Age of Booty

Genre : Video Game
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Certain Affinity
Players: 1-8
Retail Price: $10
Availability: PC, XBLA, PSN

When I heard that the first game from Certain Affinity — founded by Max Hoberman and other Bungie employees — was going to feature pirates, my instinct was to exclaim, ‘Oh my god. They’re actually making Pimps at Sea.’ While that’s not exactly the case, it’s still fun to pretend. Besides, the end result was still a game that gives you (a) the ability to make pirate jokes* and (b) a good deal of fun.

Age of Booty is similar to Multiwinia in that it’s an RTS at heart, but many of the genre’s trappings have been cut away and replaced with other mechanics. In Booty’s case, they left the resources in but took out the units. Instead, you’re given control of a single pirate ship and have to conquer towns, which hand out one or two units of gold, wood and rum. You need wood and rum (of course!) to upgrade your ship’s speed, power and health and wood and gold to upgrade a town’s defenses.

It’s long been said that RTS games won’t work on a console (but then again, they used to say that about the FPS genre too). Don’t expect Command and Conquer out of Age of Booty: the game essentially has two buttons, ‘Go’ and ‘Use item.’ You automatically fire on anything directly adjacent to your hexagon, which can get hairy if you’re surrounded by two ships and a town all begging for a piece of you. If you sail over a crate, you pick it up and if you’re next to something what needs shooting, you’ll shoot it.

Don’t let the simple gameplay fool you, though. It’s made it easy to play so that you can put all your effort towards figuring out strategy. Every part of the game has its tricks and tradeoffs. I began by upgrading my cannons exclusively: blow those bastards out of the water! Then I found that I couldn’t capture a town because it fought back too much, so I’d upgrade my health. Once I captured the town, though, faster ships snuck in and took it from me before I could react. Then there’s the question of which towns to capture: sure, you only need a certain number to win, but if you only have wood with a little bit of gold then you can never get the four rum barrels needed to upgrade your ship. Then there are the items that you retrieve from the neutral merchant ships you destroy: a well placed whirlpool sucked out three or four would-be attackers on one of my towns, allowing me to cut off a space and more easily defend. Bombs can be used effectively as well, or can backfire. I’m not speaking from experience, of course. I certainly never placed a bomb in haste and wound up blowing up my own town. Heavens, no.

Age of Booty practically demands that you play it with other people. There are 21 single player challenges, sure, but the map editor gives you the ability to create endless variety for up to seven of your closest friends (or AI bots). They can be expansive or tiny, like the one I played where four pirate bases were practically on top of each other and we were forced to duke it out for two of the four towns. There’s also no replicating the feeling of accomplishment when you outgun your friends, or make them do the work and take a town down 75% before you sweep in with full health. It’s also significantly less satisfying to talk trash to the computer, let me tell you.

More than that, though, the AI in the game isn’t always top notch. The single player missions can get frustrating when you’re paired with a computer partner, as you’ll sweep into a town expecting backup (not only do you have twice the firepower, but the town has to split its shots between you) only to see that Pegleg Pete has taken it upon himself to go in the opposite direction to pick up a crate. The ability to direct your teammates would have been nice, but then it probably would have changed the ‘one unit’ aspect of the game. Still, though, there were times when I’d have given my right hand and replaced it with a hook** to be able to press X for ‘Help!’ or ‘You fool, don’t just sit there, defend Auckland!’ There are also the occasional pathfinding issues, like when our 2 vs 5 stomping of the other team lost its glory once I realized that three of their ships were trapped in a one-hex-wide corridor, trying to go north and south at the same time.

The presence of friends more than makes up for the absence of AI, though. While you may want to skip Age of Booty if you’re the only kid on the block interested in it, even one more player (local or online) makes all the difference. Don’t dismiss it as ‘a lame pirate game’ (as though there even were such a thing!) or ‘a watered down RTS,’ because it’s neither. The map editor is precisely what this game needs, as the amount of variety and originality it can inject with a well-made scenario more than makes up for whatever shortcomings the computer enemies possess. There are issues, of course, but what can’t be fixed with a generous application of pirate jokes?