Cutthroats: Why Home Is Awesome
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
We know that in real life, pirates were on average a rather nasty lot, leading short and desperate lives filled with violence. And life at sea during the so-called Golden Age of Piracy was a perilous proposition at best; nutrition was a disaster, disease often rampant, and ships lost with an alarming frequency to the capricious Atlantic.
So why, then, do we have such a cultural love affair with pirates?
I’m not immune from it, either. I grew up on Errol Flynn movies, including swashbucklers such as Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk and Against All Flags. My favorite anime character is Captain Harlock. My father was a marine with considerable experience at sea, and his father was a merchant marine at the age of thirteen. Being Scandinavian, the ocean is in our blood; and when I was a youth growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, we had a yacht that we regularly took out on excursion. It was…exhilarating.
Perhaps it’s the idea of an autonomous life, free from stifling bureaucracy and mundane sameness. Perhaps it’s the astonishing level of documented democracy aboard many pirate ships. Perhaps it’s as simple as the human desire for adventure — particularly when we live in a world that has been completely explored and settled by humanity, with no frontiers left for the common man to easily explore.
Whatever the reason, the romanticized image we have of piracy is one of those cultural archetypes that seems to have near-universal appeal. You might not know the actual histories of Kidd, Morgan, Lafitte, l’Olonnais, Bonnet or the rest, but you immediately picture the dashing n’er-do-well and his rowdy crew, with stirring music, women in tight corsets, colorful outfits and guns and swords aplenty. Granted, my personal hero from that era is Robert Maynard, but that’s because I tend to be on the law-abiding side of things.
(Lest you think it’s not hip to be square: Maynard not only outsmarted Blackbeard, but killed him in melee combat. Like a boss.)
Now imagine that sort of setting being translated into PlayStation Home.
Home is a very weird animal. Although the beating heart of Home is its social scene, there just frankly aren’t enough people willing to spend all day (and sufficient money) in a virtual-reality chat room, getting to know one another, to justify its existence. What percentage of Home’s userbase is even equipped with keyboards, and then how many of them, if we’re brutally honest, have anything to say that’s worth listening to?
Much has been written about Home’s shift towards becoming more of a gaming platform, but it does make perfect sense. Home exists on a game console, and thus it is populated by gamers. Games are the universal language.
Ah, but here the plot thickens. Home will never rival a top-notch disc-based title; that’s fiscally and technologically impossible. So what sort of gaming experience should Home have?
You could contend that Home needs more games like SodiumOne, Sodium2 and Novus Prime. And I would agree with that assessment: those three games are outstanding experiences within Home. Yet they are consistently outsold by simpler games from Digital Leisure and Mass Media.
So is that the answer, then? Really simple games with the broadest possible appeal?
No.
Home really hasn’t yet had a game that felt like it took advantage of all of Home’s core strengths. A Home game, at its best, is almost certainly a cooperative and competitive freemium multiplayer game with sufficiently compelling graphics, sound design, strategic elements and intuitive action to keep everyone hooked over an extended period of time.
Which is why I’m so excited about Cutthroats: Battle For Black Powder Cove. It nailed the Home formula.
Most importantly: aside from Xi, it’s the first Home game I’ve seen that couldn’t exist outside of Home. Most Home games out there, if they have any moving parts, feel like they could exist independent of Home. The catch with that is that in order to live up to the PR tagline of “making Home itself a game,” you need a gaming experience that only works because it’s in Home.
So let’s start from the beginning. Although you can access the Cutthroats public gaming space directly, I recommend doing so via the newly-unveiled Adventure District. Those of you who remember the initial deployment of the Hub will recall that the Adventure District was mysteriously still off-limits, even though glimpses of it were tantalizingly shown in the official SCEA trailer. It’s now open, and although it’s currently a bit light on attractions, the scenery is just gorgeous. It feels like you’ve been dropped off in an episode of Tales of the Gold Monkey. If you’re not familiar with that reference, then dammit, learn.
(One suggestion to Sony, for what it’s worth: the Hub soundtrack really is incongruous with the setting at the Adventure District bar. Something akin to the background music at Captain Tarquin’s, from nDreams’ Pirate Galleon estate, would be a far better fit.)
