Treasure Planet (PC)

Bought this for my son about 4 years ago when it & the Disney film came out. Back then he liked it but gave up playing it after a while as he found it hard. It then sat on the shelf. However he's now 12, and with the re-screening of the movie by Disney, it was loaded back into his two year old NVidia 7950 graphics AMD2 5000 dual core gaming PC. It runs flawlessly under XP, and far more smoothly than it used to on our old 1.2GHz athlon system.You control a retro space warship or two [up to 5], all rigged out like stylish Victorian sailing boats with ion drive sails and laser cannons. Control is largely pointing to a place and the ship moves/fires there. The ships glide beautifully and the game is as visually stunning as the original film (an update on treasure island and well worth a view for any older preteen boys). It's not fantastic resolution, and the movement is really just in 2D, but the ships and the etherium [space] do look rather good - better even than the newer Ray Meirs Pirates (one of my sons favourites, along with the likes of Supreme Commander, Settlers Rise of Empire and Rome total War).Anyway after two days playing, this time he got past all the space pirates and finally saved the Queen, and in all the easy to hard modes. The final baddies have rather neat iron clad vessels and in skirmish mode you can play as them. In single player you don't have to stick to the game objectives, you can wonder off and have your own adventures for a while. My son really enjoyed the game in single player & skirmish mode, plus there's also network play as well - but you need another CD for that. As the game is now going for a few quid we got another [secondhand] game CD from Amazon resellers. For such a small outlay network battles are a lot of fun for half an hour or so, and we would recommend others try it as well. In network play there's 10 or so maps and up to eight players can play alone or in teams (and they can be either a computer or a mate or 'none'). Minimum system requirements are a PII 450MHz, but this game needs a far better spec to get your ships gliding through the ether. If your sons good with PC controls [mouse+keyboard], likes the film and war sims games, then give him this old bargain basement game for a go - my son was glad he rediscovered it.

i already own this and i need to tell u that misson 6 of this game is hard but very fun.u play as jim hawkins in the game. the more u play the game the more ships u have under your control. u have to fight pirates and keep the etheirum safe.but there is a new threat giant metal ships which at sum point u will have to face.very beutifully made