Shadow Gambit the Cursed Crew Review | Ninja Pirates Real! | Information THEY don't want you KNOWING

if I said Desperados for pirates Shadow tactics for skullduggery would you be interested you're goddamned right you would be and these devs made both those games I love Desperados and Shadow tactics but that doesn't mean I love Shadow Gambit cursed group the game starts with an undead Captain trying to steal a sentient pirate ship that keeps Martin off to the person who stole it so you steal it back and then go on a series of adventures with other Undead Pirates too probably die a lot trying to take three Surly Pirates into the angry insect Hive of religious zealots Island strongholds is like trying to eat a freaking cupcake on a roller coaster someone's getting iced but first speaking of black-hearted theft and swindley with YouTube still demonetizing videos like they did with my recent Atlas Fallen review the best way to help channels is to subscribe and comment right now besides pew pew or whatever it doesn't even stream much anymore so we can catch him easily in subscribers just a couple hundred million million more but we can get there subscribe and leave a comment onwards Pirates aren't the most notable and trustworthy a cruise and you find that out right away in this game their tails are a sheer Wasteland of Abandonment a who's who of mothers dropping kids off in Doc pails with fish lure and then some kind-hearted Captain saving them from certain death to make a name for themselves but names this pirate crew has already sort of made and as you gather them and raise them back from the dead you learn more and more about the ship's mysterious crew prior as well as the ship itself as you take on real-time stealth mechanics and take out your enemy the Inquisition Pirates the Inquisition talking boats it might sound disjointed but some writers can grate the cheese improving the nonsensical and awkward into something that after you see the undead brought back to life by being killed you think to yourself oh that actually is sort of sweet makes a little bit of sense they excel at real-time stealth strategy games and what says strategy more than a pirate who shoots enemies out of cannons nothing each Mission you take has rewards a time of day with night time taking and making stealth easier as well as overall duration and crew count for limiting those you take along with you as you Traverse the 1C you're constantly Gathering Soul power or black pearls so you can shoot them into the hearts of the undead crew and bring them on board but who are these regga muffins let's break it down presswald a baron munchaus another group a deep infiltrator who can jump into spirits of enemies driving around like skin cars and making it rain with his coin drop diversion tactics if you like Espionage sneaking Behind Enemy Lines and sound like you're 10 times smarter than everyone else while not being so he's for you but when I say Pirates you might think of the more tropes yelling anchors away and shiver me timbers John Mercury is your man deep in the tropes and even deeper in the Underworld he teleports Davey Jones Locker by throwing his big anchor down because nothing screams teleporting like the word anchor he can also whack enemies with it just in case someone doesn't think Size Matters and he can hide bodies by hooking them and dragging them five fathoms down then there's your big guns because when we talk about Pirates a lot of times we talk about cannons the cannon nests can fill that she basically said screw leaving the big weapons aboard and tore a cannon right off the ship and strapped it to her back she also loves parties so she took some firecrackers along on the trip and can cause a Ruckus while she sneaks around then there's stories I don't know why that cracks me up so much but her name everybody else's photo bottom or deep diver delicoy backed up by Teresa what she lacks in a fancy name though she makes up possibly by being the baddest mother on the entire ship she followed in John Silver's steps removing her arm and her leg I guess when you're this badass you don't need a name like follow bottom a sniper with one leg and one arm missing and a hook for a hand Teresa might have the longest crossbow shot in history and games arcing out enemies life bars with a single stroke and when push comes to shove she can also confuse him by shooting an arrow full of pixie dust into their faces does it make sense not a lot is it cool hell yeah then you got Toya the ship cook who strangely doesn't really cook anything and sounds more like a spectral ninja another dude down with teleporting he can drop a paper cut out on the ground and teleport back to it at any time he also has a bird whistle if he wants to bring attention to himself and distract the enemy if you like your Heroes weird though Quentin's your man so mindful of treasure he'd be dazzled his own damned head with enough jewels that when he throws it around guards have to go over and see if they can get some of them to Bloons he can also suck enemies up into the treasure chest on his back to hide their bodies then you have so lady as someone from the 1980s and say half woman half Bush she can put Bush anywhere and it's so thick and deep she can hide in it she can also confuse enemies with a potion that causes them to wander off if they get a sniff he also got the main Captain she uses her chest as sheath for a sword and can teleport short distances to kill instantly she's sort of your jack of all trades lastly each Hero has some penalties for example Teresa can't climb Ivy or Swim being that both are pretty damned hard if you're missing half your limbs that you need to do so mixing the folks right away to take out the enemies in the proper format has you going across different various Island getaways frequented by these evil sobs who are your Nemesis in the game with enemies split into groups like scouts or others who can not only track you by the imprints your boot leave but also flatly ignore your various attempts to distract them and it's your job to mix and match your different skills and attack them kill them hide them and push the story forward if you're like me you sometimes watch something or read something at the same time and I've been watching pirate movies and I gotta say Pirates of Caribbean one and two are fantastic luckily there were never any sequels made after that none and the reason I bring that up is because when you look at Shadow gamut there's times where you are going to feel like this is a lot like the other titles with sort of just a mod put on top the gameplay is moving across a landscape hiding in bushes behind boxes and pretty much anywhere an enemy's ever-present