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Skull and Bones review - entertaining combat can't save a lifeless pirate adventure

Eurogamer's review of Skull and Bones, a bombastic but often terminally tedious pirate game.

It begins, though, as all good adventures often do, in the midst of battle, wood splintering and canons booming as your ship is pursued across the 17th century Indian Ocean by a British armada intent on delivering you to Davy Jones - a wonderfully cinematic opener slightly undone by the fact straying beyond an arbitrary boundary immediately presents you with a stroppy message to turn around. Image credit: Ubisoft / Eurogamer There's an engagingly broad palette for experimentation when it comes to armaments in Skull and Bones, with classic cannons nudging up against the likes of torpedoes, mortars, ballistae, even sea fire - each, in turn, capable of inflicting distinct damage types and status effects, all necessitating a certain degree of counter-play. There are times this heavily reductive approach fits - traversing the winding waterways of Africa or a ploughing through a raging storm provides enough navigational busywork to keep things interesting - but out on the vast oceanic expanse of Skull and Bones' needlessly large map, when new ports can be dozens of minutes away and the only distraction is yet another ship to launch a volley of cannon balls at, your limited involvement is tedious in the extreme.

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