The Cutthroats hype reads like a package holiday brochure: lush Caribbean islands, copious amounts of rum and fights by the fistful. The only real difference is that on this Club 1640 outing the hotel is finished and burning it down's positively encouraged.
Trenton Webb

Cutthroats is a reincarnation of the ancient 8bit classic Pirates!. Starting on a run-down and under-manned sloop, the aim's to steal, kill and trade your way to infamy. Set in an accurate geographical and economic model of the 17th century Caribbean, there are over 1,000 ships to sink and 75 ports to raid. As such, the game's scope is vast, but Cutthroats fails to deliver on its promise of sprawling high-seas adventure and instead serves up tedious voyages that are punctuated by moments of intense frustration.

Three major play modes tell the story of your dastardly deeds - an Indiana Jones-style red-dotty-line map view for major voyages; a crow's nest satellite view for precise navigation; and an isometric battle view for ship-to-ship combat and land raids.

In Map View your sloop slides along until Roger (the cabin boy, of course!) starts to yell 'Ship ahoy' with annoying regularity. Zooming in to Crow's Nest View offers direct control of your ship so it can be tacked against the wind in order to approach potential prey. And when you've identified your target and decided to attack, the view switches again, zooming into Battle Mode.

With a single ship wafting about, bringing your loaded cannons to bear requires skill, patience and is real fun. However, when the fight's between fleets of up to 12 ships a side, the whole thing rapidly degrades into a click and hope debacle. Boarding another ship is simply a case of sailing into it, clicking once and watching a tiny picture of two men dancing - they may be fencing but it's hard to tell - while a counter scores the corpses for each side.