Anyway. Onward.
The first thing you notice, upon entering the Cutthroats public space, is the sound of cannonfire. Before you’ve even seen anything, your pulse is racing. It’s some of the best sound design since Central Plaza was bombed by the Helghast during the Killzone 3 promotion. And the background music…yes.
Those of you who read my work know that I’m something of a Joe Straczynski fan. He once said, in defense of Evan Chen’s background music for Crusade, “You don’t always have to hear French horns when a starship flies by.”
It’s one of the few times I’ve ever disagreed with him. Because, frankly, you do need to hear French horns when a big ship goes by. Particularly if we’re talking pirate ships. Then you more or less have to have something akin to an Erich Korngold soundtrack. It’s just one of the rules. Certain things, like the Donald Bellisario formula for good television, are simply sacrosanct and should not be frakked with.
But we’re not here to talk about setting and ambiance. We’re here to talk about piracy. Sometimes you just want to skip the preamble and get to the heaving bosoms and explosions.
Right, then. So, how is the game itself?
It’s brilliant. Stratospherically brilliant.
There’s a lot more at work to this game than you might think. You choose whether to be a gunner or a skipper aboard a four-man pirate galleon. You set off from the dock with a brief interlude of invulnerability, and then you and your ad hoc team are alone against other similarly-crewed ships. There’s a basic quick-command chat system for giving instructions (both for gunners and skippers), and you can damage other ships with cannonfire or by ramming.
Most people in Home are going to go for the quick and easy satisfaction of sailing right up to the other ships and blasting away until they’re sunk themselves, at which point respawning and doing it all over again. It’s easy, quick fun — and thanks to the graphic design, remarkably visceral. It’s a simple enough formula to be a very effective time sink for casual gamers.
That said, for those who want to dig a bit deeper, there’s a lot more to this game.
For starters, there’s a teleportal for your ship near the docks. So if you want to start a round at a random point on the far side of the battle map, this is the nautical equivalent of a castle move in chess. It’s perfect for when you want to flank your enemies or collect random power-ups in the water before diving into the fray.
There are also upgrades you can purchase — different types of cannon shot, for instance — which can really make a difference when you’re in a pitched battle. Keep in mind that while you can repair damaged guns, damage to the ship itself is permanent (although you do recover health if you sink enemy ships or unlock some limited healing abilities), and thus there is a premium on trying to stay alive. More than once I found myself wishing I could careen my ship on a beach and repair it, the way real pirates did.
There’s also some real strategy involved, for those who want to survive for a while. I played the game for a couple of hours today, and at one point, it was just Estim20 and I aboard the HMS HSM (hey, it’s my ship, so shaddap). We were heavily damaged, so I resorted to some actual naval tactics, albeit modified to suit the simpler physics of this game (such as a lack of wind). I’d ram the opposing vessel, then slide to her stern and maneuver in such a way as to stay there, while Estim conducted raking fire. The game unfortunately doesn’t calculate added damage for raking fire, but the tactic itself still works: just like actual naval combat of the era, you’re in your opponent’s blind spot, using maneuverability to win the engagement.
Utilizing this tactic, Estim and I took out three fully-crewed vessels at full strength, in rapid succession. And the game tells you when you hit or sink an enemy vessel. I could practically a dozen voices screaming profanity at me through thousands of miles of coaxial phone cable. We also snuck up on enemy ships which were engaged with each other, firing from long distance and easily taking whichever ship survived the previous encounter, and used enemy ships as shields when entering into point-blank combat against multiple ships.
Of course, we eventually got taken out. And that’s when the game told me: OneCheekyGuy sank my ship.
Cheeky!?
OMGWTFOHHELLNAW.
You die, Cheeky!
And that’s the beauty of this game: it evokes some real, good-natured emotional responses. I tend to be somewhat reserved and introspective. This game had me laughing. It had me roaring. It had me shouting, “IMMA KILL ALL U NOOBZ!!!!!one!!!!!!eleven!!!!!!!!!!!binary!!!”
