I was more talking about the hopelessness. The etherial and godlike nature of... nature that's akin to Lovecraft.
And the cannibalism of the event it was based on
Are there any good games about being a 18th century sea captain or pirate?
- Thread starter Drathnoxis
- Start date
And the cannibalism of the event it was based on
It was fun for a couple hours, but after that it starts to feel really repetitive. Ship battles are all the same, towns are all the same, money is mostly useless and you lose it all when your crew gets unhappy, and sailing to the East is mind numbingly slow because the wind direction never changes.
So I'm giving up. My captain will have to eke out his living as a farmer living in a single room by the port, owning a measly 2080 acres of land with 2000 gold coins, enjoying the tiny amount of renown that his rank as an English admiral grants... or so the ending screen said. I dunno, he seems pretty well off to me...
Yes, that is what i meant with "maybe not deep enough". It is a fun little casual game about pirates. I hope you still don't regret trying it.
All the other pirate games i know are about something else and pirates and the "something else" gets most of the playtime.
All the other pirate games i know are about something else and pirates and the "something else" gets most of the playtime.
I mean, it's a Sid Meier game. In Civilization you can make it all the way to Modern Day, have world spanning empire that's landed a man on the moon and never lost a war, but Brazil pumped out more culture points then you on one turn and now your civilization is relegated to the dustbin of history because that's how history works apparently.
I know what you mean about Pirates. It's great for a while but it gets a bit samey eventually and it's just about racking up more moneys to hopefully get a better ending.
No, it was fun for a couple hours, I don't regret it.
I really don't understand why there aren't more pirate games. It seems like a concept brimming with potential to me. We can get 500 bazillion military shooters, but one or two pirate games a decade is pushing it.
Same... though I think it's more a sad reflection on what's prevalent in media these days. WWII shooters were a thing since forever (and still are, because shooting Nazis will never get old) which got a bump to becoming (increasingly hammy and grey/brown) modern shooters, while pirate games had a heyday across 2000-ish (or so) because of Pirates of the Caribbean, but since the original trilogy ended, the genre has gone back into its niche niche and publishers don't see money in it at all (even though there is, just probably not as much as they want). Military shooters and their ilk are an easy buck since the assets have already been there for quite a while for the most part, while an Age of Sail pirate game actually requires some ground-up work and know-how to do well, whodathunkit.
It's weird that it's considered a niche, really. By the same token, Western(as in "Cowboys, Gunslingers, and deserts" Westerns)games should be MUCH more prevalent then they are and yet there's only a handful worth speaking of. There's the Red Dead games(mostly Redemption 1 and 2, since Revolver is barely known), Call of Juarez for the FPS variant and Desperados as a the Stealth take on it(and that's kind of a weird Niche intersection). There's probably others but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
I mean, Pirates and Gunslingers have a fair bit in common, since both tend to play off the " Roguish type wandering about the Frontier, having adventures and trying to make a living/fortune before the authorities clamp down and being a successful outlaw ceases to be viable" theme which always seems to maintain some form of popularity.
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I think the issue with both those genres, is that it's difficult to capture the appeal of the settings, in a way that translates easily to game controls. For the pirate genre, it's about the seas, and sailing, and oceanic physics, and that stuff, based on how janky water physics has been for decades in games, apparently isn't easy. So trying to tailor a game entirely around that system, is likely difficult. Same with cowboy stuff. The appeal of that genre, at least based on the cliche tropes of it, is the showdown and quickdraw combat, and if RDR2 is any indication, given how bloated and clunky it's mechanics system is, it's just as hard to pull that off well too. I find the quickdraw sequences in RDR2 annoying as hell, and the combat in general is just bad.
Plus, I don't think those 2 genres are actually as widely popular as think? Pirates have been on the outs, media wise, with the dying off of the PotC franchise, and hadn't been very big prior to that either. There isn't a real "clamoring masses" screaming for games in the genre, for either of them.
I mean I don't consider myself a fan of pirates as a genre, and have never actively sought out their games. The only reason I praise AC: Black Flag so much, is I played AC: 3, where they introduced their sailing mechanics, and I found it fun as hell. And then Black Flag improved on it. And while I would love more games like Black Flag in concept, it's not a case of "OMG I must have more pirate stuff because I love pirates!!" It's more "that combat/sailing system was really fun an engaging, I would play that whether it was a pirate skinned system or something else"
And cowboy stuff....well, personally I've never seen the appeal really. I'm playing RDR2, but it's more for the ancillary aspects of the game. Every time Dutch's gang try and whine about "the loss of their freedom, to live FREE, in FREEDOMNESS!! Away from LAWS, and being told what to do by THE MAN!! Because we're MEN!! And men are FREE!" I just roll my eyes and say to the screen. "Yeah, but you are all fucking criminals, liars, thieves and murderers. The most morally upstanding of your bunch, that I've seen so far, are the women who are prostitutes, who I personally see as at least honorable work, compared to the rest of you. You're complaining that the rest of society is tired of you leeching off of their actions to survive. So I don't really fucking care what you think about the loss of your way of life. You're way of life is literally a criminal gang, so fuck off."
I was actually just thinking a couple days ago how a game about driving cattle might be a pretty fun time, but there hasn't and never will be a game about that as far as I know.
You can set up Mount and Blade: Warband as a cattle driving simulator.
I mean, there are games like Trucker Simulator, and that one where you just move vehicles around in Alaska deep snow, using wenches. Those are games that actually exist. So if something as mundane as those activities can get funding to be produced, I don't see any reason a game about driving cattle couldn't be done.
I mean, there's a game about driving city buses around.
Well given the central mechanic of most action games is obviously the combat, the style of firearms in a golden age of piracy setting is gonna be horse shit because flintlocks are shitty to fight with. They take ages to reload and are as reliable a stoner with your rent money outside 7-11. I mean you can go third person so you can mix it up with swords. Which loops us back around to Black Flag I guess.
Arguably Pirates have the same problem. You're basically a gang with a ship but damn if Pirates in some media(POTC especially) love to whine about their loss of Freedom....to rape, plunder and murder. It's kinda telling that POTC had to introduce Ghost Pirates and Squid Pirates and the British East India Company(which were a real thing) to act as suitable villians to make the Pirates look somewhat sympathetic.
Of course, the irony is that few pirates ever made any real money at their chosen vocation(Nobody ever reports finding pirate treasure because Pirates rarely had tons of loot just lying about. If they got it, they likely drank and fucked it away at the nearest port because....Sailors!) and the "Wild" West wasn't nearly as filled with gunfire as it's often depicted as. The Parts of RDR with actual Cowboying(Ranching and such) is probably a lot closer to the real thing thing then the duels and mass bandit murders.
Yeah I'm fine with what they did with PotC, because at least in the films, they don't have the main characters take actions that contradict their depiction as freedom sailors or whatever. They were busy doing crazy stuff, and never (that I can recall) had a scene where one character opines about being free, and not living by any man's laws, and then proceed to go rob/steal/kill from those very men that they said they didn't rely on.
They did that in the first film, but the pirates were mostly the antagonists in that one. Beyond film 1, you never saw the protagonists (the pirates at this point) robbing, raping and looting. It was mostly "hide from Davy Jones and the EIC" That's where my issue with RDR2 comes in.
And yeah, the real West was nothing like the media depiction of it, that's for sure.