Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island brings adventurers to the Azurbbean Sea, a place vaguely similar to the Caribbean Sea of the late 1600‘s. It´s an upside-down sub-tropical paradise where protoplasmic pirates and zombies lurk around the most unusual places! Explore over thirty locations and get acquainted with a cast of unique and crazy characters as the story unfolds with hilarious tongue-in-cheek twists and turns.
Players venture through the world of Ghost Pirates with not one but three characters, taking advantage of each character’s special abilities to solve the mysteries of Vooju Island.
£29.99
This product will be shipped on Friday 26 March, 2010
Wow, that was sudden!
Also, according to wikipedia (not th best source in the world, but hey!) The North american releases is the same day. That doesn't sound to accurate though, given that games are generally released on mondays over there.
But is still not. It's stated as in "pre-order" and the release date is wrong, it's the "old" one. No idea what's the issue is with that.
UPDATE: Mamba Games download service seems to be "coming soon" at all, it's not only about Vooju (click the tab "Download Games Now"). Still, I don't understand why the physical copy is still as "pre-order", while it's available in both brick-and-mortar and online stores.
And anyhow you can find a physical copy for far less than 29,99 pounds, I bought mine from an Amazon UK marketplace partner for less than 18 UK pounds (20 euros), shipping from UK to Italy included.
Presently, I see it for 13.09 UK pounds (plus shipping) on Amazon UK and 33.50 US dollars (plus shipping) on Amazon.com... It seems to be significantly higher priced in USA...
given that games are generally released on mondays over there.
Quite OT, but I've find it funny when I noticed it In Italy games are usually released on Fridays, in USA Mondays, in other places in the middle of the week... Before noticing it I half-absently-minded assumed games were released on Fridays so that people could buy them while coming home from work or school and then play during the weekend... then I realized it's not that way everywhere... So what? I really don't know
But it seems quite cruel on gamers to release on Mondays! And a bone to coffee makers
Presently, I see it for 13.09 UK pounds (plus shipping) on Amazon UK and 33.50 US dollars (plus shipping) on Amazon.com... It seems to be significantly higher priced in USA...
Probably because it hasn't been released in the USA yet and the copy ships from English sellers ($33.50 is £22.08 right now).
If I try to buy it from Amazon.co.uk themselves, it's £14.97 (after removal of the VAT) in my shopping cart but can't be shipped to the USA.
Well, Bill Tiller and his team might make decent games, but they are FAIL AT WEBSITE MANAGEMENT.
when I go to: http://www.amegames.com/games.asp it has links to 3 games: AVS1, AVS2,and GPOVI.
Of those 3, only the AVS2 link works for me.
The AVS1 website ALWAYS makes my Avast! Antivirus freak out and stop the page from loading (even after I contacted AME and Avast! about it twice each):
...and the GPOVI WEBSITE DOESN'T EVEN WORK! I get redirected to an error page every single time.
When I researched the problem further, I found that it's not just me that can't get to the site:
The further thing that's fail about this is though the AVS2 site works, the game isn't even out yet so why care?
Damn it, Bill. Get your butt in gear. I mean, seriously... Not only does Autumn Moon Entertainment have an incompetent marketing department, such that I only found out about AVS by accident on the web, but also their website management team can't even get the official game sites working. I liked AVS quite a bit, but how can I support a company that's so fail at promoting their products?
They haven't even updated the game's official website to say the game has been released in the UK.
Ordered mine from Amazon yesterday. Was teed off that the default seller doesn't deliver to the Channel Islands. You'd have thought the Jersey depot would have come up first but no, they have the same for everyone. Still, £13.09 was better than the default asking price on Friday! It's had a price hike from the £11.45 I saw on Thursday...(must be selling well)
Okay, but that's a recent change. Why they would previously link their site to a page that doesn't even have the domain registered is dumb.
and the AVS1 site still gets my antivirus upset so that the page is completely blocked.
The site has been up for some time, I think it is run by dtp, not by Autumn. There are some errors in it too, like in one of the characters bios in english.
The online aspect of the marketing had some huge problems really, like the confusing release dates...
How did you get past the problem of main.exe crashing immediately or didn't you get that? I want to play this game so badly now...
Same thing happened to me on my laptop when trying to play A Vampyre Story. Turned out my gfx card wasn't up to scratch on the game. Chances, are your gfx card doesn't support the game, or its a DirectX issue.
Same thing happened to me on my laptop when trying to play A Vampyre Story. Turned out my gfx card wasn't up to scratch on the game. Chances, are your gfx card doesn't support the game, or its a DirectX issue.