cone of vision doesn't display them seeing you right away from there you eavesdrop you stealth kill teleport and take out almost everyone on the island you can also choose between controlling one character or all three of the group from Shadow to Shadow killing a special enemy that opens a dimensional door back to the ship itself and it also is a good place to hide bodies inside everybody's got a little something to offer and hiding bodies is very important not only as I said before can they track you via your Footprints but you can also see them change routes temporarily when alerted to something being amiss and if you didn't hide a body properly that alert magnifies and they just keep searching missions are mostly picking a land and spot on the island and then taking out a series of objectives like the eavesdropping or killing a particular bad guy or sometimes rescuing someone and each island may be packed with caves that go underground from one side of the island of the other making for very good hideaways but be warned if the enemies see you go in one of those they will hop right on inside and you're going to start to see your characters health bars go down though on the highest level that's pretty much just one shot one kill anyway now each special move has a cool down like Teresa's sniper shot and it has to be picked up by her to actually be used again unless you upgrade that skill camera control lets you zoom very far in closer to than any Diablo Style game as well as spin the map to get an eye on some overhang or Cliff face that you couldn't see before sometimes offering environmental hazards you can use on enemies like dropping a crate on their head or a rock don't question why the bad guys stand under those things we can only assume it's because they're trying to get out of the sun if it's nighttime well humans are prone to patterns and that's good because patterns are what you will have to keep an eye on in this game at all times with enemies patrolling their routes breaking off to investigator noticing a friend dead that means it's sometimes alerting enemies once just to see where they go can open up entirely different plans of attacks leading Joe Bob the Jolly who has a holy lantern that can destroy Shadows farther and farther from from safety with you comboing your distraction moves until he's standing on a cliff face ready to be taken down is something that feels so good complexity is here if you want it or need it compound moving with your team in a pause menu setting up your Pirates ocean 11 actions from sneaking past an enemy then knife and his friend while another character teleports his pile to the other side of a hill then you watch the plan come together every character in Shadow Gambit also takes a different time to kill and this is sort of the juice meaning that with one ability to throw down cover that character may also not have the fastest attack in the group so sometimes you have to decide to use their special or do you want to use them as that quick attack so that you can get out of the way right away and that can occur in a lot of the attacks the enemy sitecone creeping inevitably towards you like that spotted Dawn as you're trying to finish the kill and it makes it not only important but highly stressful if you don't have any saves left but there are some Oddities with the examples the movement and the way everything comes together for example the game warns you that you only need one of these kind of characters that can move enemies or distract them per the mission those characters I read before but I ask you this if that's right then why do four or five of the total group have that as a special why not maybe just two instead you find yourself really only focusing on the secondary abilities of those characters because that ability is not going to overlap as much in that way it does feel like a missed opportunity of overlap luckily you can upgrade those skills and make them more powerful back at the boat also I love the Slowdown mode there were times where it did not feel as tight as it should and sometimes the best laid plans evaporate when some Jack and Indians just standing on a rock and should be actually moving to where you thought they were going to and then some enemy Rings The Alarm Bell before you can throw them once you complete the mission you head back to the boat count up your items you can get and see if you can upgrade or wake up another party member each time you do wake up a member the game also lets you go to the ship's hold and practices special moves in a challenge mode which I think is a nice touch and despite some misgivings for the game that I have nice touches or something I noticed right away in the presentation graphically the game game is way more impressive than I had expected over the long period of time you never know when you do a preview if the game's going to be delivered like that here you can zoom out on your characters as they move around the landscape and seeing them pull off different moves you're going to notice a lot of smaller effects and animations that really the game has no need to be there but does show and it helps it makes each move Look slick as hell and that's not at all harmed by incredibly smooth performance throughout the game's special actions the enemy special Magics and the locations special places all meld together into one without a hint of dropped performance even when you're like me and you get a bit antsy and decide let's just go loud and out of the blue you have a bunch of gun carrying religious Fanatics take a name at your pirate as you stand in the center base thinking to yourself yeah that would have worked better if Johnny Depp were here a little warped a little off camber with comedic tones for almost everybody outlines when you're in the shadows extra knife and anchor flips and Spins when killing enemies the animations even for the enemies themselves searching for you and their constant call outs for you to just show yourself a good look as I said and stupid performance with 160 FPS or higher on the 4090 and that performance continues in the music it is uniformly excellent do you know why it's because one of the most talented but often not celebrated composers Filippo Beck did the music for this the same composer on Desperados oh yeah and Shadow tactics feeling some kind of pattern here well you should patterns are how music is made and I swear to God Beck has some goddamn third eye pointing into a dimension where his music just fits perfectly for the game Beck absolutely knows how to throw a soundtrack down that sits right between highly noticeable and almost hero-style Anthem but in this case it's not a character in the game it's just the