![]() I cut down two more sailors before someone threw a bomb into the melee, killing everyone. With my pistol's single shot I killed a second sailor, then drew my cutlass. I jumped and grabbed the netting of the mizzenmast shroud, swinging down to the deck. I aimed my musket at a British sailor and fired. Yelling, my entire crew ran across our bowsprit and onto the British galleon. During one battle, my captain yelled, "We're going to ram them, boys!" Everyone started scrambling for the top deck, ready to run across and board the enemy. When these moments do come, though, they feel great because they’re so rare. To help control this, the crew can mutiny at any time and elect a new captain, forcing the old captain to become part of the crew and watch his successor at work.Īside from captains, being a cog in a machine means there are also few chances for individual glory. Blackwake reminds me of the modern-military shooter Squad in this respect: a decisive leader makes the difference between fun and not-fun. Not only is a rotten crew a swift ticket to the briny depths, but even a good crew can be ruined by an incompetent captain. But those voice channels aren’t any good if no one uses them. Communication is essential, and Blackwake has provided some pretty good voice-chat systems to shout out to nearby crew, the entire ship, and the entire team. One downside to this approach is that your fun is heavily reliant on other people. Swordfights need more weight, but they're thrilling and messy. I have to trust my teammates because I have no other choice. If anything, Blackwake reminds me of the distributed control scheme of Artemis, the starship bridge simulator. If things feel frantic in Blackwake, that's probably a sign of a well-run ship-and that's exhilarating. Every successful crew I've sailed with has spent the entire match screaming over proximity voice chat, calling orders and yelling for help. ![]() Melee is simultaneously the worst part of the game and the most tantalizing and exciting.Īll the while, cannon balls and musket fire are whipping around and men are dying at random, leaving positions unfilled until they can respawn. The trouble is that melee hit detection and melee combat is at a very early stage, so sword fights feel a little weightless, random and flailing, like an early beta test for Mount & Blade. ![]() Suddenly being close-up, face-to-face with them gets the heart pumping every time. Even getting close enough to snipe at the other crew with muskets is relatively rare. For a huge majority of every match, opponents are tiny dots, specks climbing around the deck of faraway ships. Melee sword fights are a fascinating addition to Blackwake. If grappling hooks land and a ship gets boarded, everyone drops their work and a melee suddenly breaks out-usually while one or both ships creak and take on water. Cannons are a full-time job, but crates of fresh powder and shot also have to be shuttled to from the magazine to the guns. Damage to the sails has to be fixed in person by sailors climbing up the shroud, or the ship won’t be able to move. Any damage to the hull has to be patched by hand, with hammer and nails, before the ship fills with water and sinks. (opens in new tab)Īnd in battle, there are dozens of jobs to do. You will spend the entire match manning this one cannon and you will like it. The cooperation in Blackwake's multiplayer arena is self-reinforcing because no one can do more than one job at a time. First-person shooters usually want me to feel like the biggest boss, the hero who can do everything. But most important is this: it is an anti-power fantasy. It’s an FPS with black-powder muskets, smooth-bore cannons, and the most ridiculously foppish faux-British voice acting I’ve ever heard. It’s an early-access, first-person multiplayer deathmatch between Caribbean pirates and the British navy. There are a few ways to describe the maritime warfare of Blackwake. I reload as fast as I can while crewmates restring sails, patch holes in the deck, and die all around me. The captain finally steers round, the warship comes into view, and I fire. I'm bleeding from the blast but I stay on my station. Inches away from my face, a cannonball tears a chunk out of the deck railing, flinging a crewmate dead into the pitching waves. Chainshot rips through our foresail and our ship slows. I'm hunkered behind my cannon, waiting for my shot, when hot iron starts raining down. One of the British warships has spotted us moving in, and they pivot and face their cannons in our direction.
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