place occasionally. They resemble wind up marching toy soldiers. Switch to first person
perspective and your crew disappears (there is a great mod for this now, check
Subsim Downloads).
Combat is handled exactly as it was in Sea
Dogs (why fix what ain't broke!) and there is some skill required to
excel in navigation, positioning, and aiming. Sails can be ripped by
chainshots (knippel), crews devastated by close-range grape, and fires
sparked with bombs. Ships burn and smoke convincingly. Pirates OTC
allows you to choose a realistic sailing model or an arcade model.
Realistic mode is really good: wind direction plays a major role in
combat. There are a sufficient number of ships to command, from lowly
luggers to carnivorous battleships festooned with cannons. Altogether, Pirates OTC's sailing portions of the game are
splendidly thought out.
If
you get too close to an enemy ship, you may choose to board him. This is an
area where POTC has dramatically improved on Sea Dogs. Previously it
was a two man sword fight, each captain representing their crew. With POTC you
have four, five, six man fights. Despite not being able to actually command
the crew to throw grapples and see them swarm the enemy decks, you load into a
scene on the enemy decks and you must fight it out, man to man, your crew and
the opposing captain's crew. Akella allows you to choose who you wish to
fight. You may assist a crewman and gang up on an enemy swordsman. The same
can happen to you, several members of the enemy can gang up on you. Your
fighting progresses from deck to deck until you vanquish the enemy, or you are
killed. Great fun!
Aside from scurvy pirates and vengeful
enemies, other dangers dwell in the watery abode--storms. As with Sea
Dogs, Pirates OTC has a full suite of weather effects, from sunny calm
seas, fog, and squalls, to shipkilling typhoons with lighting hits and
colossal waterspouts bearing down on your ship and crew. Storms
can be detected and avoided...sometimes. Quite often an unexpected
storm would waylay me and I would watch my ship rack up experience
points while the crew struggled to keep her afloat.
The motivating element of Pirates OTC is
its quests. Aye, there is a main quest and quite a few side branching
quests full of intrigue, deception, and mystery. Any or all can be
undertaken or you can simply play the game as an open-ended
sailing/pirate sim. You may be tempted to smuggle, ferry passengers,
and run trade routes to add gold to your chest, dreaming of bigger
ships and better officers. Communication is accomplished through text
dialogue and the font size is, to put it in precise scientific terms,
way too dang big! (must be something set up
for X-box players). Additionally, there is a lack of useful and
interesting chatter, interaction with the NPCs is pretty much the same dialogue over and over. It
seems as if Akella could have sat a college student down to fill a
database with better and more varied non-essential chatter than what
is in Pirates OTC.
Also sorely missing are the crews
orders from Sea Dogs! Why this was left out is puzzling. Now that you
have crews aboard your ships they are rendered mute. Whereas a Sea
Dogs mate would say "Load
guns with balls, aye aye, Cap'n", in Pirates OTC all you hear
is "-----------": nothing. I'm guessing Akella can fix this without
undo effort, if they choose to. Little things like this add to a game
and should be included.
Quests and generic exploring can lead you
to many areas of the game that most players will miss. Running around
in the bushes or checking for unlocked houses can lead to surprising
discoveries. Only the curious will find these and this is one of the
most rewarding aspects of the game. I jumped off a dock to see if the
character could swim, rounded a small outcropping of rock, and behold!
I
discovered a secret dungeon! A plus for gameplay and longevity.
During some episodes you may find your way
blocked by ghouls or bandits, forcing you to backtrack and try a
different route. That's okay, it happens to foster more interesting
gameplay. This is a game that pays you to explore, take
chances, and prove your mettle. Your character gains rank, experience,
and gold faster if you are brave. There are villages, lighthouses,
ship decks, dungeons, canyons, jungles--a whole world to explore. The
NPC AI is good--attack a civilian and they all run frantically and the
guards come rushing to restore peace.
