Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales (PC) – Pirates are certainly hot right now and this spiritual successor to the Sea Dogs games should help continue that trend. You start out as a scurvy pirate and must work your way up to controlling all of the islands in the Caribbean. You do this by earning money by plunder, trade, and swashbuckling your way through the merchants and militaries in the area. The game looks great with some of the best water effects I’ve seen in a game which is important given that a good chunk of the game takes place in the ocean.
As captain you are responsible for managing the crew of your ship and eventually your fleet with each person having specific responsibilities on your ship. There’s also an RPG element so your character will grow with you as you progress through the game. This is important as you’ll need the extra skills to capture the big ships you’ll need to capture the various islands as you’re not only responsible for taking down other ships with cannons but boarding the ship and fighting it out with the crew and captain as well.
Arthur and the Invisibles (PS2,PC, PSP,DS,GBA,DS) – Movie tie-in games, you usually can’t live with them and you never want to pass up the opportunity to make a little extra cash. Well, maybe that’s just the jaded side of me but this game based on the upcoming Luc Besson movie actually does look to be one of the games that might actually do pretty well. The game is being developed in conjunction with the movie and will ship with the movies release in January of next year. You will control Arthur and two of his friends as they try and save Arthur’s house and Minimoy’s habitat. Each character you control has different abilities and you’ll need to switch back and forth between the three of them in order to get through the game. This is especially true when you fight the boss monsters in the game. The game does feature a few of the God of War style button press puzzles where you have to hit the buttons in a certain sequence to complete a puzzle (although you won’t be decapitating anything or ripping the eyes out of any of the monsters). I got a chance to see the PS2 version and they are really pushing the capability of the machine. While I don’t think older gamers will get a kick out of it I do think younger gamers will be eating it up by the spoonful.
For me, one of the biggest things at Atari spotlight was something that they hinted at but didn’t give any real information on and that was that they are looking to start releasing old Atari games on Xbox Live Arcade. I tried to get a few specific titles out of the Atari execs but all they said was that everything in the Atari library from the 2600 to the Jaguar was on the table and that we could expect to see the first games by this year’s holiday season. Atari will be selling the games individually so don’t plan on seeing any kind of package deal on Xbox Live Arcade. I just hope Atari prices them right because multiplayer combat over Xbox Live Arcade sounds really cool but paying more than $5 for that experience isn’t.
You may have noticed that I left out Atari’s upcoming Test Drive Unlimited from the list and that’s because I’ll be putting up a full preview later on this week. To keep it short I really dug the game and I think Atari could have a big hit on their hands if people “get” the game. This really isn’t a hardcore racing game but much more of a mellow race around the island and do challenges kind of thing. Check back later this week for more details.
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