I'm beginning to think the former. I bought my computer with on-board graphics because at the time I couldn't afford a card with the longevity I had in mind. I have DirectX 11 on my system, so I doubt it's that (even though at the end of the game installation, it ticks the DirectX box for me )
I'm beginning to think the former. I bought my computer with on-board graphics because at the time I couldn't afford a card with the longevity I had in mind. I have DirectX 11 on my system, so I doubt it's that (even though at the end of the game installation, it ticks the DirectX box for me )
Yep, looks like a gfx card upgrade would be the best thing for you. I had an onboard card on my laptop, too.
How did you get past the problem of main.exe crashing immediately or didn't you get that? I want to play this game so badly now...
I haven't had any issue
My home PC is an old Athlon XP 2100 with an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro as gpu, and just 768Mb of RAM (lowest than the requirements in fact)... and everything seems to work just fine. The mouse cursor is slightly slightly slower than ideal, and I have some annoying "blip" in the audio sometimes, but that's all.
Doubt it, it just looks really bad when you can tell the artwork has had a lot of effort put in but it's let down by low res scanning or whatever. Tales looks far superior to this.
Can't get the aspect ratio to change on mine. Its stuck at 4:3, despite the manual's assertation that it supports 16:10.
There's a config file in the game folder called config.exe that lets you change it, but it's in German though easy enough to spot the aspect ration option.
If the game doesn't let you choose the 16:10 aspect ratio in the main menu, there's no point in chosing it with the german config tool.
The thing is that Ghost Pirates only supports two resolutions:
- 1024x768 (4:3)
- 1280x800 (16:10)
Nearly every screen (monitors/flat-TV's) supports 1024x768 (regardless if it's non-widescreen or widescreen). But not all screens do support 1280x800. Even many widescreens doesn't support this resolution.
Ghost Pirates tries to recognize if your screen does support this resolution. If Ghost Pirates recognzies that the resoultion is supported, you can switch to 16:10 in the main menu. Otherwise you can't switch to 16:10 in the main menu.
If you switch to 1280x800 with the german config tool and your screen doesn't support this resolution, Ghost Pirates switches to a 800x600 resolution and you get many graphic glitches like ghost shadows at wrong places (since the game isn't supposed to run with this resolution).
Played the game from start to finish (I've been engrossed in it since I last posted here). My thoughts on the game are thus:
The game has possibly too many characters. The storyline is messy and hard to keep a clear picture of the overall plot in your head without getting lost.
It borrows heavily from Monkey Island (particularly Curse), but then you'd expect it to because Bill Tiller wanted LA to make a sequel to CMI where you control Elaine & LeChuck as well as Guybrush.
Anyone who enjoyed the Plunder Island feral chickens and the scenery of Puerto Pollo will get rushes of nostalgia in Part 1: Papa Doc and Part 2: Blue Belly respectively.
The atmosphere is spot on and the artwork really is as good as you'd expect it to be. Unfortunately the music on the website and the game launcher are in more than one place in the game but that's a minor complaint.
The puzzles do involve a lot of inventory combining but then I rather like that. It has a rather innovative feature where there are many items you need but your characters don't want to haul them around. These appear in a ghost-like form (bathed in blue) in your inventory and these items usually get used in the room you find them in. Another innovative feature is asking one of the other protagonist for specialist advice on objects. These exchanges are usually quite amusing (for me, anyway). I like the puzzle design too. Sometimes you'll be completely lost but after exploring and random clicking/combining/advice, you'll be back on track in no time. But does that mean it's easy? Hell no! There was many a point where I knew WHAT I needed to do but the HOW still alluded me. Scratching my head when I'm so near yet so far is a good feeling I'm sure most of you can relate to.
Unfortunately I think the ending is quite rushed. After the Papa Doc ending, there should have been an epilogue ending involving all the main characters still alive but there wasn't. It left me cold and I'm worried that a sequel doesn't easily follow on. The first two chapters were well-sized but the last one, as with the Monkey Island games, was short and over too quickly. I want more!
I'd seriously recommend this game to Monkey Island fans because despite its faults, it does manage to stand on its own feet and the gameplay is really enjoyable, from a MI adventurer's perspective.
I just finished the Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island. I think the game was good. But I beleive that Tales of Monkey Island is much better than Ghost Pirates! Humor, plot, dialogs, animation, atmosphere, puzzles, music, and voice acting in Tales is better! Only the backgrounds in Ghost pirates were better than Tales.
The inventory gimmick where you have "the memory of" an item instead of putting, say... a cannon's ram rod or a giant q-tip in your pants, was also present in A Vampyre Story.
I finished it yesterday, and I will be posting a detailed review later, but I have to say (and echo some post above), Autumn Moon needs to get someone with clear storytelling skills soon.
I finally got my hands on the game myself. The humor is way off, the puzzles are abit too random and the story is quite a mess. This may sound silly, but the game feels ALOT like a sequel. You are introdused to alot of new characters in the first 5 minutes and they all have some crazy backstory.
