Beer and Boats

Well a night of pizza, beer and Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back led to a good session on Pirates! Legend of the Black Kat. When I say good session I mean only the two player aspect supported in 'Sea Battles' mode. The game supports Quick Battle, where one player goes head to head with either the CPU or another player, and Fleet Battle where one player goes against a fleet of CPU ships in a sort of 'survival' mode.

After copious beer, the head to head battles with your tanked up adversary can get very loud and hectic. You can select which ship type you would like to command and the arena/watery landscape you would like to battle in. The landscape can range from fairly sparse flat pieces of greeny blue ocean to iceberg infested arctic wastelands. The land masses in Sea Battles can be both a hindrance and a tool for tactical play. As you tack to and fro trying to gain optimum placement to let your barrage of cannons rip into the soft belly of your opponent, these shards of ice can give you a taste of what the titanic went through, running you aground and leaving you vulnerable to a swift return attack, whilst you slam the rudder hard right to dislodge youself. The land masses can be used to stall the frantic cannonade, allowing you to take stock, repairing your bough and sails. With a bit of luck, you'll lure the enemy boat into pursuing you around a craggy island and as he makes that vulnerable turn you can open the sails and catch a gust of wind to come around his broadside and hit him hard and quickly escape the return fire, catching the wind again. Obviously using the landscape in this way leads to cries of "cowardice!" and other insults against your families level of honour. Maybe you fire one or two cheesey wotsits over to your opponents duel shock and catch him in the face leaving an orange reminder that if he "offends your family he offends your shaolin temple"...

The ships available range from really small one gun wonders to huge over gunned galleons. The impressive "GUNBOAT" having a single front-mounted gun, which gives rise to an impressive game of boat-based 'chicken'. The best games where the "even matches" where both opponents had the same boat. Having said that, theres nothing more hilarious than a two cannon "BUSS" going up against a 10 cannon "GALLEON", a real David and Goliath battle that has been decided before you start to play. Makes for interesting cat and mouse chases. The "MANOWAR" battles where a sight to behold, these massive battling stations turn slowly and take a lot of punishment and the sheer fire power can be stunning. The camera in Sea Battle mode remains independent of either player, however it zooms in and out depending on how close the two battling boats are together. So you can always see both players, but they will be small zoomed out representatives if you are having a long distance stand off. When the boats make a close pass, the camera zooms right in so you can see the burning sails and wood fragments explode from your deck.

There are floating box powerups thrown in every now and then to keep the battle lively, it takes real skill to race your ship to the box, avoiding collision with the other boat, sweeping up the goodie and getting away without too much damage. They provide a focal point for the two players to converge to - because one or the other usually has to make themselves prone, buy "telegraphing" their current course to the other player for the sake of the powerup. Powerups generally come in the form of a different masthead which affords you different attacks. One a rams head, allowing more successful ramming of the other ship (although ramming seemed to be a very costly thing to do regardless of masthead - sometimes the rammer would take more damage than the rammed), another was a dragons head, giving you a fire-based special that lights up your opponent with a warm glow that you want to toast your marshmallows on. Some powerups are used to block the attacks your opponent can make - and when you use them you halt any specials and disable their ability to catch the gust of wind - so you can plan carefully when to use these - as you sail into combat - disable the enemies attack and escape capabilities and hit hard and make your escape. These disabling powerups only have a limited time period of effect so it is important to get in, boom, boom, and out again. These hit and run tactics seem to be the best method for chiselling away your opponents hull integrity and tearing the sails into tatters. Prolonged side by side cannon pounding is impressive to watch but will decide the winner on who can get more off quicker rather than who can tactically maneuver and strike at the same time.

All in all, it is an excellent addition to the basic single player game. Even though I was wary of using the different ships in Battle for fear of reducing the ship building aspect to the single player game, I think the battles are isolated enough to just make you want to get your hands on enough money to upgrade to that "MANOWAR" rather than spoil anything. Very good post pub action, a few chugs on some grog before going into battle can help the fluidity of your turn and hopefully not affect the timing of your broadside special attacks. If all else fails you can always bombard your rival with cheesy wotsits and set course for ramming speed.

Gaming TV Shows

TV Gaming shows... why do we have to have presenters with attitude anyway? From what little I've seen of Bits and Thumb Bandits, I prefer the cleaner format of Cybernet. If they could only get a voice presenter and some writers with a bit more gaming nouse, I reckon just watching the game is enough. If you buy a gaming mag, you read the review and furtively glance at the screenies (you're never looking for the chump that wrote it), if you go to a gaming web site, you download the movie whilst skipping through the textual dross, if you happen to be lucky enough to have a video or better yeta DVD strapped to the magazine you slap them in or on and watch the game in action. In fact the more you keep the reviewer away from the actual game the better. Let them throw in points of balance, let them have their opinion - but at the end of the day the snippets I see of the game itself is the thing that will sway me one way or another.

Reading a strategy gamer review is a scarey thing, a) because its strategy but b) because all the reviewers look like c**ts. Don't show me their faces when I read their dribble! Don't make me listen to "wacky and racey" birds pretending to know stuff about the games, if I want to watch birds I put on old re-runs of Baywatch. I want to watch the friggin games, I want more footage less banal shite and competitions. Even cybernet cuts the footage up with an overused piece of cgi showing a TV-headed robot FFS! I don't think the "scene" around gaming can be marketed as a cool "extreme sports" type thing. Not yet anyway. Most gamers are fat bespectacled teens or ageing men. Most work in IT, or are studying IT and most wouldn't dream of slipping into a ski suit and risking life and limb to pull off a 360 degree 'twisty misty'. Fat pizza and beer loving criminals.

