By Jim Rossignol on June 30th, 2009 at 9:28 am.
Sadly nothing to do with the classic Captain Blood, and everything to do with classic novel Captain Blood. It’s a hack ‘n’ slash adventure game from the developers of Sea Dogs, complete with pirates getting stabbed, cannons getting primed, and bosses getting – wuh-oh – quicktime event’d. I played this a bit in Moscow last year and it was actually pretty fun – especially the arcade boat violence between speedy galleons – but I’m not exactly holding out for a masterpiece. Go take a look at the dev walkthroughs below, and you can judge for yourself.
I could have sworn I heard about that years ago, and then nothing since. Not so sure about the boss battle, but otherwise it looks like it could be fun.
Don’t have sound here, so I don’t know if it’s answered in the videos: does it have (random) loot?
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Someone really liked God of War.
Still looks pretty good, though.
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@Lou
He says you can loot ships, but doesn’t go into detail. I skipped through it, though, so I may have missed some parts.
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Damn you quick time bosses…damn you.
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Who needs to copy God of War when you can do well by copying from within the genre? Pirates! had a great swordplay minigame.
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It’s been over a decade, but I’m still holding out for a successor to Sea Legends.
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Pirate OF WAR!!!
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Somebody should make an episodic game series of everything Errol Flynn has been in.
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Refreshingly up-front about QTE’s (spit) and cut-scenes for plot advancement… almost as if they were nothing to be ashamed of…
Seems entirely console-based really.
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It looks like a low-budget version of God of War without the sense of impact or fluidity of movement. It looks rather flawed, but these flaws are not actually because it’s a multiplatform game. Merely that it doesn’t look to be very good.
Anyone remember X-Blades?
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Actually, to be honest, it looked like quite a good clone to me. My problem is that it looks like they took not just ideas, but also scenes from it, which is a bit grating.
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@Okami:
God of PIRATES!
If I got that right, the QTEs mean you only see the maneuver rather than playing it out. How interesting. A pirate game where the most dashing pirate fights are pavlovian. Pirates! did this better without forcing that whole THERE IS NO TIME TO AARR PRESS YOUR “X” stuff.
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@Okami:
God of PIRATES!
If I got that right, the QTEs mean you only see the maneuver rather than playing it out. How interesting. A pirate game where the most dashing pirate fights are pavlovian. Pirates! did this better without forcing that whole THERE IS NO TIME TO AARR PRESS YOUR “X” stuff.
Sorry… forgot to say great post – can’t wait to read your next one!
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Bleh, quick time events. They’re just like cut-scenes: always have some uber-cool action sequences that you only wish you could actually do in-game (see Devil May Cry series).
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Does anyone like QTEs??? I don’t understand how they can continue to exist when they are so universally loathed.
For some reason that makes me think of my Wii. Nintendo makes a lot of games with big boss battles that could depend on QTEs, but they almost never do. You do have the occasional “you must shake your wii-mote like a retard now” moments. Bad designers might use QTEs to allow less skilled players do something kewl, but Nintendo realized it is more fun to actually have the player do the fun action bits themselves, even if it might be kinda’ hard.
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@Clovus: The God of War games do QTEs incredibly well and I really think that the games would be worse without them. But I can’t think of any other game where I’ve ever liked them.
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Aww, you mentioned the classic Captain Blood game – one of my all-time favourites. Thank god that delectable weirdness is back in style in the form of Zeno Clash and others.
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Looks like good fun. I like the way the enemies shower coins and what not when you kill them. Something about that makes me feel rather warm and nostalgic.
As for the God of War comparisons, personally I think it looks nothing like. Unless you’re refereing to the QTE boss fight. But those things are so common now in the hack slash genre that the GOW comparison is rather akin to calling all FPS’s Doom clones.
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Cool, one character is strong but slower and the other is fast but weaker!
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“Sadly nothing to do with the classic Captain Blood, and everything to do with classic novel Captain Blood.”
It actually has barely anything to do with the Sabatini novel either, which is a shame and possibly also a crime. How hard would it have been for them to come up with their own piratey setting? There’s no need to abuse a delightful book.
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The “swordfighting” looks incredibly boring, as does the game itself. Hey developers! How about taking a leap of faith and trying something original for change? Another juicy pirate theme ruined by idiotic game design.
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I love the Captain Blood videogame (the classic one), and I love also the movie ( the black and white classic ).
This game sould have use a different game, since Captain Blood is a classic. Using his name is somewhat like ignoring the old title, and that is a tasteless thing to do. I applaud the blog for remenbering Captain Blood.
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Rather than GOW, isn’t this just Conan, minus Ron Pearlman, respect for the source material and the sublimely joyful, hacking two arms off simultaneously special combo.
The habour location and upgrade screen in particular look almost identical.
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@Chaz
The coins shower is one of the things that I think comes from God of War and not from the games of old, like you think.
It wasn’t the QTE thing that made me think of GoW. It was mainly how some scenes were set up, especially the last third of the first film (from the door pounding on). Also, the combat system.
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By the way, did anyone else find kinda silly, that the captain had to shoot all the cannons himself? I’d imagine the captain would bark orders to his crew to get things done. Or maybe he was one of those “do-it-yourself” guys…
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Looks fantastically boring. I feel sorry to say so. It’s so subdued.. There’s little if any chaos. No “wildness” heh. Pirates===wildness.
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QTEs :\? die plz
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@marilena
Oh enemies dropping coins is as old as the hills in the world of video games. What it reminded me of in that video was the old Bitmap Bro’s classic The Chaos Engine.
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enemy sheeps
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