Heck, near the end there is a huge cutscene that tells some pretty major events that led to the current situation in the game. And those events would have made a better game, because they are basicly the first game that didn't happen. If you catch my drift. It's almost like they planned making a game about Flint, Papa Doc and I'Xel fighting some bad vooju.. evil, but then desided to just make the sequel of that story. Pretty crazy. But Bill Tiller is not a writer, he's an artist.
The voice acting is abit meh (though it might be just because the lines are not that good.) The music works, but it's nothing too memorable. The biggest plus of the game is probably the looks, though few of the characters are a little too grotesque (Jane's huge almost exposed rack or the deformed Azteclan Emperor and Priest for example).
Oh, and then there is the Charade Puzzle, who I hate with all my heart and think it's the worstly designed puzzle ever.
But you know what? Somehow, the game still carries some of that Monkey Island vibe. Even with all it's flaws I still liked it. It has some soul to it that makes me forgive it all. So yeah, try it out and see for yourself.
Is it as good as TMI or CMI? Not sure, but it's better than EMI.
Comments
It was a little better, but basically identical to the first one.
<checks IMDB>
Yep, it's Lani Minella. Rouge the Bat, Gina Timmins, Nancy Drew, and now Wendy O. Koopa for NSMB Wii.
http://www.mamba-games.co.uk/ghost-pirates-vooju-island-p-51.html
Just Adventure+ is having a contest giving away 10 Copies of Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island
Details:
http://www.justadventure.com/Contests/GhostPiratesVooju/Vooju.shtm
Wow, that was sudden!
Also, according to wikipedia (not th best source in the world, but hey!) The North american releases is the same day. That doesn't sound to accurate though, given that games are generally released on mondays over there.
Neat! She also played Kitty Ledbetter in the last Nick Bounty Game! ( Shameless plug:Nick Bounty: The Goat in the Grey Fedora )
She is a TON of fun to work with and a real sweetheart! And she likes to talk... alot!
Entered, thanks for telling us. But by doing so, you do know that you've just made your chances of winning slimmer?
Yep. There is also another giveaway at Adventure Gamers:
http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,1126
Already entered that one
My copy is on the way by (physical) mail
It should be available here:
http://www.mamba-games.co.uk/ghost-pirates-vooju-island-p-51.html
But is still not. It's stated as in "pre-order" and the release date is wrong, it's the "old" one. No idea what's the issue is with that.
UPDATE: Mamba Games download service seems to be "coming soon" at all, it's not only about Vooju (click the tab "Download Games Now"). Still, I don't understand why the physical copy is still as "pre-order", while it's available in both brick-and-mortar and online stores.
And anyhow you can find a physical copy for far less than 29,99 pounds, I bought mine from an Amazon UK marketplace partner for less than 18 UK pounds (20 euros), shipping from UK to Italy included.
Presently, I see it for 13.09 UK pounds (plus shipping) on Amazon UK and 33.50 US dollars (plus shipping) on Amazon.com... It seems to be significantly higher priced in USA...
Quite OT, but I've find it funny when I noticed it
But it seems quite cruel on gamers to release on Mondays!
Probably because it hasn't been released in the USA yet and the copy ships from English sellers ($33.50 is £22.08 right now).
If I try to buy it from Amazon.co.uk themselves, it's £14.97 (after removal of the VAT) in my shopping cart but can't be shipped to the USA.
when I go to: http://www.amegames.com/games.asp it has links to 3 games: AVS1, AVS2,and GPOVI.
Of those 3, only the AVS2 link works for me.
The AVS1 website ALWAYS makes my Avast! Antivirus freak out and stop the page from loading (even after I contacted AME and Avast! about it twice each):
...and the GPOVI WEBSITE DOESN'T EVEN WORK! I get redirected to an error page every single time.
When I researched the problem further, I found that it's not just me that can't get to the site:
The further thing that's fail about this is though the AVS2 site works, the game isn't even out yet so why care?
Damn it, Bill. Get your butt in gear. I mean, seriously... Not only does Autumn Moon Entertainment have an incompetent marketing department, such that I only found out about AVS by accident on the web, but also their website management team can't even get the official game sites working. I liked AVS quite a bit, but how can I support a company that's so fail at promoting their products?
TellTale Games, on the other hand, is awesome.
Ordered mine from Amazon yesterday. Was teed off that the default seller doesn't deliver to the Channel Islands. You'd have thought the Jersey depot would have come up first but no, they have the same for everyone. Still, £13.09 was better than the default asking price on Friday! It's had a price hike from the £11.45 I saw on Thursday...(must be selling well)
Same thing here in Australia
Okay, but that's a recent change. Why they would previously link their site to a page that doesn't even have the domain registered is dumb.
and the AVS1 site still gets my antivirus upset so that the page is completely blocked.