There’s a scene in Sherlock Hound — the only anime TV series Miyazaki worked on — in which Moriarty is in some steampunk flying bird contraption, and he’s firing a gun at Hound and Watson. “I’m sick and tired of being an intellectual criminal,” he rages, deadpan.
Cutthroats evokes that response in me. It’s a game in which you can get together with your friends, coordinate as a team, and go blow stuff up. And, blessedly, there’s precious little downtime between rounds: once you’re sunk, you and your crew rematerialize on a new ship and start the whole thing over again, without having to cycle through menus and wait for servers and the rest of that garbage. You know how you have to wait in line at Taco Bell to place your order for some nachos and Mountain Dew, then stand around pretending there’s something interesting on your smartphone while you wait to pick up your order? Well, this game is just a steady conveyor belt of nachos and Dew. No interruptions. You can even buy add-ons while you’re playing the game itself. That’s freaking epic.
I had a chance to catch up with John Ardussi, Cutthroats’ game director, to ask him about what it must have been like to conceptualize and then develop such a title.
“The goal was to create a game where lots of people could go out and have fun interacting with lots of people,” Ardussi says. “I thought about a lot of different game types, but being a pirate on a pirate ship seemed like the maximum opportunity for out of control mayhem. Being able to sail a boat around a lake in Home seemed like a lot of fun. Then adding guns and explosions raised the potential fun level to “crazy great.” So I bought a pirate flag, hung it up in my cube and started to work. When we first demoed the game, execs had to shut their office doors because the players themselves were making so much noise while playing. They were having loads of fun even though the game had no collision and no explosions in that early build. Cannonballs just sailed right through ships. Still they were having tons of fun. Watching that, I was sure we made the right choice. We had achieved mayhem.”
There are some legitimately fantastic gaming experiences in Home; what sets this one apart, in my personal opinion, is that this feels like a Home game. It’s the sort of game that Home inherently and instinctively lends itself to. It’s casual for the casual gamer, and it’s quite deep and involved for the more strategic gamer. It’s free to play, with loads of extras and for-purchase upgrades, and it’s a ridiculously fun time sink that you can enjoy with friends and form new friendships from as a result of it.
At the beginning of 2012, I predicted that this year would be remembered in Home as the “Year of the Game.” There are some fantastic gaming experiences on the horizon — Mercia, No Man’s Land, others which haven’t yet been announced — but for now, Cutthroats might just be the best game in PlayStation Home. And I suspect it’s going to be a hit for a long, long time.
Some specifics on the game’s rewards, courtesy of its producer, Charles Babb:
- Multiplayer fun
- Great graphics, sound and music
- Fantastic freemium business formula
- Addictive (and subtly deep) gameplay
- ...There isn't more of it?
March 29th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 27 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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I agree totally on this one Norse, I had a literal blast last night with some of my friends playing this game. I am at level 13 already and loved being the captain as well as the gunner. I hope they continue to upgrade it and add rewards after they have all been won to keep it fresh, but even without this is the best game to hit Home in a long time. It also shows what you can do with Home, and it is obviously more than we thought possible before this came out.
Kudos to John and his team for putting this together and giving it to us! Ahoy ye landlubbers, get on board and play Cutthroats!
By the way loved the video!
OMG! Kudos to the developers this for this one! I was in this one for hours! I am level 15. I had the best time. I was captain on a ship and my crew left me there for so long… I was praying for a mutiny so I could blow something up! lol We were a well oiled machine.
Hooray Cutthroats!
Well needless to say, all of my friends have been playing this game. Everyone is having a blast! You knocked out of the park with this one John! Norse that video was excellent! So there are 31 levels to go through right?
bill u re a traitor,u sink my boat so many times than i can draw a map of the seabed!^^
HEY! Landlubbers,here Cap’tain Sorrow! Rendez-vous at Tortuga’s island,hehe i stole a cargo of rum to those damned English!YIPPPEEEEE!^^
more seriously: great article for a great game!
Thank you all for the kind words. And thanks Norse for one of his superlative articles!
I wanted to make a game that everyone in Home played at least once. It sounds like mission accomplished. Now I have to go shoot some of you out on the high seas! No quarter just because I like you.
deuce: this game totally ROCKS!!! Even lamers like me can play quite easily. I managed to hit petty officer my first time out! That’s a huge accomplishment for a gal that can’t even finish Spyro!
