Buccaneer: The Pursuit of Infamy

Has some fun potential, but total inability to aim make it an exercise in frustration

User Rating: 4.5 | Buccaneer: The Pursuit of Infamy PC

By deaconmon | Review Date: April 9, 2009

After playing the demo for about an hour, Buccaneer Pursuit of Infamy has a simple concept, and in general premise is a fun little game. Take your pirate ship and blow up other pirate ships and stuff. You sail around in what basically steers like a poorly controlled car - wind speed and direction has no effect what-so-ever, otherwise, the game makes no attempts at realism. That is, in effect, what makes the game fun - the simple concept.
Upgrade your ship to make it faster or stronger, loot, buy a better or different ship, loot, upgrade your ship, etc.
Missions are simple and an effective distraction, except...

Shooting is effectively random. You never know where your shots are going, you can't aim - but your enemy can. It is very frustrating to be next to an enemy ship, and fire a volley which leavs your ship at a 20% forward angle completely sails in front of the enemy ship - his volley, however, all strikes home. So you turn into him a little bit, and fire again, to have your entire volley leave your ship at a backwards angle of 20% so it completely sails behind the enemy ship, while his volley again, strikes home.
This is even worse when facing a land target - stop your ship in a single place and fire - all shots go the right, then fire, all shots go to the left - but I have not moved at all. Meanwhile, the enemy appears incapable of missing...
All in all the single player version is more than anything, an exercise in frustration since you can have absolutely no confidence in where your shots are going.

I have not played multiplayer, but I would assume that multiplayer would be more fun, since you are not playing the computer and all users have the same handicap - though personally, I would also find that frustrating to know that at least 30% of how I do in any given battle is just pure luck on where my cannonballs happened to have landed...