Reviews / previews
Pirate games, like pirate treasures of legend, seem to be a fatal mixture of monetary allure and deadly curse. None of the successors to Sid Meier's Pirates has been a critical or popular hit. Eidos' Cutthroats, however, possesses a wealth of ingenious options and endless replayability. It might just break the curse--if its ship isn't scuttled first by an infestation of bugs.
Like the original Pirates--and unlike so many other buccaneering games, including Microids' new Corsairs--Cutthroats is open-ended. You aren't forced to play through a series of missions, and can carve out the kind of career you wish. Starting in one of 16 different periods, between 1625 and 1700, you can prey upon or aid more than 60 ports--each with its own distinctive characteristics, including defenses and economy.
It's possible to patiently build a career as nothing more than a trader, or you might choose some judicious freebooting, picking off poorly armed merchant ships at sea, or run optional missions (killing a defector, delivering a statue) for port governors. Successfully completed missions may result in anything from a treasure map to a Letter of Marque that makes you into a privateer (a legalized pirate, used by a European government to hound its enemies).
Or perhaps you want to kill everything in sight, like the legendary Blackbeard? You can do that, watching your infamy mount over time. This trades off the increased attention of European navies for the added likelihood that targeted ships sailing alone will simply surrender because of your unspeakable reputation.
The real-time battles come in two flavors. Land battles are more varied and more fun. You can send a party to attack specific buildings in a port, stealing weapons from the armory, freeing prisoners to join you, looting houses and treasuries--the usual pirate stuff. You can also take captive members of the gentry, whom the port's governor will ransom.
Sea battles recall Talonsoft's The Age of Sail in their choice of shot types, ship areas to target, and the attention to wind direction and strength. You can ram, board or launch rowboats if your ship is sinking. The animations and 16-bit color graphics are effective enough, but the small, unlabelled action icons make this portion of the game more of a chore to manage than it should be.
That's the least of Cutthroats' problems. The release version is as buggy as month-old meat rations in the tropics. Just one example: Frequently, I found myself returning to port with a booty-laden ship--only to discover that nothing was onboard when I arrived. The developers quickly issued a 3.0 patch, but several problems persist. For instance, your men can enter a house to sack it, only to find upon leaving that they're in another part of the port. Things can get real serious, real quick, when that exit randomly deposits your crew next to the guard barracks.
Nevertheless, Cutthroats is worth buying. It's deep and varied, and a worthy successor to the original Pirates that never plays the same way twice.
But don't spend your doubloons until Eidos posts a 4.0 patch.-- Barry Brenesal / GamePro
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