Age of Pirates: Beautiful but Sucked

Let's start off the month of March with some game reviews, yay! These are the games that I've played from January to February 2008, complete with uncensored criticism and biased ratings:

AGE OF PIRATES: CARIBBEAN TALES

Arr sad to say in the great Pirates vs Ninja fight, I'm 90% on the pirate side and thus the need to play a sea dogs related game nyaharrr!!! Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales gave an impressive presentation when I first played it. It's a RPG/Action/Tactical game where you choose to either become Blaze or Beatrice Shark. But seriously there are no pros and cons to both of them, just the gender and appearance. Next is your faction (Spanish, British, Dutch, French or the Pirates). Then comes the gameplay. Hey wtf should I do? Some scurvy dude gave me half a map during the short cutscene and then what?. Where's the tutorial? What should I press? Where's the damn minimap? Where the hell are the wenches?!! Yes, the game has NO TUTORIALS so you will have to go to the Options and check out all the keys for yourself. Shait.

Me raiding a Dutch fort (I think) with my crew. Not much to complain, just that it can get REALLY repetitive when you have to raid forts and settlement to take it over from the oppressive colonial superpowers. By the way, ignore the pop up message paiseh XD

Age of Pirates offers a good combination of RPG/Action (you fight, do quests and level up), a bit of settlement management (what to build on the conquered settlement), and some typical captain skills (control your own ship and crew and pwn the Caribbean sea with you fleet). The game would have been fun with all those beautiful graphics and swashbuckling, if not for the fact that Captain Obvious laid down his comment saying this game is incomplete and the plot sucked. Ok so I got a map and then I have to meet my step-sister Beatrice (I chose to play as Blaze Shark), who was somewhere in the Caribbean. Then I accidentally found her in Dominica (oopsie spoiler alert) when I got tired of constantly having my hull pounded by 17 lbs French and Dutch cannonballs. From there I was told to complete 1-2 more story related quests, until I reach a part where Beatrice said bye-bye to me to help me complete our father's dream of uniting the Caribbean states. After that you wouldn't see her again as you repetitively conduct your plunder ships and raid the next few dozen more settlements until all of Caribbean is yours. It's really boring doing the same thing over and over again, and things would've been nicer if the developers spent more time on the game plot instead of the cannonball physics.

My ship, the Black Sultan, cruising slowly after sinking a French frigate. You start off with a super mini ship, but later with higher skills, gold and luck, you can own uber huge ship like the Black Sultan. I got her for free when I hijacked her from the Dutch fleet pursuing me somewhere near Havana XD Oh and later you can upgrade your ship by buying parts and accessories such as cannons, hull buffing and sails.

That's just how big the Black Sultan is. The sound of 270 cannons firing off simultaneously at smaller ships is like music to the ears... "Cease using grapples, load up those bomb kegs! Smithy bring us to port! Wait for it.... wait... FIRE!!!" BOOM! x270 wheeeee!!!! Harr har haarr!!! The ship fights in this game is nice, somewhere near PS2's Naval Ops: Warship Gunner (bullshitty futuristic tech but deep plot).

RATING:
As mentioned earlier the details and graphics in this game is awe worthy, 3 years ago anyways. Sadly it's just another one of the games that is just shiny but doesn't shine. So here's my rating:

Graphics:

Everything looks nice and pirate-ish, just click on any of the image above to see for yourself.

Sounds:
Ok la, different sounds and music for different scenes. But the limited dialogues from the NPC can get repetitive

Game Play:

Good, you can poke your cutlass on land and pound your cannonballs on enemy fleets at sea, AND manage your very own Caribbean fleet and empire.

Storyline:
No star for this one, not even a kesian star. The plot is so bad it makes the nearly plotless Space Invaders more interesting.

Longevity:
Sure all those fights can be addictive but after 2 hours it gets repetitive. Imagine the looks of your scurvy crew members when you shout :
"Look! Another Spanish merchant fleet!"
"Yay... -____- again"
"Oh c'mon you sea dogs! Lighten up a bit"
"Our hands are tired and blistered from loading cannonballs and hoisting the sails"
"Ok what about if we raid Puerto Rico?"
"Don't want! They all look the same! We're tired of plundering settlements with the same architectural layouts!"

All in all, this could have been a good game. But too bad, I was personally let down by it. However if you enjoy a pirate life and don't mind the repetitive gameplay (or really bored and got nothing better to do), try this game out.

If you like pirate games Captain Ham suggests:
Tropico 2: Pirate Cove
Pirates of Caribbean Online
Buccaneer