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Pirates of the Black Cove

Officerpuppy said:
Out of curiosity, will the game have some modability? Nothing fancy, just stuff like perhaps swapping sound effects or some textures?
Click to expand...

Sort of. The game has a function where you can pimp out your ship's appearance. Doesn't go deeper than that, though -- there's no full fledged editor included or anything like that for advanced customizing, sorry.
 
The day is upon us, brethren! Pirates of Black Cove will be released tomorrow! That means today is the last day you can preorder Pirates of Black Cove, and you should indeed do so, for you will get a free copy of Woody Two-Legs: Attack of the Zombie Pirates as a bonus gift! PoBC has a price tag of $20 - getting two pirate games at that amount is almost a crime.

This offer is available at GamersGate, Direct2Drive, GameTap and GamesPlanet.

Hoist the Jolly Roger and let the colors fly proud, yarr!
 
Yarr!

Our baby has set sail and is out to conquer the world! But how will our dread of the seven seas fare? We'll let this collection of reviews of Pirates of Black Cove speak for themselves.

Gamers@Home calls dibs on the first review of Pirates of Black Cove, giving our lovingly crafted action RTS/RPG adventure a score of 8/10!
”Filled with pirate battles and cheesy jokes in bottles that will never fail to make you giggle, this game is a real treat for the eyes and ears of a trainee pirate.”
Full review here.


Elder Geek says:
"Pirates of Black Cove is beautiful. It controls well. It has a great concept and fun gameplay mechanics. For anyone who wants a slower-paced, but well made game about pirates, then Black Cove is your answer.”
Elder Geek's review is in both text and video format.
 
Thanks mate, front page news! I am off to go do some pillaging!!
smileyviking.gif
 
Akella Fan said:
Has IGN reviewed the game? Will they?
Click to expand...

IGN hasn't reviewed Pirates of Black Cove yet, but that doesn't mean that they won't. I'll keep monitoring the situation, believe me :)

In the meantime, here's couple of other reviews:

Strategy Informer gives PoBC 7.5/10!
"Pirates of Black Cove is a very endearing game. Its playful nature, its colourful vision of a pirate-infested Caribbean, and it’s knowingly terrible jokes make it an inoffensive and pleasantly innocent experience."

GameBanshee recognizes a good thing:
”It's got a good sense of style, it's visually attractive, its mechanics and gameplay are solid and varied, the RPG elements are enough to give a little bit of flavour to the proceedings, it's got enjoyable and arcade-y naval combat, and the sense of wit in the writing is fun”
 
Five more reviews surface!

GameFront graces us with a 7/10 score: ”If there’s two things that Pirates of Black Cove can be relied on to provide, its the small, clever touches, and cheesy, broad Pirate humor. ”

BeefJack.com found us worthy of a 7/10 score: ” Nitro Games took up the reigns and churned out what can only be called a delightful little game.”

Lameazoid.com delivers no scores so the words can speak for themselves: ”Pretty fun and pretty complex in a good but not too complicated way.”

GameSpot didn't like our vision of carefree piracy, giving PoBC 3.5/10: "Pirates of Black Cove is full of character. It's just not full of fun."

Digitally Downloaded bestows upon us a score of 3.5/5: " Light and breezy experience, elevated to be genuinely entertaining thanks to the genuine sense of humour."
 
I have been waiting on posting on this for a couple of reasons, the download wasn't stable and Nitro was working on a second patch. Pirates of Black Cove patch 1.01 is now out, and it looks like WorthPlaying has a stable download link HERE!

Version 1.0.1

Release day patch
1001 jokes
Updated world visuals
Unit radar indicators
Slow ships are a bit faster
Tutorials can be accessed via ingame menu
Fixes & tweaks all around, more stability

Known issues:

Water isn't visible if AA is forced on from graphics drivers. (Quick fix: Set Anti-Aliasing to "application controlled" setting instead of forcing it on from ATI/NVidia settings)
Disband may cause a crash
Monkey cannon won't start shooting in some situations
El Torro mission stutters
Collision issues with destroyable buildings
Unit movement difficult on bridges
Cannon towers won't fire player units sometimes

So prepare for the 16th century, the golden era of pirates! This is your chance to conquer the Caribbean, because the Pirates of Black Cove challenge you to roam the open world with your pirate crew. Notoriety and pirate fame brings you closer to your goal to be the King of All Pirates.

