Skull and Bones is finally coming out this month (or so we're told), and this week's open beta is Ubisoft's last best chance to convince us that the long-delayed pirate game is worth $60. I played a few hours of it today, and I can't say I'm convinced, though I won't rule out that it gets better in the endgame.
It starts with Ubisoft's typical early game babying: Before you graduate from captaining a dinghy, generic pirate NPCs make you prove that you understand complicated game systems such as pressing F to pick up floating loot, and you're sent schlepping between little islands in search of an acacia tree to cut down. That task took me a while, because other players had already harvested all the nearby acacia groves, and I guess they take a while to respawn. Yo ho yo ho, another stump for me.
