Pirates: Duels on the High Seas Review

"Yo-ho-ho-ho, a pirate's life for me! Arrrrrrr me hearties prepare to set sail on a pirate ship o' many adventures and booty galore!"

"Pirates: Duels on the High Seas" is a game where ye be controllin' yer ship, that will take ye on a grand adventure where ye be sailin' through the seas. The story is that yer character be wantin' more gold. A haggard ol' sea dog tells him of a key that is worth a lot of booty, but shiver me timbers, the scurvy dog tricks ye! And so it turns out to be that ye have to find the other six keys or you and yer crew will face a terrible curse for all eternity...............

(Alright I'll stop with the pirate talk - now, back to the serious part)

This game delivers you to becoming captain of your ship in the savage world of pirates. You have to sail around the world to seven different locations collecting treasure and seeking all of the seven keys. On your travels you will find yourself in: Port Bello in South America; Port Royal in the Caribbean; The Bermuda Triangle; The China Sea; and The Persian Gulf.

There are also three different types of ships you can select, which are: easy - where your ship is the largest, but is also the slowest, can handle a lot of hits and has great firepower; medium - the ship is smaller, but is nevertheless a lot faster, is less resilient in taking hits and has less firepower than easy; hard - is the smallest and the fastest of all the ships, which is vulnerable and has the least firepower.

With seventy different levels, of which thirty-five are on the singleplayer and the other thirty-five are on the multiplayer and skirmish, the game will keep you quite engrossed for a while. However, some of the levels can be easily completed in a very short time which leaves you a bit frustrated. As well as having multiplayer options that can handle two to four players, you also have single player campaign, or you can select skirmish where you can battle three AI opponents.

If any of your friends have this game, then up to four of you can link up together and play. But don't worry if your friends don't have a version of this game as "Pirates: Duels on the High Seas" supports DS download play for up to two players, which means your friends don't have to have their own cartridge.

Throughout the game you have your normal "henchmen" type enemies which are ships that come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and strengths. Then you have your end of level type enemies which are creatures like Sea Dragons, Krakens plus others which I won't spoil too much of.

Your normal DS buttons control steering, forwards and backwards movement. You can also use the buttons to fire normal cannons and special weapons, of which I will discuss further about later on in the review.

While the top screen is used for playing the game and viewing your ship, the bottom touch screen is used for a map and activating performance boosters. There are four performance boosters which give you extra abilities in certain areas, though you can only use one performance booster at a time. These are the boosters:

Map icon - this increases the ability to see any signs of ships and treasure further along into your map.
Sail icon - this increases the speed of your ship.
Saw icon - this speeds up the repairs to your ship when it is damaged, although it will cost you some gold.
Cannon icon - this increases the range of your cannons.

Occasionally after you destroy a ship you may find castaways in the water that would like to become part of your crew for certain amount of gold. When they become part of your crew they help out with your performance boosters. The more castaways you find and hire, the more your performance boosters upgrade. This will make your performance boosters more accurate and enhanced. You can only upgrade the performance booster four times (per icon)

To tell the story there is a Captain's Log, which also tells you of your progress throughout the game. For example it tells you how much gold you collected on that level and how many shots you fired, plus other statistics. You also have a Sea Selection which is basically a level selection, so then you can either carry on where you left off, or you can play a level which you have already played on.

As I stated before, there are special weapons that you can collect. They do more damage then your usual cannons and have limited ammo, which is a maximum of twenty-five shots. Unfortunately you can not pick up more than one different special weapon. For example every time you collect a crate with a special weapon in, you get five ammo. If you've collected two crates for that weapon you have ten ammo. If you are trying to get your ammo full so that you are ready for battle, you may accidentally pick up a different special weapon. You then have five ammo of that special weapon and your ten ammo of your old special weapon resets and there is no way of bringing it back. Here are the different special weapons and what they do:

- Rockets - they fire forwards, have a long range and are very powerful.
- Chain Shot - they also fire forward and have a wide arc making it easier to aim with.
- Sea Mines - this weapon drops a mine out of the back of the ship. They blow up if anyone touches them.
- Saw Blade - fires forwards and can bounce off walls. This makes it very powerful.
- Flamethrower - this weapon also fires forward and has a very short range of firepower, nevertheless it has a devastating effect.

You can also pickup other items as well as special weapons, one of them being treasure which is used to pay your crew and pay for repairs. You also can pickup a Skull Shield which is a magic hex that spins around your ship giving it limited protection from enemy fire. As well as these items you can also pick up random items such as eye patches or black beards. Admittedly I have not yet found out the reason why you can collect those crates, though I suspect they are to do with collecting certain amount of gold for collecting these items as there is no way of retrieving or using these items.

Another item I have mentioned quite frequently already is the cannons. These are your main weapons used in a battle. The cannons shoot from either side of your ship, or both at the same time if needed. If there is an enemy on a particular side, the cannons automatically shoot from the side that the enemy is on. It is quite hard to manoeuvre in to the correct positions to fire upon a foe as the cannons are on the side of the ship. This is different from most games where you fire forward. However it does make the game more challenging.

To conclude, I do feel that this is a good game. It would appeal to some adults, but mainly to younger game players.