Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9612 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Atari
• Released on: 2006-09-08
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description
Age of Pirates Caribbean Tales is a naval game devoted to pirate adventures on the Caribbean seas of the 17th century. It models all the details of the pirate life and misses nearly no part of a swashbuckler's sword swinging adventures.

Taking the role of reckless fortune-hunter Blaze or redheaded daredevil Beatrice the player will navigate his sailor through the Caribbean, trade multiple goods, plunder merchant convoys, accomplish quests, build up his fleet, and capture and rule colonies.

Following his lucky star he lives a life of high adventure, full of naval battles, bloody fights and treasure hunts.

Customer Reviews

Are you prepared to be boarded by bugs?
I've been waiting a while for this game to be released, and I was very happy to finally see it hit my doormat one Monday morning!

The problems started after I had finished the installer. There is nothing on the disk casing saying this, but you have to install some `apparently dubious` anti-cd software called StarForce. Not being one to install anything I didn't know about without checking, I did some research on the internet. There have been many horror-stories posted about this particular copy-protection system on your pc - everything from complete windows disaster's to cdrom's being disabled. There is not an un-install option either, you have to manually remove the files as specified on many web-sites to properly remove this once for all. Other people have had reports of this locking out their cd-rom and cd-writer drives..

I decided to run this installer on a seperate PC I have lying about for testing - so not an issue to me. It installed fine, but then when starting up the game I started seeing numerous bugs and random crashes. Let me clarify this, continuous crashes! There are many reports on the playlogic forum about the instability of this game, and you have to believe me it is not very good. For instance, the game ships with multiplayer support, but this is broken. You have to install a utility written by someone else to actually get any multiplayer action - and then it's still buggy. Crossfire cards are not supported (it doesn't say this on the packaging, but you get corrupted displays when this is enabled). Perhaps the worst bit is the random `engine.exe` crashes - they are not too frequent at the start (only 1 per hour), but as you progress in the game they become more frequent - I was up to 7 in one hour at one point..

All this for a game that they promise they will release a patch for `really soon`. This in my opinion is not good enough - they should have never released this buggy software to begin with.

To sum it up? looks like a super-model, goes like a skip. I'd wait 3-4 month's until the patches are out, or give it a miss and spend your hard-earned cash elsewhere.

Not bad but not that good.
Pirates of the Caribbean Caribbean Tale is a great role playing game set during the age of gun powder and sword play. The game itself is great fun and has many hours of game play, all the ships, guns, swords, cannons, ship hulls etc are fun to play around with and definitely have more choice than in previous games, Sea Dogs and Pirates of the Caribbean 1. The graphics are also excellent, particularly at sea and looking at other ships. Certain issues in the original games have been dealt with to an extent.
Unfortunately just when you begin to get gripped on this game you will probably find yourself facing your desktop with crashes occuring most hours. This can get extremely annoying and during long voyages the last thing you want to see is your game data slipping away as the game shuts down. Another issue I found with the game was that there seemed to be very little story line, you can get a mission from virtually anyone on the street but Im not sure if the storyline itself had finished on my own game, I certainly wasnt sure where to go next a lot of the time. Frustration is the word.
To summarise, if you are an experienced veteren from the Sea Dogs, Pirates of the caribbean... games, this game is worth buying despite the problems. However if you are new it will probably be one worth looking over as you will find yourself disappointed.

Pirates defeated by anti-pirate Starforce.
What can I say?

I run off vista, so I expected to encounter a few problems along the way. But I atleast expected encounter them after I booted up the game.

Now first you must understand im not putting down the game itself, primarily because I havn't actually had the chance to play it.

Now i've encounted Starforce before on X3 but I managed to work with it and get the game to work, but this time was just a terrible drama that left my computer completly unoperable for a good hour or so.

I installed the game successfully and went though all the usuals as you do, including restarting the computer after installation. Now for a start when you put the CD into the CD-drive with the game installed it doesn't, as one would naturally expect, cause the game to boot up, or a menu to lead you to this. It just instantly starts up the uninstall setup. Which is probably a good thing as your going to be using it.

When I went to run it using the shortcut on my desktop it came up with a message starforce must add files to your computer to allow this game to run. So I clicked o.k and then it said I had to be computer administrator to run this.. Considering I have the only account on my computer this was an annoyance in itself, fortunatly with a quick rightclick on the shortcut I was able to run game as admin, which one doesn't usually have to do, but with a very 'cant wait to get on this game' attitude. I was willing to look past this minor annoyance.. But as you'll notice, as I go on, these minor annoyances add up.

Well. I finally get past the admin block and it scans my computer, gives me a text file very similar to a 'DXdiag' file and installs, no. Weaves its way into my machine. Then presented with a non suspicious and highly common, please reboot your machine for these effects to take place I did as it requested and did so. My mistake..

It broke.. It would not boot fully and trapped me in a loop of there is a problem with this system32 driver and there was an error with your last start up. I managed to work my way though this, by going into the advanced options and allowing the odd files to run. Ofcoarse I switched off my wireless first as I suspected this might create an easily accessible back door into my computer.

Well, now logged on with the drivers supposidly running correctly I attempt to boot up the game. I put the disk in, prompting a, yes, you guessed it, uninstall setup. Well I quickly exited that and went to start the game via shortcut. When which familar name should pop up? Yep. You got it again. Starforce. Telling me to run it as admin. (didn't I tell you all these little annoyances add up?) Well I did, and getting quite frustrated now by the lengthy install waited for the game to run as it should.

Then ofcoarse a starforce error message! Similar to a DXdiag file with a huge 10000 word, string of lines added on, depicting what the error was about, but using such terms and coding that only the game designer would reconise.

Needless to say, the solution was clear. Open CD drive.. Close CD drive and smile politly at the uninstall setup that pops up on my screen and do exactly as it said. As a good little game it installed and prompted me with another reccommended reboot. So ofcoarse I did. yes another, bad mistake..

Even with the program that starforce was protecting gone it had still firmly imbedded its files deep within the core of system32. I had to bypass this issue again, as I had the first time, using the advanced menu and logged back in.

I followed this up by manually deleting all files associated with Starforce from my system32.

Ever played F.E.A.R? The game with that horrendous little girl whos only task in life is to scare the living bunny out of you? Well I tell you now.. Knowing how important system32 is to the running of your computer, there is nothing scarier than deleting files from it, not knowing if you have the right ones. Luckily for me, possibly not for others, I got the right files.

To stop accusations of, oh, maybe your computer cant run games that good or, oh, maybe your computer cant run games that bad. Im very broad minded at gaming and my PC manages to play both Starwars, rouge squadron and Crysis. Both practically at the other end of the graphics scale to each other as far as installation games go.

Unless you have a computer personally designed for you from N.A.S.A I think that buying this game is just throwing your well earned money away.

In short. Just dont bother.