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.