Getting promotions within the pirate brotherhood requires force, daring, guile and even deceit. But be careful, because other pirates will be competing for promotions too. However, bribery, favors and outright assassinations will ensure that you climb the ranks faster. Join infamous pirate strongholds like Port Royal and Tortuga. As you are promoted to higher ranks, you will own, manage and develop parts of the stronghold and entice other captains to join your fleet.

Join, champion, and unite the three pirate factions; Pirates, Corsairs and Buccaneers. Unite the three Pirate factions to gain access to their hero units and ultimately take down the Pirates of Black Cove and become King of all Pirates. Do you have what it takes or are you a weak land lubber?

Key Features:

Roam the open World with your Pirate crew and pick up missions as you sail the seas.
Notoriety and fame brings you closer to your ultimate goal: to be the King of All Pirates
Battle it out with the forces of Black Cove and other colonial nations on both land and sea
Gather infamous pirates to your crew, but be sure to keep them happy or they’ll side with your rivals
Select your character from several different Pirate Captains, each with their own unique skills and features
Varied units and weapons allows You to carry out the battles as You see fit
Click to expand...

Original post HERE! Or thanks to Seigman on the Paradox forums, you can download a torrent file for the patch HERE!

The second patch is also out now, but you must have the first patch installed as well.

Version 1.0.2 (Patch 2) 5.8.2011

NOTE: This version requires that Patch 1 (1.0.1) is already installed.

Breakers:
- Game now starts even if selected resolution is bad
- Fixed crash after having opened Pimp the Ship window
- Fixed bug causing jam on loading screen in some situations
- Fixed crash on strongholds after disbanding unit
- Fixed crash at finale mission
- Fixes to ship capture
- Fix to dublicate ships
- Fix on alt causing crash in some situations

Features:
- Timed accept window on resolution change
- Numpad layout for left handed (configurable keymapping coming soon)
- Achievements (Steam)

Missions:
- Chiefs chowder fix
- Voodoo priestess tracking fix
- El Torro stutter fix
- Dog Skull island black cove ship can't be captured
- Corsair FM6 fix
- Fixes to capture missions after loading game
- Storyline mission starts right after last faction mission
- Buccaneer Storyline 4: Fix if the once captureable black cove ship was captured and has disappeared without dying
- Mission fixes: Buccaneer FM3, Corsair FM4 and FM6

Misc:
- Fixed health bars
- Ambient Occlusion off by default
- Fixed hero tooltips
- Fixed crazy cannoneer label not fitting in alt-view
- Exclamation marks on action menu now work as they should
- Removed lag from pressing alt on land
- Balanced stinkbombers
- Player can access unit buildings with his faction hero's too
- Fixed replenish cost
- Player ship info fix
- Shipyard fixes

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Known issues:

- Water isn't visible if AA is forced on from graphics drivers.
(Quick fix: Set Anti-Aliasing to "application controlled" setting instead of forcing it on from ATI/NVidia settings)
- Collision issues with destroyable buildings
- Unit movement difficult on bridges
- Cannon towers won't fire player units sometimes
- Siren level gates can't be destroyed with mortar
- Player should be able to remap keys
Click to expand...

You can get 1.02 from Megaupload HERE, or you can download a torrent file for it HERE!

I must say, this is a pretty unprofessional way of releasing game patches, and it doesn't reflect good at all on Nitro or Paradox. We are not a game company, yet we are at least capable of hosting our own files on our own FTP! From what I have read over on the Paradox forums, Steam users have really been hosed with this one. I wanted to at least get this info out there so more people can see it if they are not aware of it. Part of me is ashamed for ever even recommending this game.
 
Wow, this is not a good start. A 900 meg patch....are we replacing the entire game with it?

Bad reviews and a shamozzel of a patching system.

As a steam user myself the idea now of waiting a couple of weeks for a patch to filter through is. ......
 
