I recently took a trip overseas. More than half of the trip was completely over water, so there was nothing to look at, and it was one of the most mind numbing and boring experiences I've ever had the umm...pleasure of being a part of. Then, three months after getting off the plane, I was dumped back into the experience, but this time I never left my office. Paradox Interactive and Nitro Games' Pirates of the Black Cove is the gaming equivalent of staring at a blank wall (or in this case, the water) for hours on end, only here there's no real payoff, unless you count a bug filled and uninspired experience.

The obvious standard for the Pirate genre (and yes, there's a pirate genre) is the classic Sid Meier's Pirates, just don't expect that level of perfection here. In Pirates of Black Cove, you'll take one of three different pirates and attempt to be become the biggest name in swashbuckling. The game consists of two basic sections, land missions and sea battles. Where other games infuse strategy elements like trading into these modes, Pirates of Black Cove is a distinctively arcade experience and short of slight RPG elements, it won't be enough to satisfy fans of the famed series.

"The missions are usually pretty fun, but way too easy."

Your basic goal in either of the modes is to grow your pirate fleet, done by either taking out other ships and taking their money to upgrade or exploring the game's map to find blueprints and other resources. Sounds pretty straight forward right? The missions are usually pretty fun, but way too easy. Whoever dumped the blueprints and resources all over the game's islands must have been looking to get rid of them as they're incredibly easy to find, almost too easy. It's almost as if you'll have to try to not find them.

Most land missions follow the same basic structure; dock, go to the missions point and swashbuckle with whatever stands in your way. The game suffers from some terrible path finding issues, especially when it comes to your crew. They're supposed to automatically attack any enemies near them, but that doesn't always happen, and directing them to do so isn't always easy as there's no default attack button and you'll have to manually right click and instruct each of your crew to do so. It's extremely tedious and more complicated than it needs to be. It also doesn't help that the game features rather large maps and your crewmembers move incredibly slow.

"...it's downright slow and boring at times."

Perhaps this is the game's biggest downfall - it's downright slow and boring at times. When you're going from battle to battle, or island to island, you're going to be staring at the screen doing nothing for much longer than you care to. There are options you can unlock to instantly transport your entire ship or crew to other areas, but for some reason the developers decided it would be best to almost hide these options in toolbars so much that players often forget to use them.

For what it's worth, Pirates of Black Cove is filled with charm and great visuals. The water looks impressive and the islands are rich in color and detail. There's also an obvious love here for pirate culture as Nitro games has pulled inspiration from great pirate films and old TV serials. It's fun to see pirates roaming around port, and the voice acting is generally impressive enough (when the game isn't forcing cheesy pirate jokes at you for the 56th time).

Pirates of Black Cove isn't a great Pirate game; hell it's not even a good game, it's a mildly entertaining but ultimately disappointing experience that's too filled with bugs to really enjoy. To the developer's credit, they've released a few patches since release that have fixed a number of the bugs, but we still found crashes and glitches. It's tough to recommend Pirates to anyone, since fans of the genre will be looking for more strategy and action fans will find the slow sections mind numbingly boring.