overall art aesthetic and the feeling of the fantasy what's nice is for the most part he doesn't have an overarching familiar sound to him like a movie composer where sometimes despite the genre you can pick it out unless we just say his abilities deliver a really good soundtrack that fits in whatever atmosphere the game is and while he hits the tropes concertina and woodwind simple revolving notes that instantly bring that familiar sound to power movies to life they hit every time what doesn't hit every time is The Voice be aware this is character and pirate Trope 101 which is fine it works and it's not like these guys are given seven minute soliloquies about the stitch in depths but well maybe one or two are a particular note here though is my favorite John Mercury like it just got shipped in on a Long John Silver's coupon deal announcement in a YouTube channel his random one-liners and murmurines are pretty good and they always sound a little bit on the side of somebody LARPing but it actually works there on the other hand presswald who feels like he could be every bit the fopish pipe smoking high neck collar wearing Undead nobleman just doesn't work as well as I would have liked I like that the developers didn't really ask a vocal artist to try to pretend he was 90 years old a tactic we've seen fail again and again there are a lot of other different one-liners from enemies and heroes alike fleshing out the story very well actually if you listen to the enemies talk about their thoughts worries beliefs and boasting it can really engage you into the story but I did feel like a lot of them were delivered in a way that felt a little less emotional than it should so you get this teeter-totter effect where one character sort of over the top and the other one is sort of like a table read that they just fell asleep during woke up saw the script and were like oh where was I sounds do their part there isn't a large deal of 3D audio as it's not needed you can tell where an enemy is here not just by sound but by the game's numerous visual alerts to perfectly accurately show you Island side where an enemy is which means also the sound doesn't have to be as accurate before we hit fun Factor I'm going to give you my score right now because fun factor is definitely impacted by some things that occur here I would say the game is good the game is enjoyable and I think buying it will serve you well however this comes with some caveats after 25 plus hours of moving and scooting behind Scouts stealth killing and hiding them in nearby shrubs if Shadow gamut teaches you anything it's that sometimes a tonal shift even with a new story and ideas doesn't always work exactly as planned for example if the enemy routes were more altered I would like it now they couldn't be as altered as weird West the game would be much more difficult sort of like this game on its hardest difficulty where you have one Health the enemy's got two eyes and a reaction time it's like three milliseconds but making them a little bit more variable would have helped however it would have had to have occurred with a less busy level structure this game is busy as I'll get out it's hard to explain until you play it into some of the busiest levels of a game of this type I've ever seen while it's fun and it keeps you consistently looking and engaging a couple of the islands don't have as much time to sort of breathe as an experience and it would have really liked that when you see it it'll look more like a chess game at times especially when you see oh there's three characters here so there's definitely gonna be four in the engagement or there's three and there's gonna be five in the engagement there's a bit of roteness that can creep up now talking about the character's special skill overlap could it have more characters yes it could Ocean's 11 could have been called Ocean's 45 but the movie would have been like 13 hours long it doesn't even need more characters I don't think the game needs that but I just think the skills could have been widened a little bit more and a tiny bit more imaginative some powers do feel like they're a bit of an alternate of Desperados like the ability to take over the brain of an enemy for a small amount of time familiarity doesn't always breed contempt and it didn't hear but it did take a while for the game to sort of lock into me but it did take a while a lot of the game was very fun especially in the beginning areas it ran flawlessly as I said before for me though I wonder just how much longer it would have lasted and how many times I would have wanted to go back to some of those islands if it was a little less busy as well as a couple times when they look set up in a particular way where it was almost like oh I'm playing against another human not necessarily against the AI itself as I said before though the game is enjoyable to play there's a lot of different things I like to explore there's also a very cool I guess you'd call it Achievement System think of achievements like in the Xbox or platinums but actually you know fun so I already gave you my rating you know what I think I think and this is just one of those type of titles where sometimes I know a game is good but it's just not exactly what I want and this is one of them so that's it for me check out exclusive videos on everything from Starfield to Space Marine 2 Spider-Man 2 and more subscribe now and check out the podcast over 40 000 people have subscribed to us just due to the podcast which is crazy but better yet with YouTube demonetizing even the Casual videos I do sometimes jump into the patron regardless all that I hope you enjoy your gaming I hope you're excited for the titles that are coming up in the future gang gang [Music] foreign [Music] so this is Angler's grave Charming this lerato let's find the bar and make a deal before the Inquisition shows up my soul returns to its crusted frame and I hear a thought the depths of goddess at last not yet John Mercury though from what I hear you have no fear of the darkness below what date is so I pair your bell the court is in session foreign

Channel: ACG

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Keywords: acgreview, angrycentaurgaming, gameplay, ACG, gaming news, acg reviews, video games, angry review, acg impressions, videogame reviews, videogame review, game review, acg review, games, gamenews, reaction, ign, steam deck, react to, comedy, podcast, Shadow Gambit the Cursed Crew Review Desperadoes as Pirates, shadow crew, shadow gambit the cursed crew review, cursed crew review, ninja pirates, shadow crew review, The Cursed Crew Review

Id: CQMus9VGxQA

Length: 16min 26sec (986 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2023