I found myself wanting to throw my other pirates overboard so I could take over their guns and blow up more stuff. I had no idea I even possessed that kind of virtual blood lust.. how fun!!!
So huge KUDOS to you and the entire team, this game is a huge winner in my book!!
LOL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onTNtA_fI-g time index. 3:40 -- 4:10 Anyone else miss the Critic?
“I must taste Bluhd!”
This game blew my away by the sheer amount of chaos, but after the first couple of times i got the a little more used to it, and it is pretty damn awesome. I wholeheartedly agree on the con. Im already wanting more and Im not lvl 31 yet.
I was hoping someone would review this game in depth. I only played a quick round when I wrote my review of the Adventure District. I totes did not stay up until 4:00 AM playing this game and miss my classes today… OK, I did! This game is just awesome, awe-inspiring and awesomesauce. Thank you, thank you, deuce_for2 and thank you for the article and machinima, Norse. Watch out for Captain Sunshine and her fearsome crew on the high seas!
Your article was a huge help. Thank you. It was the first review type press out there. Everyone else was just copying or rewording the blog post. I have no measure for how effective a positive review is on the public, but I can tell you, it effects my peers and people who want to hire me.
I truly appreciate all that you all have said and done. I am truly in your debt. But sadly, still no trophy room. A hovercar? We’ll talk.
I’ve been waiting for that game that would define Home’s space as a social-gaming platform. This is it.
What sets this apart from other Home games is that we’re all, literally, in the same boat together. Turn on the mics, and captain and crew have seamless communication. No mics? No problem. The preset text feature lets skilled players tell the captain when and where to strike, and there’s a huge battlefield to play with, even if most players opt for dodge-ems near the docks.
This game expands on the tactical gameplay that Novus Prime brilliantly introduced by adding a player-versus-player element. In short time, we’re going to see some really good teams out there vying for a spot on the leaderboards. The inclusion of functional naval tactics is a tremendous boost for captains who are well versed in the high-seas combat of Sid Meier’s Pirates, the difference here being that you need gunners who know what the heck they’re doing, and a captain who can actually help them attack successfully.
It’s a great achievement for Home, and a real game-changer for those who’ve wondered what this platform is all about. We can now see the full potential of Home as a place where the casual gamer can pop in and play and have some fun, but where serious gamers can also explore the depths of an offering, develop strategy and pit themselves against one another.
Could the camera system use some tweaks? Yes, but beyond that it’s hard to find a fault in a game and a Home experience that provides the sort of fun, co-operative multiplayer that’s otherwise missing in this console generation.
If you press the right joystick (R3) you switch the camera into a 360 camera. That way it does not automatically pop back to straight. I am not sure if that is the camera issue or not.
If it is not, feel free to recommend a better camera system. It is one of the least talked about, hardest parts of a game to get right. We tried a lot of things and settled on the top two. And believe me, I switched choices many times before I picked my choice.
I’ll have to try that and see how it works. I kept banging against the limits of the cannon cameras and wanting to see more. It rarely occurs to me to press that R3 button.
The right joystick allows you to move the camera, but it snaps back when yo let go. The R3/right joystick press makes the camera only move if you move the joystick. I tend to mix the two. I leave it in 360 mode, but snap it back when I am not sure where I am.
If you are Captain, then the 360 camera is a must to see behind you while driving. Unless you are one of those crazy button mashing street fighter types who can move joysticks and press buttons with the same hand.
I DID join Norse’s crew at the very beginning, but must of pressed wrong button, joined again but ended up on another ship.. But i DID have fun sinking Norse’s ship (Hehe) But I have to tell you guys, Norse can be pretty aggressive when he wants to be.. watch out!, lol He can ram opposing ships into submission.
This game is SO much fun to play, just being Jack Sparrow isn’t enough.. (whose with the Cheekster when I say that Geoffrey Rush was every inch the better Pirate than Johnny Depp’s ‘Keith Moon’ impression in that movie?)
