Pirates of the Caribbean Online

The pirate genre is one that seemed to go from sparse to bountiful rather quickly. Years ago there were not that many games that dealt with the time period and then, of late, quite a number have entered the scene – including a couple that sailed into massively multiplayer online seas.
Pirates of the Caribbean Online is an offering from Disney that works off the movie license, dropping in some of the familiar screen characters, like Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swan, while trying to make the experience in the game world uniquely the player’s story.
It begins with a prison break and much of what you do in the early going seems to be carefully orchestrated. But don’t think of this in the same frame as that other pirate MMO, Pirates of the Burning Sea. Disney’s entry is a kid-friendly, family-friendly offering that is intuitive, easy on computer specs and it does not require much in the way of deep thought or character planning.
You do get to create a character and while the options are hardly robust, you can create a character that fits in nicely to the open world. The game does touch on some of the films' moments, including the enemies, but everything has been reduced to a low common denominator. For example, combat is merely a matter of clicking away. But the clicking with the mouse is not without reason. In fact, it is a timed attack and if you hit the timing just right, you will be able to chain together attacks for bigger damage.
As you fight, you gain experience and that leads to more Notoriety (which translates into allowing the player to ‘buy’ new skills) and more skills. However, the game does come in two flavors – the free to download and play taste, and then the one where you play a small monthly subscription and get to experience all that the world has to offer. The free-to-play version will be fine, but you will find yourself handcuffed if you try to scale up your character to truly compete down the road.
The “play for free” option comes with some distractions, like the ads that ring your game window, a lower priority for server access and a level cap. If you pay $9.95 a month, though, you can get rid of the ads, lift the level cap and enjoy all the game has to offer. As a business model, it seems to be a case of tantalizing the player with a bit of a taste of the game and then requiring them to pay if they want the full course.
As for the quest system, the game has the fetch variety and the ones where you have to fight and defeat so many mobs of this or that variety (from garrison soldiers, to skeletons to crabs). There is also ship combat and that can be entertaining. Because the game is played online, players can put together crews with a captain to navigate and fire the general cannons while individual players, as part of the crew, can aim and fire individual cannons. This can be very entertaining, and add a challenge to the game’s general mechanics.
Visit a tavern and you can gamble your coins in games of poker or blackjack. The game really does have a lot to offer and for the most part, this is a game that rewards players with a lack of a serious death penalty and an MMO experience that could only be considers on the late side.
The game also has PvP, but this is purely consensual and, again, there is no real penalty for being defeated. In this regard, Pirates of the Caribbean Online seems to understand its target audience and cater to them.
The game does have a few failings and they fall in line with the multiplayer aspect. In order to put together a crew, you have to visually be near one another in the game. You can’t just warp into a location and crew up. Also, while the graphics are serviceable, they are hardly cutting edge; this, though, falls in line with the fact that this is a game that will work well on lower-end systems.
Pirates of the Caribbean Online is a lighthearted affair that is for families. As such it is very kid friendly and does an adequate job of portraying the world of Jack Sparrow in a manner that should bring a smile to the face of those who truly enjoy the game. However, don’t expect the “free to play” idea to do much more than lure you to pay to play. If you want to enjoy all this game has to offer, it will cost you.

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

Enemy Territory is a free multiplayer FPS set during WWII. It was originally planned to be released as a commercial expansion pack to the popular FPS Return to Castle Wolfenstein and later as a standalone game. However, due to problems with the single-player aspect, the multiplayer portion was released on May 29, 2003 as a freeware standalone game. In early 2004 the source code for the game logic (not the game engine) was released to the benefit of its modding community. The game uses a modified RTCW engine, itself being a modified Quake III: Team Arena engine (which has been open-source since 2005).
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is an online multi-player game, where the players interact with each other over a network in two teams (Allies and Axis) to defend or destroy mission objectives. The game is playable over the Internet or a Local Area Network. Like many online games, cheating and exploit communities exist. To counter this, the game has support for PunkBuster, an anti-cheat solution.
There are six officially released maps (North Africa Campaign: Gold Rush, Siwa Oasis, and Seawall Battery; Europe Campaign: Rail Gun, Wurzburg Radar, and Fuel Dump), as well as hundreds of custom maps made by the internet community. On each map, the offense needs to complete a certain set of objectives within a limited amount of time. The defense needs to keep the offense from completing objectives until time runs out. Some objectives may be optional, and some objectives can be carried out by either team. These minor objectives assist the team completing them. Depending on Game Mode the action will continue on another map (Campaign Mode) or the same map (Objective Mode, Stopwatch Mode, Last Man Standing).
In all but the LMS mode, dead players respawn all at the same time, every X seconds. In the default maps - assuming that the server settings aren't changing it - Allies spawn every 20 seconds and the Axis every 30 seconds, the only exception being Rail Gun where both have a 20 second spawn. With default settings, you can see the spawn timer in the right side of the screen. Experienced players should watch the timer all the time - dying to a 1 second spawn practically means losing your position (and a life, if the server has the rarely used Limited Lives feature enabled) and resetting your health and ammo, while a 30 second spawn can be deadly if there are only a few players. A good tactic is to find out the spawn time of your enemy, for example looking at the mission timer, and time your attacks so that every dead opponent will have to wait a full time spawn.