In
the beginning of the game you should choose your battles wisely. Your
ship is small and lightly armed and you can be killed easily by most
adversaries on land--I was dispatched rather quickly by a drunk before
I knew what was happening. But once you learn the basics, it's cake
from there on. Swordplay is similar to Sea Dogs but has been dumbed
down. Instead of feint, parry, block, slash, attack you simply have
attack and block. Virtually no skills are required to successfully
fence, just hold the block key down until your adversary finishes a
thrust then attack, and then block again. Repeat. Fire pistol, repeat
full cycle. We were very interested to see how Akella would handle
this and are much more in favor of a higher level of personal combat
technique. At the least, a block should not be maintained effectively
for longer than a second--the player should have multiple sword
attacks, blocks, moves, punches, kicks, etc. at his disposal. Alas.
What isn't a plus is the standard
interface set-up. What an X-box inspired mess! Through a
confusing combination of keys you interact with NPCs and control your
character. The left mouse button moves the player forward and other
keys control attacks. The most bewildering part is the combination of
ENTER key and SPACEBAR required to open objects and talk. For some
reason, once the command console is pulled up, you still cannot use
the mouse to make selections. Thankfully the keys can be remapped to
some extent, allowing you to assign functions to replicate more
conventional setups. The dev team needs to play Battlefield 1942
and see how it's done right.
Another
area where BF42 spoiled me is the near-lack of game boundaries. In
POTC, your character can venture far and wide but there are still
rigid game boundaries. You cannot jump tables or barriers, you cannot
climb ladders or nets. On top of that, the game loads news areas with
surprising frequency. I know, I shouldn't criticize areas of a game
where code requires concessions to game suspension when there is no
other choice but POTC misses some pretty standard factors, such as
going through doors and gates. While I'm complaining, let me dig up
one of my complaints about Sea Dogs:
"There is the inevitable cookie cutter use of some building interiors
with the same barkeeper idling in the same spot in many of the
taverns." Same can be said for governors and shipyard masters. There
are some differences but in general, when you've seen one tavern,
you've seen them all. On the other hand, the towns are very different,
each with it's own layout and style.
Now
for all the cats and dogs: Inadequate manual, no bugs or crashes, near
unrestricted save game functionality, there are skeletons and zombie
monkeys, and great narration by Pirates OTC movie actress
Keira Knightley. Sounds are good, if well below the awe-inspiring
level of the graphics. Pirates is a very quiet game, little sound save
the boom of cannons. No crew chatter, no shanties, no creaking, and
minimal sail flapping. The musical score is acceptable but I miss the
rousing original Sea Dogs symphonic pieces. There is no scenario
editor (but with the dynamic nature of POTC sea combat, it isn't
missed much) and no multiplayer, which leaves the door open for Flying
Labs' Pirates of the Burning Sea to own the market for online
pirate action.
For a game three years in the making, a game that was pretty far along
when we saw it a year ago at E3, we expected more than Pirates of the
Caribbean currently offers. Most of the old good stuff from Sea Dogs
is still there and some new good stuff adds to the fun of the game but
there are also lingering rough edges such as the crew animations,
simplistic sword fighting, and deficient NPC dialogue, not to mention
the baffling interface. That's not to say Pirates OTC isn't a good
game--it is. It just doesn't bowl us over the way Sea Dogs did.
Nevertheless, we'll take it.
Rating:
90
| Realism |
Historical Accuracy |
Graphics |
Sound/
Music |
Game play |
Repeat Play |
Stability
/Bugs | Multi- play |
Mission
Editor |
| 18/20 |
9/10 |
10/10 |
8/10 |
18/20 |
9/10 |
10/10 |
0/5 |
3/5 |
|
BONUS: +3: Superb graphics; +2: Extended areas to explore |
|
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Also see:
SUBSIM.COM'S
Pirates
of the
Caribbean
Interview with Director of Marketing
Pete Hines, Bethesda
More
POTC Screenies
