Rating:
www.laughingpan.com

Plunder is a fantastic game the whole family can enjoy (so long as there’s only four of you.) It captures all the best things piracy has to offer – pillaging, sailing, buried treasure, tavern brawls – while at the same time remaining portable enough to take nearly everywhere.

The game-set itself is made of very durable materials – the coin and booty tokens are heavy-duty cardboard, and the cards are rigid and glossy. It’s all compactly packaged in a surprisingly solid cardboard box shaped like a small treasure chest that I’m sure will hold up for many years. Everything is decorated with properly nautical/piratey artwork that gives that perfect feeling for an evening of merry cut-throatery. [read more »]

Rating:
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates
www.puzzlepirates.com

I first fell in love with this game back when they were still beta testing. It was fantastic then, and has only gotten better. The scope has grown, as have the options and the puzzles, and my wife is wishing I hadn’t discovered this thing – my chores have stacked up to Mt. Everest levels and I’m only getting started.

There are many fantastic points to this game – it’s fun, it’s clean (arguably g-rated). But I think its greatest feature is that the pirate crews have to work (get this) AS A CREW. Some folks work sails as others pump the bilge or navigate. Somebody’s got to load the cannons while the captain barks his orders so you can all collect some booty. And isn’t that what its all about – cooperation and booty? I’d review the game in more detail, but I’m not sure I can. Puzzle Pirates is an entire world of piratey goodness, and your options are endless. I could tell you about my experiences in the game, but they won’t be your experiences. All you can do is take my word that this is a fantastic game and go learn about it for yourself. It’s like a game of Monkey Island that never ends – and I can think of no higher praise. Go there, subscribe – I promise your real life will crumble from neglect. [read more »]

Rating:
I remember playing the original Sid Meier’s Pirates! back when it was the only pirate game around. I’d sit for hours basking in the cold glow of my Amiga, pillaging villages and courting governor’s daughters. Years later I had the pleasure of revisiting the game on my Sega Genisis with the release of Pirates! Gold. And now Sid Meier has treated us to yet another installment of his wonderful creation.

First, let me be plain – this is NOT the “end-all, be-all” of pirate simulations, nor was it intended to be. This is a highly detailed, multi-faceted arcade style game – realism clearly took second place to entertainment in most every respect. A small ship can dodge cannonballs. Your character can do flips during sword fights. And governor’s daughters’ display gravity defiance that truly boggles the mind. That said, this game is beautiful, and it is FUN! [read more »]

Rating:
www.popcap.com

Popcap has a ton of cute little games, and they seem just intellectual enough that they probably increase your SAT scores or someting like that. Seven Seas is their pirate-based game where you sail around in your little ship blowing up other pirates. The tricky bit is that everyone moves on a grid, and if you’re good you can anticipate where the enemy pirates will go before they go there. If you’re not good – well – you get blowed up. It’s a fun game, and just a little addictive. The cannon blasts make a terribly satisfying “boom,” and the music’s catchy too. There’s an online version, but it’s not nearly so impressive as the one you can download. There’s a version for your Palm Pilot as well, if you’re so inclined.

Rating:
www.acemurdermystery.com

Rum helps us drink like pirates, costumes help us dress like pirates, and music helps us sing and dance like pirates. But there’s just not much out there that helps us ACT like pirates. Enter Ace Pirate Murder Mystery – you and seven-to-nine of your dearest friends get together to act like scalliwags, eat-drink-and-be-merry, and ruthlessly accuse each other of the most diabolical murder of Captain Kidd. Who could ask for more?

I was unsure what exactly a murder mystery party entailed, but when the package arrived I found a great deal of the work already done for me. 10 party invitations inluded an introduction to the game and ideas for how each character should dress for the evening – all I had to do was add a time and date, and figure out which character I thought would best suit each of my friends. Also provided was an instruction manual for me, the host, telling me what to do (and what not to do – no good peaking at something I shouldn’t, and thereby spoiling some surprises,) along with character-specific instruction booklets, secret clues, 2 CDs (one narrated, the other effective mood-setting background sounds), and name cards (just in case we forgot who was who.) [read more »]

Rating:
Fun. Just an absolute blast. You’re likely already familiar with this sort of game – civic planning and the like. You run a town, you decide how the money gets spent and where the buildings get built. But this time you do it as a pirate king. You provide your pirates with gambling dens, taverns, female companionship, and the like. You also build ships and send your captains out to bring back booty. That’s the game in a nutshell, but there’s real charm here as well. When you read the thoughts of your subjects (you’re a psychic pirate king) they’re often thinking amusingly snide things. Also, sometimes your captives will get uppity, and you’ll have to loosen the reigns on your pirates to put them back in their place.

The graphics are excellent, and everything is designed to look extra piratey. But the real star of this game is the music, which is available on it’s own as a Soundtrack CD. Fun tropical music that makes excellent background music while remaining catchy enough to keep your attention. I found the CD is a great compliment to other pirate games that don’t have good background music of their own.

Rating:
pirates.bethsoft.com/firstsite/main.html

I admit being perturbed at the name change. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. But I also loved that Seadogs was made by a small company I’d never heard of. I loved that they were making a sequel. But I didn’t love that Disney came along and bought that sequel and slapped their logo on it. [read more »]

Rating:
www.bethsoft.com

I bought this game on a whim – didn’t know a thing about it but the box looked good. One of the best spontaneous purchases I ever made. Beautiful graphics, relatively easy ship controls, and absolutely wonderful music (this holds espically true when you visit a pirate village, where the background music is ripe with “yo hos” – very fun.) In the game you play Nicholas Sharp, a pirate captain that you can take ashore to buy goods and chat with the locals, or take aboard your ship to pillage and plunder. Best of all, whenever you give a command you hear a piratey voice say things like “Full sails, aye captain” or “Cannons loaded, captain.”

A fine, fine game, but it does have about three real sticking points. First, it’s buggy as hell. But this is easily fixed with a patch available at the official website. The second point is that there seem to be multiple missions and plotlines interwoven, and it’s tricky to tell what you’re supposed to do when in order to keep the story moving along. And the third is that the game starts you off in a weak little boat making it almost impossible to survive. But when you do finally climb up the ladder to bigger and better ships, it almost becomes too easy.

A beautiful but flawed game.