Gangfare

A very closed game. The only FREE mafia web game on the Internet. I cannot stress how much I enjoy this game enough. The game is FREE to sign on, although I have donated a small amount to the guy running it. It's a business simulation, all statistic based. But it has an extra level of play. A role playing family loyalty aspect that just really takes the dry cold statistical game to a new level. I'm a sucker for a game which calls for honour and loyalty on a big scale. Big concepts for small minded games.

I admire the fact that it is run by a single guy taking care of everything. I admire the fact that it is a fun simulation, very interesting in itself. But the most it has to offer - is the player to player interaction and family alliances. Because the world is small (only 200 players online at the moment) and the families are quite well setup and small scale, it has a very personal feel to it. You become embroiled in the affairs of the families and their gangsters, there is even a history that you can follow and the game hasn't been online that long. Well worth the effort if you enjoy role playing and simulation. Full marks for a very entertaining game, I just hope the guy who runs it can hold out against the barrage of ideas and tweaks let alone the whinges and whines from *some* of the players.

Pirates! Legend of the Black Kat

http://www.westwood.ea.com/games/pirates/

I picked this up yesterday, mainly because I liked the look of the big titted heroine on the front cover, but the game looked like a swashbuckling romp.

Anyway, what a nice surprise, I didn't have high expectations for the game, just thought I'd give it a rustle and it was the only new game out on the PS2 recently that I fancied.

It's a blend of a game. Sea battles and land exploration. The sea battles are like a spruced up version of Overboard. The land exploration is a simplified Tomb Raider - not based around puzzles more fighting enemies and collecting treasure.

The Sea battles are really lively and look very good, mainly due to the camera being fully under your control - you can pull out all the way like Overboard or you can zoom in down to deck level and watch the action from there. Ship control is simple, use the left analogue stick for turning and forward for opening the sails, there is even a gust of wind meter that builds up and allows you to catch the wind at speed for a short period. There is an element of strategy in that your ship can carry an assortment of cannon ammo (grape shot for ripping sails, burning pots for fire damage, poison pots for choking the crew affecting their aim). For a good all round arcade clipper ship battler its really quite good.

Tied into the sea battles are land exploration, collecting treasure and artifacts. The gold collected can be used to upgrade your boat and buy extra weapons for our buxom heroine (like throwing knives, sleeping gas etc). The "tomb raider" portion of the game involves jiggling around various islands and slaying the enemies with your cutlass and dagger. Attack combos are possible but only in a limited way, a bit like the triple A bashing of Phantasy Star Online. There is a block which seems to be effective if timed right against all but the heftiest of foes (some ham-fisted gorillas can actually hit harder and knock you in a daze). Striking the enemy also boosts your special attack meter, which collects sword upon sword from a single special to a double orange special to the triple crossed swords red special. You can fire the special anytime, as long as it has attained a sword (or number of swords) icon. These specials fire off like a Dynasty Warriors special, all glam and glitter with a touch of matrix-style bullet-time swirling. Satisfying, especially if cornered.

There are a few things lacking in the TR exploration, early on the islands are very compact and samey, there are some objects you cannot jump on top of, and you cannot splash around in the sea at the waters edge. All of these draw away from the generally pleasant graphics and pirate island mood. Our heroine does a nice rock slide down any slope thats too steep to climb, and she leaves footprints everywhere that can be used to judge some jumps and where exactly a rock slide will kick in, on some tricky hard to get at places. You save your game on the island at the nearest parrott on a perch. There are sometimes shops found where you can buy more kit - and you sense buried treasure with the rumble pack, and have to use the strength of vibration to dig up the chest and reveal the gems within. Other nice touches are when an enemy ship will sail past you as you are on the island, and you quickly board your ship and give chase.

The enemies re-spawn in an area if you re-visit it, and since the game advances the heroine character through items she finds rather than anything gained by engaging in combat, often the battles become tedious and you use your ability to jump and run unpredictably to escape the enemy, rather than run them through with cold steel. I think an element of character progression could have added to blend and put the icing on the cake. As it stands you sometimes wonder why you are attacking the "jason and the argonaut" skeletons for the sixth time running - just because you forgot the way back to the ship. There are several teleports around an island and these make quick exits back to the docks where your ship is berthed possible. There are bosses hidden in each group of islands and defeating them usually leads to you finding a torn portion of a map unlocking a new set of islands. Once you have unlocked them, you can pretty much roam as free as you want between the islands, and in fact some of the keys and collectibles have to be unlocked from one island in order to collect them from another.

In order to upgrade your ship, you need to dock at a fortress, on new islands this fortress is often held by the enemy and as well as taking on the enemy ships, you may have to bombard the fortress and any associated cannon towers. When enemy ships sink down to Davey Jones locker they often spew forth chests of gold, piles of wood and sail material that can be salvaged by picking them up. The wood and sail can be used to repair damage to your ship whilst at sea. You can also have a full repair in the fortress if you can afford it. Some of the islands are set at night, and the water effects are really eye catching, particularly one island where a massive full moon lights up the whole arena and the moon's reflection shimmers in the sea as you do battle. Some really nice lighting and environment effects on display.

Overall, its nice to see something a little different. Even if it is a blend of a couple of gaming styles that have come before. They tie in nicely and keep you amused - which is all you can really ask from such a title. It's apparently due out on the Xbox also.

There is a head to head Sea Battle mode, which I'd imagine will be real good fun after a night out on the grog.