Cutthroats: Terror on the High Seas

Cutthroats: Terror on the High Seas puts you aboard ships where peaceful retirement is apparently not part of the career plan. The game mixes naval action, exploration, and the dangerous atmosphere of life among pirates and other unpleasant people with swords. Its setting gives it plenty of personality, while the gameplay asks you to think about survival as much as simply attacking everything that floats. Battles can be tense, particularly when positioning and timing matter more than brute force. There is also a pleasing sense of adventure in moving between locations and dealing with the unpredictable dangers of the sea. The presentation is unmistakably from the late 1990s, but the pirate theme remains effective because it taps into that eternal fantasy of sailing away from civilization and becoming extremely inconvenient to everyone you meet. Just remember that piracy is considerably less glamorous when someone else has the cannons.