I almost used Steam to get this game myself, as it is, I decided to use GamersGate. I should have took your advice Keith and just passed on this one till the real reviews started to come in. :facepalm
 
Thagarr said:
I almost used Steam to get this game myself, as it is, I decided to use GamersGate. I should have took your advice Keith and just passed on this one till the real reviews started to come in. :facepalm
Click to expand...
as I recall . . .

AOP was released with rave reviews

great reviews followed it around like a wet puppy

for - what seemed like forever

took a year and a day for the bad reviews to finally surface

then they were universally BAD

so you may have to wait quite some time for the truth to float to the top
 
Hey guys,

A lot of things to answer (for), in no particular order:

Bad reviews? Really? Because I've been scouring the net for the better part of last week, and a clear majority gives us 6-8 out of 10. So far I've found only two bad reviews: both GameSpot and A.V. Club gave us a negative score (A.V. Club's review is almost annoyingly vague and superficial, but GameSpot's review is a well written piece, read it). Which is not to say there aren't more, I just haven't found them yet.
Since we like to be honest with our players and not just gloss things over, we will collect and display all reviews on our forums, even the negative ones. (The review links in my previous message can attest to that.) Let me know with a PM if you find more negative reviews than those two, ok?

You might wonder why more reviews aren't negative, since Pirates of Black Cove was found to be released in a very buggy state. In general, bugs are a difficult issue for reviewers. Bugs tend to get squashed with patches, or it could be just your computer that's at fault. Getting hung up on the bugs and dropping the score based solely on the bugginess factor will make your review less credible, if not completely outdated, when patches have come out and eradicated the bugs you wrote about. This doesn't mean that the review shouldn't mention that there's plenty of bugs -- he definitely should, but a good review doesn't get hung up on bugs, just like a good review isn't just about graphics, music, effects, UI etc.
Since the core mechanics, gameplay and presentation are not likely to change, that's where reviewers try to keep their focus -- find out what the game is about, what it's like. The reviewers report on that, and for example say that the game is fun when it works, but it badly needs a patch to be the game it deserves to be.


In any case, yeah, I agree: the first week after PoBC was released has been pretty disastrous, mostly due to bugs crashing the game. We have already put out two patches which solve at least some of the problems, including most known CTD issues. And yes, Steam users were left with the shortest straw. Wish I could say more about the subject, but I can't. Let's just say that the situation didn't make us happy, either.


As for the huge size of patches, that can be explained like this:
Let's say that you're writing a 15-page short story. Somebody has pointed out a misspelling in page 2, line 27, and you dutifully edit it to be right. Simple and quick, right? But, when you upload the text on your site, you won't upload a Notepad text file saying "Yeah, there's a misprint there, this is how it should go", but you replace the old file with the new one. It's simpler that way, and a lot less things can go wrong.
The same thing goes to files that get patched. There might be just one number changed in one line in a 300 MB file, but it's easier to replace the whole file than try to find a way to slip that correction into an already existing file. The total size of files getting replaced is, in this case, 900 MBs in the first patch alone.

Huge patches are not uncommon, but one thing is certain: when a patch is huge, it usually addresses a whole lot of issues -- when you want to replace, say, files of 50 MB or less, there's quite a many of those files in a 900 MB set, which means a whole lot of problems just went away. That's also saying that there were a whole lot of problems to begin with, mind you :)
 
Any Pirate game is good game ! :keith

Thanks for a great one ! (if you ignore crash here and there and few bugs, but hey we are used to it) :onya
 
Six more reviews!

Destructoid finds that “the entire game has a certain charm to it”, giving our baby 7/10!
http://www.destructoid.com/review-pirates-of-black-cove-207947.phtml

Gamereactor deemed our laid back epic spectacle worthy of a 8/10: “Mighty entertaining and colorful adventure”
http://www.gamereactor.fi/arviot/81607/Pirates+of+Black+Cove/, in Finnish only


Airborne Gamer's minireview awarded us with a 7.5/10: “This game does something unique for me and it was a pleasure to give it a whirl.”
http://www.airbornegamer.com/2011/08/05/pirates-of-black-cove-review/