The site has been up for some time, I think it is run by dtp, not by Autumn. There are some errors in it too, like in one of the characters bios in english.
The online aspect of the marketing had some huge problems really, like the confusing release dates...
How did you get past the problem of main.exe crashing immediately or didn't you get that? I want to play this game so badly now...
Same thing happened to me on my laptop when trying to play A Vampyre Story. Turned out my gfx card wasn't up to scratch on the game. Chances, are your gfx card doesn't support the game, or its a DirectX issue.
I'm beginning to think the former. I bought my computer with on-board graphics because at the time I couldn't afford a card with the longevity I had in mind. I have DirectX 11 on my system, so I doubt it's that (even though at the end of the game installation, it ticks the DirectX box for me
Yep, looks like a gfx card upgrade would be the best thing for you. I had an onboard card on my laptop, too.
I haven't had any issue
My home PC is an old Athlon XP 2100 with an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro as gpu, and just 768Mb of RAM (lowest than the requirements in fact)... and everything seems to work just fine. The mouse cursor is slightly slightly slower than ideal, and I have some annoying "blip" in the audio sometimes, but that's all.
Doubt it, it just looks really bad when you can tell the artwork has had a lot of effort put in but it's let down by low res scanning or whatever. Tales looks far superior to this.
There's a config file in the game folder called config.exe that lets you change it, but it's in German though easy enough to spot the aspect ration option.
The thing is that Ghost Pirates only supports two resolutions:
- 1024x768 (4:3)
- 1280x800 (16:10)
Nearly every screen (monitors/flat-TV's) supports 1024x768 (regardless if it's non-widescreen or widescreen). But not all screens do support 1280x800. Even many widescreens doesn't support this resolution.
Ghost Pirates tries to recognize if your screen does support this resolution. If Ghost Pirates recognzies that the resoultion is supported, you can switch to 16:10 in the main menu. Otherwise you can't switch to 16:10 in the main menu.
If you switch to 1280x800 with the german config tool and your screen doesn't support this resolution, Ghost Pirates switches to a 800x600 resolution and you get many graphic glitches like ghost shadows at wrong places (since the game isn't supposed to run with this resolution).
The game has possibly too many characters. The storyline is messy and hard to keep a clear picture of the overall plot in your head without getting lost.
It borrows heavily from Monkey Island (particularly Curse), but then you'd expect it to because Bill Tiller wanted LA to make a sequel to CMI where you control Elaine & LeChuck as well as Guybrush.
The atmosphere is spot on and the artwork really is as good as you'd expect it to be. Unfortunately the music on the website and the game launcher are in more than one place in the game but that's a minor complaint.
The puzzles do involve a lot of inventory combining but then I rather like that. It has a rather innovative feature where there are many items you need but your characters don't want to haul them around. These appear in a ghost-like form (bathed in blue) in your inventory and these items usually get used in the room you find them in. Another innovative feature is asking one of the other protagonist for specialist advice on objects. These exchanges are usually quite amusing (for me, anyway). I like the puzzle design too. Sometimes you'll be completely lost but after exploring and random clicking/combining/advice, you'll be back on track in no time. But does that mean it's easy? Hell no! There was many a point where I knew WHAT I needed to do but the HOW still alluded me. Scratching my head when I'm so near yet so far is a good feeling I'm sure most of you can relate to.
Unfortunately I think the ending is quite rushed. After the Papa Doc ending, there should have been an epilogue ending involving all the main characters still alive but there wasn't. It left me cold and I'm worried that a sequel doesn't easily follow on. The first two chapters were well-sized but the last one, as with the Monkey Island games, was short and over too quickly. I want more!
I'd seriously recommend this game to Monkey Island fans because despite its faults, it does manage to stand on its own feet and the gameplay is really enjoyable, from a MI adventurer's perspective.
Heck, near the end there is a huge cutscene that tells some pretty major events that led to the current situation in the game. And those events would have made a better game, because they are basicly the first game that didn't happen. If you catch my drift. It's almost like they planned making a game about Flint, Papa Doc and I'Xel fighting some bad vooju.. evil, but then desided to just make the sequel of that story. Pretty crazy. But Bill Tiller is not a writer, he's an artist.
The voice acting is abit meh (though it might be just because the lines are not that good.) The music works, but it's nothing too memorable. The biggest plus of the game is probably the looks, though few of the characters are a little too grotesque (Jane's huge almost exposed rack or the deformed Azteclan Emperor and Priest for example).
Oh, and then there is the Charade Puzzle, who I hate with all my heart and think it's the worstly designed puzzle ever.
But you know what? Somehow, the game still carries some of that Monkey Island vibe. Even with all it's flaws I still liked it. It has some soul to it that makes me forgive it all. So yeah, try it out and see for yourself.
Is it as good as TMI or CMI? Not sure, but it's better than EMI.