Ah,
the open air, the pitching waves, the blasting cannons … a pirate’s life for
me! Who wouldn’t want to cruise around the seas, raiding ports, harassing ships,
and being a general nuisance to those wimpy landlubbers? Strangely, though, the
gaming world is a bit lacking in pirate games. Yes, there was Sid Meier’s classic
Pirates, along with a handful of other high-seas games ranging from fun
to plank-worthy. However, for every one of those, there’s about a bazillion games
featuring rival factions who want to take over the post-apocalyptic world. Me,
I’ll choose pirating any day. And Hothouse’s Cutthroats is certainly not
a bad choice.

Cutthroats covers just about every aspect of pirating,
from cannon battles on the high seas to division of the plunder. It does these
things very well, too. You start off with a tiny ship and some capable men. The
object is to make as much money and gain as much fame as you can until you’re
captured, killed, or retire the easy way. Now the question arises, “What
does this have to do with adventuring?” Well to be honest, nothing, in the
traditional sense. There really aren’t any characters or plots to speak of. Governors
of towns will give you small quests once you gain their favor, though these are
pretty random and unconnected. Which countries are at war and how you act towards
those countries’ ports and ships will have an impact on how they act towards you.
Still, the game is completely open-ended. Not to say there’s no adventuring, of
course. I’d certainly call roaming around the Caribbean, picking fights, and threatening
citizens adventure. However, the lack of a story and other adventure-ish features
make you seem a bit withdrawn from the game. Plus, the open-endedness of the game
will often leave you asking, “What next?” Then again, that means you
can choose your own destiny, and once you know what you want to do, things go
rather smoothly. Your goal may be to make a fortune from small trading operations,
or to be the biggest, baddest mutha ever to rule the waves. You can be nice and
not threaten anyone, heeding to other ships’ pleas, or heartlessly blow away any
ship that crosses your path, and kill all its crew while you’re at it. Your actions
affect future encounters. During all this, you’ve got to keep your crew happy
with lots of rum and the occasional division of the plunder. In this sense, it
is an adventure. The “plot” gets a B.

The
gameplay is a mixed bag. Actually, playing the game is fun. You go around from
port to port, buying and selling goods and picking fights as you like. These fights
can either be battles on the water or land raids. Both types are very detailed.
You’ve got to keep track of ammunition, men, etc. In my opinion, however, the
designers should have skipped the land combat and concentrated more on ship-to-ship
fighting. The sea battles are extremely fun, and with lots of ships around they
can grow very hectic. I do wish there was a better way to control all your ships,
either with better AI control or some kind of split-screen. Interface aside, these
fights are tactically challenging and rewarding. You can choose to relentlessly
sink the enemy ships or send your marines over to take over the ship and press
its crew. Taking advantages of a boat’s strengths and weaknesses is important;
those huge galleons might outrun you downwind, but they’ll never beat a quick
little sloop in an upwind turning contest. Port raiding, on the other hand, seems
a bit tacked on. It’s more of a “select all your troops and click on what
you want them to kill” affair and seems out of place in the game. Sure, real
pirates performed land raids, but only the ones who could afford to. Most stuck
to fighting other ships, and that’s what I did in the game.

Of
course, you don’t have to fight your way to the top. There is a wealth of ports
in the Caribbean willing to pay a pretty penny for the goods you’ve accumulated
somehow or another. The easiest way to get these is to take them yourself from
a ship, but you can also use your economic genius to buy low and sell high. Goods
have different rates at different ports, and if you trade with the right ones,
you can make out pretty well. In fact, with patience, it’s possible to accumulate
a small fortune without ever firing a single shot.

While the interface is
a little quirky and some parts aren’t as great as others, the gameplay is still
very fun and gets a B+.

As for graphics and sound, they’re pretty much
average. The boats look pretty plain, not bad, but not great either. The battlefields
are a bit better, with rolling hills and bustling cities. They do look kind of
boring still, and there’s not much variety. However, the graphics aren’t too important
in a game like this; so long as they don’t interfere with everything, they’re
fine.

The same can be said for sound. Your pirate friends tell you what’s
going on with your crew and in ports, but he can get repetitive after a while.
Battle sounds are fun, but not excellent, and still feel a bit repetitive. Like
the graphics, they are pretty average. All together, graphics and sound get
a C.

A
word must be said on performance. My copy would not run until I downloaded the
latest
patch and DirectX 7, and tweaked my graphics acceleration settings (quite
annoying since I have to change them every time I switch games). And I won’t say
anything about the defective disk I got, or the, ah, typo on the box. I wouldn’t
mind these things nearly as much if I didn’t have to pay for support. Not that
I was too disappointed about these things; my experiences with Eidos haven’t been
altogether good …

Despite some problems, this is an excellent pirate
game. While not everything is great, it all comes together to form an extremely
fun and involving adventure on the high seas. Even though there’s not much competition,
Cutthroats simulates pirating as well or better than anything else.

Final
Grade: B+

System Requirements:

Pentium
200 MHz or equivalent (266 MHz recommended)
Windows 95/98
32 MB RAM (64
MB recommended)
DirectX 6.1 (Included on CD)
600 MB uncompressed hard
drive storage (not 250)
8x CD-ROM drive (24x recommended)
2 MB SVGA Graphics
Card 100% DirectX 6.1 compatible
100% DirectX 6.1 compatible sound card

Mouse and keyboard