PC Advisor thought the experience to be a bit lacking with a 3/5: “Very much onto the right idea, just lacking that critical extra bit of polish.”
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/game/3295518/pirates-of-black-cove-review/


Wargamer judged our naval pulp adventure to be “boring and tiresome with little reward”
http://www.wargamer.com/article/3070/pirates-of-black-cove


AV Club found little to cheer about our game, but instead of simply trouncing PoBC, it was “not actively bad, just remarkably inessential”, giving the game a D+.
http://origin.avclub.com/articles/pirates-of-black-cove,60022/
 
Believe me mate, we know all too well about buggy games, POTC was chalk full of them when it was first released, and we have spent the past 8 years fixing them and adding to the game. I do give you guys credit for actually releasing not only one patch, but two this quickly after release. From what I have read and experienced myself, most of the game stopping bugs were eliminated. My problem is with the way distribution of the patches was handled. I tried downloading the first patch from Gamersgate and like most of the other people I saw posting on your forums, it got about halfway through and it died. If it wasn't for the resourceful thinking of a couple of your forum members by providing alternate methods of acquiring the patches, I am not sure that I would currently have either one of them!

I find it amusing that a game developer has to rely on having it's own game patches distributed by torrents just to be able to get them out to their customers. There is not one mention of the patches on the games official web page, Nitro's page, Paradox's main page, Paradox's news page or their support page. I understand that things with digital distribution are a bit different than it used to be with only having a CD or floppy, but all the patches and updates we have released over the years have been hosted on our own server first. There have been times when we have pushed our servers capability's, but we have always tried to have other mirrors to download them from as well.
 
Thagarr said:
I find it amusing that a game developer has to rely on having it's own game patches distributed by torrents just to be able to get them out to their customers. There is not one mention of the patches on the games official web page, Nitro's page, Paradox's main page, Paradox's news page or their support page. I understand that things with digital distribution are a bit different than it used to be with only having a CD or floppy, but all the patches and updates we have released over the years have been hosted on our own server first. There have been times when we have pushed our servers capability's, but we have always tried to have other mirrors to download them from as well.
Click to expand...

On this, I readily concur.
I mailed my superiors about these grievances (which, I think, are entirely valid) -- hopefully the flow of information gets fixed. I also asked if we could get the patches up on the sites proper, as well as delivering the files to mirror sites, e.g. Patches Scrolls.

What's next on the list? ;)
 
@Nitro Games CM, thanks for the heads up! You deserv your username. Has anyone noticed how Gamespot reviews nowadays? I think they like to critic games only so for amusament. Heck, I'll buy this!
 
More reviews!


The Examiner found the pirate life to be especially alluring: ”undeniably very fun, frequently amusing, and even a little addictive”
http://www.examiner.com/pc-game-in-national/pirates-of-black-cove-review


Ironhammers had difficulties grasping the amoral lifestyle of greedy pirates, but in the end, they had to concede that Pirates of Black Cove is ”as savage and sincere as such a game could be”, giving the game a 3/5 (almost 4/5, if not for the bugs, which are now mostly eradicated, so yeah, by all means read the score as 4/5 :) )
http://ironhammers.org/?p=6661


AusGamers loved the tone of the game and ship-to-ship combat, but detested every land battle, ending up with a 6/10 score.
http://www.ausgamers.com/games/pirates-of-black-cove/review/


Front Towards Gamer found that PoBC ”betrays its kooky character with mind-numbing action” and swings a 4.5/10 score at us.
http://fronttowardsgamer.com/2011/08/10/ftg-review-pirates-of-black-cove/


GameTrailers hits us with a reviewpod, finding the experience worthy of a 5/10: tedious land battles, but ”it's got a certain charm”
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/review-pod-pirates-of/718793


Gamelitist immediately knows where the strength of PoBC is at, with a score of 3/5: ”You don’t come to be stimulated deeply, you come to enjoy the show.”
http://gamelitist.com/2011/08/pirates-of-black-cove/
 
the deluge of reviews belies the fact that required patches are humungous and are not available on the official site

this alone bodes the coming storm


will this be another Akella style time-bomb waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting
(as defined by the reviews for AOP being honey sweet until exactly one day when all the reviewers world wide hit the iceberg)
 
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