Yes i DID like the multiplayer ‘Hack em -up’ promotional game for ‘Dead Island’ but it wasn’t it’s own game. Home needed a game like this, this is definitely one of those games every other Home ‘Game’ is going to be judged by.
Hope this stays around, cos its brilliant fun!
The Cheekster LIKES !
An aggressive streak? Me? I have *no* idea what you’re talking about, Cheeky.
I had another go ’round with the game last night, and I must admit it’s quite fun to outmaneuver the other boats and get them so riled up at you that they blunder into each other and make complete idiots of themselves while you sail circles around them and open up with raking fire. It’s quite satisfying.
One interesting experiment I tried: knowing that most of the people who play any sort of online freemium game won’t spend any money, I joined a ship as one of the gunners and equipped fireball cannon shot. Once the skipper realized I was setting his opponents ablaze, he consistently maneuvered the galleon to give me the best firing angles. In this way, I could (for the most part) effectively navigate the boat more or less where I wanted, and still have all the visceral fun of lighting my enemies on fire.
It’s also quite fun to watch inexperienced skippers *freak out* when they see their ships on fire. The hasty evasive maneuvers are quite predictable, and usually just make them even more vulnerable to attack. So, if done correctly, a properly-equipped gunner can actually exert a considerable amount of control and psychological warfare in this game.
In billiards, I think that’s called a bank shot.
If anyone asks, I’m *really* enjoying this game.
Hey at least this game wasn’t ARR rated.
I was waiting for the “Arrr!” jokes to start popping up…lol
By the way that Jolly Roger rug is Awesome!!
You people are all the best! I would thank you all individually but it would make the comments hard to read.
This is really a monument to the fact that we listen to all your comments. I first pitched this in December 2010 and it released this week. It takes a long time to get from idea to implementation. It isn’t that we don’t care, it is that we can’t turn on a dime. And many decisions involve Public Relations, Business and Legal as well as Developers.
It is like wanting to put an aircraft carrier in reverse -- you may be able to imagine it is easy, but that doesn’t make it easy.
Strangely enough, this was a hard fought battle to get it done. It was almost canceled many times. So to see you all enjoying it is the best thing that could happen. All the pain melts away and we can just go have fun. Especially if Norse is your Captain.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want Norse as my captain as much as a want to sink his ship. I’m not sure why, it just sounds totes fun!
This is a great awesome game. I played this for the first time the other day and got to level 10. So far I unlocked the eye patch and ruby skull! Can’t wait to keep leveling up! I am sure this game will be very popular. Hope to see you all on the dock and join up with you to play! Arrrrr!!
Even though one of my favorite movie memories is the serial Captain Kidd and I love my pirates outfits and the Pirate Galleon space, I didn’t think I’d like this game.
Still, when I entered the space and saw a ship with no one on it I stole it and took her out jumping from the helm to the gunners position when I wanted to sink other ships and steal their treasure.
Others came on board after awhile and 14 hours later I went back to my pirate galleon quite tired.
At times the ship could steer for me and others but a good ole mutiny and change of helmsman fixed that.
I don’t know what rank I had but I got 3 or 4 male rewards and a level 29 with 60,000 points. Whether that’s good or bad I don’t know. I do know the game is fun and I am not one to enjoy these types anymore save for the Dolphy game. There used to be a shooter strategy pirates video game years ago that I liked.
I can’t wait till I get my submarine the Nautilus repaired.
Then you all better watch out!
Here is a comment from a friend of mine. One of those friends who will not say your idea is great or what you have done is great if it is not:
“I’ve logged into PlayStation Home a few times in the last couple of years. This is the first time I actually wanted to stick around for a while and play with it. Definitely a step in the right direction for PlayStation Home!”
We all know how great Home can be. Now it looks like a new set of people will be giving it a chance.
The inevitable has happened. I have reached 31, and this doesn’t get old. I wrote an article on trophy hunting. Some spaces i never visit again after I collect the rewards, as there doesn’t seem a reason to. Yet this is definitely one i enjoy revisiting and playing over and over. By the way Kudos on the eye patch, one of my favorite wearable rewards ever earned in Home. Didn’t think anyone could make a cooler eye patch since Elle Driver’s Nurse eye patch in Kill Bill.